"Uncle Tomming"

[victor steinbok]

[Uncle Tom, n. 1922 --> 1920 --> 1909? --> 1908?]

Tom/Tomming and Uncle Tom/Uncle Tomming should be tracked separately,
although, of course, it's not an easy task. Note, in particular, OED tom v.

Etymology:  < Tom n.1
>  1. trans. To address familiarly as ‘Tom’. nonce-use.
> 1900    S. J. Weyman Sophia xxiv,   ‘You may Tom me, you don't alter it’,
> he answered.
>


 2. intr.  [ < Tom n.1 1f] To behave in an ingratiating and servile way to
> someone of another (esp. white) race. Also to tom it (up) . U.S. slang.
> 1963    L. Bennett in W. King Black Short Story Anthol. (1972) 161   They
> say you are going to chicken out, Papa.‥ They're betting you'll ‘Tom’.
> 1972    M. J. Bosse Incident at Naha ii. 94   Virgil just smiled, Tomming
> it up.
> 1976    Public Opinion Q. XXXIX. 527   The respondent ‘accommodates’, or to
> use the colloquial term, ‘toms’, in order to get through the racial
> interaction with minimal tension.
>


 3. intr. To practise prostitution, to behave promiscuously; also, to have
> sexual intercourse in such a context. Also to tom (it) around . slang.
> 1964    Z. Progl Woman of Underworld iii. 35   They were perfectly willing
> to go ‘tomming’ on the streets to earn a few quid, but I never could.
> 1968    ‘J. Ross’ Diminished by Death i. 14   She's just tomming around.
> 1973    J. Rossiter Manipulators ix. 102   This woman.‥ Is she tomming it
> around with the local villains?
> 1981    A. Sewart Close your Eyes & Sleep xviii. 181   What was she doing?
> Tomming, to put it bluntly. She was having it off with a bloke.
>
> Derivatives
>
>   ˈtomming n.
> 1968    J. Lock Lady Policeman ii. 12   A prostitute was a ‘tom’‥and to
> practise prostitution was ‘tomming’.
> 1973    Black World May 44   Afrikan People all over the world Conscious,
> unconscious, struggling, sleeping, Resisting, tomming, killing the enemy.
> 1981    ‘J. Ross’ Dark Blue & Dangerous ix. 55   His own tomming around had
> given him a charitable view of casual sex.



Note that tom n.1 1f does reference "Uncle Tom", so the verb is linked to
its origin, even though the overarching etymology note omits that little
detail (v. 1. is of a different cloth and is irrelevant to the rest of the
post). Now, for my money, v. 3. and the derivative "noun" tomming are both
derived from v. 2 and not some hypothetical "Tom" that parallels the
hypothetical "John". The timing certainly fits.

Now, 1922 sounds awfully late for early "Uncle Tom" references, even for
noun.

Here's one earlier, but it doesn't seem quite right:


http://goo.gl/bHE6M
Current Literature. Volume 45 (6). December 1908
Mr. Stringer's Arraignment of the "Canada Fakers". p. 644/2

> Then, too, Mr. White speaks of a bloodhound being used in this man-hunt;
> and "there are no bloodhounds," Mr. Stringer asserts, "in the country of
> which Mr. White so movingly writes. They are not found there, and it would
> be as foolish to import them as it would be to bring in an army of Uncle Toms
> to gather cotton from the Moose River bottoms." Then Mr. White represents
> the Ojibways and the Chippewas as engaged in deadly strife, which is just as
> reasonable, Mr. Stringer opines, as to speak of the conflicts of Canucks and
> Canadians, of New Yorkers and Gothamites; for the Ojibways and Chippewas are
> one people.



Note that this is not quite the same slur, but rather a juxtaposition
between "Uncle Toms" and "gather[ing] cotton" from Moose River bottoms that
Mr. Stringer (the critic) finds incongruous. The issue here is inability to
grow cotton at a Canadian location and "Uncle Toms" are thrown in for color
(no pun intended).

