Aunt Thomasina?

Interesting thoughts snood.

Perhaps it's because women weren't part of any power structure until recdently not even entering the business world until the 40's. There isn't the history like there is with men. Even today a lot of strong women in business are seen as a b----.

I'm not sure that simply assuaging an employer's ego is "tomming."

I always thought that tomming was assisting an abuser, in order to further oneself and avoid the abuse. Being a toady, a lickspittle, and an accomplice.

Taking the measure of your boss isn't really the same, IMO.

I grew up in a completely white country - Sweden.
But I think that if I had to write a book or tell a story which would have taken place around and before WWI I would have made the male servant the one who bows and licks the boots of his boss. You have the butler, administrator, hunter and maybe the head gardener.
The female would be a woman who rules and is extremely strict with the housemaids and cooks.
The gouverness and nurses are somehow outside of all the intrigues and gossip.

As far as I know in real life it was not just like that - there were respect from both sides and sometimes a lifelong friendship.
My ideas might come more from books and films than real life.

i much prefer Uncle Semitism to Auntie Semitism

The stereotype "Uncle Tom" is uniquely male and can be found in every culture. It's a stereotype that has been around as long as there has been powerful male ideal.
The equivalent in female terms is the slut. The opposite is the ideal, the mother. Children, cooking, cleaning, motherhood, being female is as series of unending tasks, whether you have a job or not. A woman's work is never done, so the lazy title never seems to apply women overall. But if a man doesn't bring home the bacon we tie it to his manhood, his worth.
A man, though, can impregnate many women and he's virile. A woman looks at two different men and she's a whore. There is no real brush of shame where sex and men are involved.

Uncle Tom is not really a term I grew up with, I'm not sure when I first heard the term but I know it was a while before I understood what it meant. I did know what the term 'drunken paddy' and 'mic' meant, and it's pretty much the same thing. In most of the world, this kind of stereotypical name calling is usually reserved for religious differences, the other guys.
We are a unique bunch of idiots, us people. We've spent an awful lot of history beating ourselves up.

My family is from Ireland. For centuries, pale faced morons have been killing each other over minor differences in opinion. I remember as a kid, sitting on a bench in my mothers home town. She could point out a catholic from a protestant. Seriously. They all looked the same to me. A slightly blue tinged populace under various shades of hair, wrapped in woolly sweaters..

Getting back to the whole idea of work. I think it's hard getting past a stereotype. If a person/group is susceptible to ignorance/propaganda, it doesn't take much to cement an idea. If a business hires x and he doesn't show up to work (or whatever), then the x stereotype must be true. It then becomes difficult to dissuade the employer from his belief and he won't hire x. He tells others, peer pressure... It then become harder for x to find work, and we all know, if you can't find a job, you're lazy, shiftless and it becomes self fulfilling prophesy. A vicious cycle.

Reading through your post the first thing that popped into my mind was Ronald Regan's mythical "welfare queen". I was a junior at a predominately black high school at the time and I remember so many of my fellow students being absolutely crushed by this characterization of their mothers.

Somehow this idea was so "sticky" that it persists today. The Welfare Queen seems to be the flip side of Uncle Tom, in a way.

There have been some awful black women in movies -- the mother in "Precious", the mother in "The Blind Side", the foster mother in "Finding Fish". They all fall into the "welfare queen" mode of black women.

I have been acquainted with some very educated black women who were very caustic. I think I would prefer the welfare queen from my personal experience which isent extensive.

Wonderful comments, all. I knew I could get good feedback from you guys / gals.

Something I missed on my first read-through was the inherent assumption (which, I'm sad to say, I apparently shared) that "welfare queens" are black.

The welfare queen stereotype is especially pernicious in that it distracts public attention with a false image of who is served by welfare. The majority of welfare recipients are rural and white, not urban and black.

I do not think that Black women are better at pandering to the white male ego, than any other women. I think that organizations might often just believe that Black women are oftentimes more intelligent than their male counterparts, at least in the northern urban setting. And, since many are raising a family, as a single parent, it might be thought that they have more to lose if they do not "get with the organization's program."

The popular hip-hop culture may be giving credence and exacerbating this belief, by some, since when white guys cock their baseball cap brim to the side, and let their jeans hang low, I believe (and have heard it explained this way on some tv show) that emulating the Black young male allows white guys to feel more in charge of their destiny (aka, more masculine).

