The term is easily translated to Tom. Which is pejorative for blacks that conform to white society (white wife, he’s well educated, polite, and well spoken).
Did this recently fired commentator make up the term cornball brother? Blacks have been calling each other Toms going all the way back to the 50’s and 60’s.
The attitude is a major headache for educators. Any black child that does well in school or life in general can be held in contempt by his peers.
I’ve never liked listening to Rob Parker. It wouldn’t surprise me if he made up the term himself. Hopefully, people will stop hiring him for sports broadcasting now.
I did a search on Google Groups (Usenet). Almost all the usages were people talking about Rob Parker’s comment.
The very few others uses seem to be in the sense of someone saying “my cornball (i.e., idiot/goofy) brother”.
Given the extreme rarity of it’s usage there, with no obvious racial implication, this cannot be a widely used slur.
Unless Rob Parker is Jihad, author of 2005’s Babygirl: She Robbin’ the Rich to Give to the Poor, then he apparently wasn’t the first to use “cornball brother.”
But, of course, “corn ball” (or “cornball”) has been with us for a long time. Its first appearance at Urbandictionary.com came in 2003. And “corn-ball” (or “cornball”) to denote corniness or lack of sophistication has been a part of American English for at least 60 years.
So, I’m not sure I’d ascribe any uniqueness to Parker’s “cornball brother.” No doubt he was simply applying the established “cornball” to the established “brother.”
Cornball has always been derogative for rural people or situations. Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies were cornball tv comedies.
Applying this term to a black person who’s well educated, speaks well, and has a white finance seemed very strange. I can only guess Rob Parker thought he’d get away with a made up term. If he had said “Tom” then I’d imagine he would have been fired that very day. That’s an explosive term for one black to call another brother.
I think some of the definitions for “corn ball” and “cornball,” particularly the earlier ones, parallel how Parker used “cornball” to signify “uncool,” ergo, to Parker, not “a brother.” My reading is that he’s not going so far as to call Griffin an “Uncle Tom,” which to me implies obsequiousness and servility to whites, but that he sees Griffin as cheesy and uncool, an inauthentic brother because he has characteristics and interests Parker feels outside the norm for “authentic” black males. As you’ve implied, “cornball brother” seems a step or two short of “Uncle Tom.”