If You Know What I Mean Black Guy

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substantive Disparaging and Offensive.

a Black person, especially a man, considered by other Black people to be subservient to or to curry favor with white people.

a person who exhibits overly deferential beliefs.

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My grandmother ________ a wall total of antiquarian cuckoo clocks.

Origin of Uncle Tom

An Americanism first recorded in 1920–25; then called later the leading character in Uncle Tom'southward Cabin

OTHER WORDS FROM Uncle Tom

Uncle Tomish, adjective

Words nearby Uncle Tom

Uncle Charlie, uncle-ji, unclench, Uncle Remus, Uncle Sam, Uncle Tom, Uncle Tomism, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Uncle Vanya, uncloak, unclog

Lexicon.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Entire Lexicon, © Random House, Inc. 2022

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What doesUncle Tom mean?

Content warning: this article includes content dealing with slavery and racism.

Uncle Tom is a fictional character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel Uncle Tom'southward Cabin. His proper noun has become a highly offensive nickname some Black people use to accuse other Blackness people of subservient to white people and culture.

How is Uncle Tom pronounced?

[ uhng-kuhl tom ]

Where doesUncle Tom come up from?

The abolitionist and novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe (who was white) published her antislavery novel Uncle Tom'southward Motel in 1852. The book was intended to combat stereotypes of slaves and make white Southerners empathize with its title character, Uncle Tom. That name, Uncle Tom, as it happens, can exist found as an epithet for an obedient Blackness person before the novel was published, which possibly had some influence on Stowe.

In the book, Uncle Tom is a slave sold to different families throughout his life, but, owing to his kind and generous nature, he remains a devout Christian and loyal to his masters. At the end of the book, Uncle Tom becomes a martyr figure, whipped to expiry for refusing to give up the location of some runaway slaves.

In its day, Stowe's novel was enormously popular and influential, even credited in helping Abraham Lincoln, a champion of the abolition, to win the presidency—and fifty-fifty the Civil State of war. Selling over 300,000 copies in the U.S. and over ane million in the U.K., it is considered the bestselling novel of the 19th century.

Not everyone thought highly of the novel, however. This included the pro-slavery camp at the time, as you can imagine. But many Black Americans in the 19th century criticized the grapheme of Uncle Tom as a White vision of the ideal Black person. And so the term Uncle Tom emerged every bit a term for a extravaganza of and insult for an obsequious Blackness person.

In the 1960s, major figures in Black history and culture, including Malcom X and Muhammad Ali, used to the term Uncle Tom to disparage Blackness people every bit betraying their race and existence complicit in their own oppression.

Major Black figures in recent history accept also been chosen Uncle Toms, including President Barack Obama, actor Terrence Howard in the show Empire, President Trump's HUD Secretary Ben Carson, and rapper Kanye West. In each case, the idea is that the Black person is interim like an Uncle Tom (i.e., submitting besides readily to the interests of white people and institutions, at the expense of Blackness empowerment).

Comedian Michelle Wolf (a white woman) controversially extended the metaphor of Uncle Tom at the 2018 Whitehouse Correspondents' Dinner, likening Trump's Press Secretarial assistant at the time, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, to an Uncle Tom for white women: "What's Uncle Tom but for white women who disappoint other white women?" Sanders was the punchline. Many in the Black customs criticized Wolf'due south appropriation of Uncle Tom.

How isUncle Tom used in real life?

Calling a Black person an Uncle Tom is seen as strongly offensive. Every bit a 2011 article on the Black-oriented website The Grio put it: "Curt of dropping the n-bomb on someone, there are few things more insulting to many African-Americans than being called an 'Uncle Tom'."

The insult suggests a Blackness person puts the interests of white people earlier the just and fair treatment of the Black community. This can be in politics or in everyday life. For instance, a Black person may be called an Uncle Tom for letting white friends employ the Black-reappropriated forms of the N-word. More extremely, a Black person may as well be called an Uncle Tom if they demonstrate a certain center-class bearing (e.thousand., audio similar a white person or engage with white mainstream culture).

These supposed "black conservatives" are why all black cons go called an Uncle Tom or Uncle Ruckus and all the other names in the book. To them racism can simply happen to those other black people, not them. They don't care, they've made it, f**m the rest.

— ConservativeBlackMan 🇯🇲🇺🇸 (@NevilleD35) May 6, 2020

Sorry what is a "new Black". Is it Candace Owens, Ben Carson, Diamond and Silk? Uncle Tom's take been around since slavery.

— Angie C (@acaldwell96) May 6, 2020

In the 2010s, some in the Black customs pushed back confronting the Uncle Tom epithet, arguing the grapheme in the novel wasn't a race traitor as much every bit trying to survive in an oppressive system. Others have worked toward reclaiming the epithet given the key goodness of the character. Nevertheless, the portrayal of Black people themselves in Uncle Tom'due south Motel is widely viewed as racist today.

Tom is sometimes used as a curt form of Uncle Tom. Annotation: the extremely offensive slur, coon, is occasionally used in the same mode as Uncle Tom.

More examples of Uncle Tom:

"Nadia Brown, professor of political science and African American studies at Purdue Academy, idea Wolf's Uncle Tom zinger was funny but missed the marker for another reason: 'Y'all can't say a white woman is beingness an Uncle Tom if she's doing what other white women are doing'"

—Vanessa Williams, The Washington Mail service, May 2018

How to use Uncle Tom in a sentence

• Tom Brady, the prettiest of pretty boys, leads the Patriots.

• Same with my uncle and cousins when their planes landed from Vietnam.

• There, many minority parents supported Tom Torklarson, who favored the education reform agenda.

• The immature Jordanian airplane pilot comes from a well-known war machine family unit in the kingdom and his uncle is a retired major general.

• Tom Rust, a spokesman for the House Ethics Committee, declined to comment to The Daily Beast.

• The strains of the syren at final woke her uncle, and brought back Miss Hood, who suggested that it was late.

• "Information technology means, my dearest, that the Dragoons and the 60th will have to teach these impudent rebels a much-needed lesson," said her uncle.

• Tom—I felt out of myself in a manner—as though I'd escaped—into—into quite dissimilar weather——'

• The conflict in Tom's puzzled middle sharpened that evening into dreadful edges that cut him mercilessly whichever way he turned.

• She gave details of the singular mood that had come up upon her with the arrival of Tony, but Tom hardly heard her.

British Dictionary definitions for Uncle Tom

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noun

breezy, derogatory a Black person whose behaviour towards White people is regarded as obsequious and servile

Derived forms of Uncle Tom

Uncle Tomism, noun

Word Origin for Uncle Tom

C20: after the slave who is the master character of H.B. Stowe'due south novel Uncle Tom'south Cabin (1852)

Collins English language Dictionary - Consummate & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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Source: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/uncle-tom

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