Also, to be candid, many white collar environments today are disproportionately females, and there might even be a feeling that Black women can fit into an office culture better than a Black male, perhaps because a Black female can bond with white females over raising children, but beyond "sports talk" the thought might be that Black males would have a harder time bonding with white males? Fitting in, or not, to a work group is often the criteria for hiring. White gay males, in my opinion, also might be judged as better able to fit into a predominantly female office.

There may also be the belief that the Black male is angrier (in a free-floating sort of way) towards the white establishment than the Black female?

Let's be honest, how many news reports talk of Black females robbing, or assaulting anyone? In effect, in my opinion, the country has been conditioned to think of a percentage of Black males as renegades to civil social mores. While a large percentage of the country still lives in fairly segregated neighborhoods, developments, etc., not that many white folk have enough positive experiences with Black males to know that the news media is just selling what will get viewers.

I also think that in urban America many people believe that Black males have a penchant for "packing."

In effect, in my opinion, Black males have a reputation going back over a century to being more volatile. The Black female, again in my opinion, has a reputation (as seen in the movie The Help) of being able to love the white children of her employer, even though the children's parents (her employer) have been brainwashed with prejudice from an early age.

P.S. Movies that depict Black parents like what Precious had is not exactly giving urban Blacks a positive image.

P.P.S. Here in NYC, in my opinion, many whites think of Blacks from the West Indies in a totally different manner from African-Americans. Positive that is. Why? Aside from the awareness that they have an education based on the British education model, where it is thought one learns in a more disciplined environment, there is also the thought, in my opinion, that coming from an island nation of their own, their self-esteem is healthy, not having any family that relates the experiences in the not too distant past of the Jim Crow South.

Not being a sociologist, but liking the subject, I try to see things from the aspect of what causes things to be the way they are. So, the above is my opinion, gleaned from decades of my own observations. Perhaps, my opinions ring true in some ways? At least I don't pussy foot around (to quote LBJ).

Before the welfare queen stereotype entered the public consciousness, the stereotype that I grew up with is the hard working black woman supporting some children and a shiftless husband. Never mind that I have associated with some black men both of good character and willing to work, I sort of believed this one myself.

I've worked in small places, mostly, or small places within big ones. Have had mostly non obnoxious bosses (the one I did I quit fast). Race and ethnicity and gender have varied and I can't come up with a view re my peers being subservient to bosses. Maybe one will pop up if I think more about it, but I'd bet the person is white. For example, I, irish american woman, worked along with a black architect for a japanese american boss. Nothin' snivelling or sucky about any of us. Two blacks I worked with in medicine, one was a man from Eritrea and one a woman from Cameroon. No sucky stuff there either. The eritrean guy was part of our lab crowd, that is, out of the lab. Then there was Nat in LA, the lab driver. Man could sing, and did Motown with Sharon, lab tech from Buffalo.

Maybe we were all lucky. I didn't mention the vietnamese woman, the korean woman, the tall redhead named Marilyn, the armenian guy who took us all to a night of belly dances in Hollywood - labs were an interface then. One boss had a temper, but it was a multicultural temper.

I'm not denying there could be Thomasinas, I just haven't seen it, even with what were then called secretaries, of any description. Well, maybe one. She was blonde. But not Lulu or Elaine.

Thanks for everyones' anecdotes from work. Very interesting. Just to reiterate what I was originally getting at though...

Popular American culture has many well-known boot-licking male black characters, but basically no female ones. I was wondering why that was, since it is obvious to me that black women kiss ass at least as well as black men.

I'm way behind on tv culture, fifteen to twenty years. And you have been in the Army, which is a whole rigamarole about who is subservient to whom - as I take it - and may not represent what is going on out of the army. Or, maybe it does.
Interesting question, anyway.

Weren't the black maids a female equivalent to "Uncle Tom" ?

The historical record is pretty clear that some black women slaves were willing (and I use this word with hesitation) to exchange sex for a more favorable position in the household.

I'm sure that came at the expense of their dignity.

Perhaps the difference lies somewhere in that -- they exchanged different kinds of "services" to appease their masters.

Whoa. We're gonna have to exchange "historical records" I guess, because the encounters I've read about more closely resemble rape than any sort of implicit barter for better status.

That's why I said I use the word with hesitation. It was rape.