I thought a more extended passage might set the context:

"We see the same tendency to dish up a goulash of dilettante details spiced
> with sentiment when Sir Gilbert turns historical and has General Wolfe 'eye'
> his men in the boats at the turn of the tide in the St. Lawrence (on the
> night preceding Quebec's fall) when that night has already been described as
> pitch dark, and when it is plain that these men were so many, many hundred
> feet away."
> Mr. Stringer confesses that he approaches the blunders of Stewart Edward White
> with a feeling akin to trepidation, not, he explains, because Mr. White is
> the master of a forceful and fluent style, but because "so august a
> personage as the Washington enemy of the nature faker himself has placed on
> Mr. White the seal of his complete approval." Yet blunders there are, and
> not a few. The very plot of "The Silent Places" is, in Mr. Stringer's
> judgment, based upon a fallacy. This story describes the prolonged and
> relentless pursuit of a defalcating Indian by two hired agents of the
> Hudson's Bay Company; but "it is not and never was the custom of the
> company," says Mr. Stringer, "to expend good money for the active pursuit of
> delinquents." The mere "posting," or black-listing, of any defalcator at the
> different trading places of the company has been all that was necessary to
> bring him to book as a rule. Then, too, Mr. White speaks of a bloodhound
> being used in this man-hunt; and "there are no bloodhounds," Mr. Stringer
> asserts, "in the country of which Mr. White so movingly writes. They are
> not found there, and it would be as foolish to import them as it would be to
> bring in an army of Uncle Toms to gather cotton from the Moose River
> bottoms." Then Mr. White represents the Ojibways and the Chippewas as
> engaged in deadly strife, which is just as reasonable, Mr. Stringer opines,
> as to speak of the conflicts of Canucks and Canadians, of New Yorkers and
> Gothamites; for the Ojibways and Chippewas are one people.
> The same sort of blunders are discerned in Stewart Edward White's
> "Conjurer's House," and are all attributed by Mr. Stringer to "the passion
> to make the trails of the north either always picturesque or always tragic."


There is a bunch of nice points here, starting with "dish[ing] up goulash of
dilettante details"; "black-listing" as posting notices of "defalcators"
(embezzlers?)--no OED listing suggests that anyone on the black-list ought
to be caught but merely rendered unemployable; "Gothamites" matched up with
"New Yorkers"--making of a nice post-dating citation; and the mention of
"Canucks" that the OED, for some reason, finds "In U.S. usage, gen.
derogatory" (clearly not even remotely the connotation here). All of these
under one very tidy roof.

However, the main one for citing it here--Uncle Toms--appears to fail. It is
obvious that the reference here is to blacks, but there is no hint of the
additional connotation of being subservient or servile. The only reason that
this reference is there is to point to the absurdity of blacks picking
cotton at "Moose River bottoms"--it's not clear where the conflict lies, but
it is surely not in their being excessively subservient.

The opposite is true of another 1908 Uncle Tom reference. This one is in
Punch, but it identifies a proper name--fictitious, but referring to a
specific person, just like its antecedent. But IMO the usage of this name is
exactly matching the derogatory general use. I only submit the link because
the entire text should be considered in this analysis:

http://goo.gl/Byd49

The particularly odd thing about this is that it's English, not US, but its
origin appears to be in minstrel show versions of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Does
this one deserve at least a bracketed treatment in the OED?

The best certain antedating I can get right now is 1920.

http://goo.gl/PG3Rp
The Herald and Presbyter. A Presbyterian Family Paper. Volume
91(32). Cincinnati, OH: August 11, 1920
New York Letter. By Rev. Clarence C. Reynolds. p. 6/3

> "... The Uncle Tom Negro has got to go, and his place must be taken by the
> new leader of the Negro race. That man will not be a white man with a black
> heart, nor a black man with a white heart, but a black man with a black
> heart."



There is a transitional piece that may well be important in the history of
"Uncle Tom".

http://goo.gl/QAPG8
The International Socialist Review. Volume 9(12). June 1909
The Economic Aspects of the Negro Problem. VIII. The Negro Problem from the
Negro's Point of View. By I. M. Robbins. pp. 985-7

> Besides, Mrs. Stowe's types are the complex types produced by two hundred
> years of slavery. It would have been extremely interesting to enter the
> inner world of that infuriated negro, whom the negro dealer had caught in
> the jungle of wildest Africa, and brought him over, chained in the dark and
> ill-smelling bunker of the ship, to the distant land, where he was sold to
> work the rest of his life in the marshy rice fields, or the sun-baked cotton
> plantations. It would have been highly instructive to follow up the
> evolution of that wild beast into the mellow and faithful Uncle Tom of a
> century later. But this psychologic problem never had the good fortune to
> find its scientific investigator.
> In the glorious days of slavery, that is during the first third of the last
> century, the white south was firmly convinced that it was the destiny of the
> negro both, according to God's will, and the dictum of science, to be
> nothing else than a faithful Uncle Tom. That the negro was satisfied with
> his lot was the strongest article of faith--of the white man.
> Such assertions may even be heard to-day, though perhaps not so frequently
> as forty years ago. The famous South Carolina Senator Tillman, perhaps one
> of the strongest negro haters in the South, in theory at least, once
> remarked that the main proof that they deserved the treatment accorded to
> them was found just in this: that no other race would tolerate such
> treatment.

