How did ‘Uncle Tom’ come to be used as a euphemism for a racial sell-out. I just read the book and he is the hero. I really don’t get it.
As it happens, I just read a bit from a book on the Civil War that answers your question in a nutshell:
“In a later age ‘Uncle Tom’ became an epithet for a black person who behaved with fawning servility toward white oppressors. This was partly a product of the ubiquitous Tom shows that paraded across the stage for generations and transmuted the novel into comic or grotesque melodrama. But an obsequious Tom was not the Uncle Tom of Stowe’s pages. That Tom was one of the few true Christians in a novel intended to stir the emotions of a Christian public.”
(from James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom, pg. 90)
Tom’s seen as a sellout because he’s so damn meek and accomodating to the white folk.
Uncle Tom’s character was created to be non-threatening and acceptable to whites. The book shows that slavery is bad by showing its effect on this non-threatening character. He met some standard of behavior that whites saw as deserving humane treatment. Think about that for a moment. I find it damn galling for someone to imply that inhumane and unjust laws should be overturned because they might affect an unreasonably good person negatively. It is like championing women’s rights with Griselda for an icon. When I read that tale, by the time she is prepping the new bride I’m screaming at her, “Get a spine, woman!” I can better identify with Medea than with Griselda.
Would a female also be called an Uncle Tom, or something else?