Uncle Tom

The term Uncle Tom (also House Negro in African American circles or internalized misogynist in feminist circles) is a commonly-used term in social justice circles to refer to members of oppressed groups who devote their time and energy to justifying why their oppression is either benign, preferable, or justified. They're oftentimes commonly used as political ammo by reactionaries to claim that their beliefs are right and that they aren't bigots. It's the ultimate form of internalized oppression or internalized discrimination.
==Origin and function==
The term Uncle Tom is derived from the character of from the eponymously named novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, edited by Elizabeth Ammons (2010). W. W. Norton & Company, 2nd ed. (Norton Critical Editions). ISBN 0393933997. In the novel, African American slave Tom is beaten to death for refusing to betray the whereabouts of two other slaves; the name of one of the slaves, Sambo, became a slur in its own right partly due to this (though published many years later in the UK, is the most common association, as even though the character is Indian, the name Sambo had come to refer to anyone with darker skin).Uncle Tom's Cabin. Cliffs Notes. While he was a hero in the book, the play adaptation portrays him as a cringing lackey of his master.
Malcolm X accused Martin Luther King Jr. of being an Uncle Tom:Voices of a Generation: Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
Along these lines, Malcolm X famously made an analogy describing the difference between a 'House negro' and 'Field negro'Malcolm describes the difference between the "house Negro" and the "field Negro." Speech transcript from Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan. 23 January 1963 (The Malcolm X Project at Columbia University). The 'House Negro' as described shared many of the benefits of their Masters and thus were subservient and reluctant to rock the boat while the 'Field negro' toiled in the fields and longed for change. Malcolm X contended that a modern day 'house negro' existed, a modern day Uncle Tom, consisting of black people who identified more with the white establishment than their fellow black brethren.
Oddly enough, before the term "Uncle Tom" arose as an insult, the boxer was depicted as Uncle Tom in a positive way. A 1910 depiction shows Johnson as Uncle Tom punching out his last owner, Simon Legree, in a clearly positive way.https://www.granger.com/results.asp?image=0109568 To add to the strangeness, while even being the heavyweight boxing champion could never get him fully accepted into white culture, he was accepted enough (to the point that he married a white woman) that other black people accused him of being a race traitor; essentially calling him an Uncle Tom before that became a slur.https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/unforgivable-blackness/rebel-of-the-progressive-era
==In popular culture==
* in the comic strip and TV series Boondocks
*The character Stephen in the movie Django UnchainedDjango Unchained (2012) IMDb.
*The character Clayton Bigsby from The Chapelle Show.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLNDqxrUUwQ
==See also==
*Respectability politics
==External links==
*
*Internalized Categorism on TVTropes
==References==