...
> If all through the period of slavery negroes energetically voiced their
> protest against slavery not so much by words as by acts, they were no less
> anxious, immediately after the emancipation, to express their conviction
> that they were no lower, nor worse, than the white folks. Uncle Tom was not
> the ideal of those few negroes of that period who had ideals at all. It was
> rather Toussaint L'Ouverture, that full-blooded negro, who succeeded in
> creating a negro republic in Haiti.


Although Stowe--and, indeed, her book--is mentioned, the use of "Uncle Tom"
is more symbolic and representative than literary and specific.

VS-)

On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 6:27 PM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> The OED has Uncle Tomming with a first citation in 1947.
> Uncle Toming n. (also Uncle Tomming)
> 1947    S. Lewis Kingsblood Royal x. 52   Why, you gold-digging,
> uncle-tomming, old, black he-courtesan!
>
> Here is a relevant cite in 1933:
>
> Cite: 1933 March 18, The Pittsburgh Courier, Views and Reviews by
> George S. Schuyler, Page 10, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (ProQuest)
>
> Negroes responsible for the ballyhoo about conditions being so good
> down South that Negroes who escaped should return there, are merely
> Uncle Tomming in the hope that it will please the white folks.
>
> There are many earlier instances of "Uncle Tomming" with multiple
> overlapping senses. An "Uncle Tomming" troupe is a theatrical group
> that performs "Uncle Tom's Cabin". "Uncle Tomming" also refers to
> performing as part of such a troupe.
>
> Garson
>
> On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 4:24 PM, Garson O'Toole
> <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Arnold Zwicky wrote on his blog:
> >> Green’s Dictionary of Slang (2010) has a 1954 cite
> >> for the verb tom, in the relevant sense, and that dating
> >> could probably be improved on by a systematic search.
> >
> > Here are two leads for the verb form "Uncle Tomming". These are
> > unverified matches in Google Books. The first has a GB date of 1944,
> > but the GB pointer really leads to seventh printing in 2009. The term
> > "Uncle Tomming" might be in the 1944 edition, the 1962 edition, or
> > later. (Maybe Green already checked these leads.)
> >
> > An American dilemma: the Negro problem and modern democracy - Page 774
> > books.google.com
> > Gunnar Myrdal, Sissela Bok - 1944 - 936 pages - Google eBook - Preview
> > But the common Negroes do feel humiliated and frustrated. And they can
> > afford to take it out on their leaders by defaming them for their
> > "kowtowing," "pussy-footing," and "Uncle Tomming"; by calling them
> > "handkerchief heads" and "hats ...
> >
> > http://books.google.com/books?id=1S8XwCM-EYcC&q=tomming#v=snippet&
> >
> >
> > Here is the same text in another book with multiple editions. The
> > first has a GB date of 1956 and a WorldCat copyright date of 1948, but
> > there were multiple editions so the date is uncertain. The term "Uncle
> > Tomming" might be present in some 1948 edition, or a 1964 edition or
> > later.
> >
> > The Negro in America
> > books.google.com
> > Arnold Marshall Rose, Gunnar Myrdal - 1956 - 324 pages - Snippet view
> > And they can afford to take it out on their leaders by defaming them
> > for their "kowtowing," "pussyfooting," and "Uncle Tomming"; by calling
> > them "handkerchief heads" and "hats in hand," and particularly by
> > suspecting them of being ...
> >
> > http://books.google.com/books?id=vTt2AAAAMAAJ&q=Tomming#search_anchor
> >
> > Worldcat has an entry that says:
> > The Negro in America
> > Author:         Arnold Marshall Rose; Gunnar Myrdal
> > Publisher:      Boston : Beacon Press, 1956 [Copyright 1948]
> >
> > But another edition was published in 1964:
> > 1. The Negro in America.
> > With a foreword by Gunnar Myrdal.
> > Published: New York, Harper & Row [1964]
> >
> >>
> >> According to the late-great:
> >>
> >> "He [a black policeman, when in the company of a white partner] may
> >> _tom out_ on yo' ass."
> >> -Richard Pryor, ca. 1967, in person; 1971, on the album, Hope I Don't
> >> Crap! (Laff Records)
> >>
> >> I find that sign to be more embarrassing than appalling.
> >>
> >> <sigh!>
> >>
> >> --
> >> -Wilson
>

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