What is an Uncle Tom mentality?
Uncle Tom is a pejorative for an African American who is perceived by others as behaving in a subservient manner to White American authority figures, or as seeking ingratiation with them by way of unnecessary accommodation. The term Uncle Tom comes from the title character of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, although there is debate over whether the character himself is deserving of the pejorative attributed to him.
I looked several places, the term I found was Uncle Tomism. http://kpearson.faculty.tcnj.edu/Diction… Uncle Tomism: A policy of relationship between whites and blacks involving a benevolent but patronizing attitude on the part of the whites and a willingly submissive attitude on the part of the blacks”(2056-57). Random House’s earlier edition (1966) has a slightly different definition, “Uncle Tom n. Contemptuous. A Negro who is abjectly servile or differential to whites. Also called Tom.” The definition for Uncle Tomism remains the same except for the term black (1987 edition) which replaced Negro (1966 edition).
