Your response is so dopey.
There's a wide range of ethnic slurs, some viewed as "more offensive" than others. I find it amusing that you think that "etymology" somehow mitigates an ethnic slur. As I've pointed out before, even a word as simple as "boy" has a long history of being used as a racial slur against black men.
Also, to repeat the obvious, the term "Uncle Tom" is a very specific racial slur used against black people. It, quite literally, doesn't have the same meaning or impact if you use it against, say, a German person.
As has been mentioned ad infinitum, there are many intended racial slurs that arise from fictitious characters. Sambo, Uncle Tom, and Aunt Jemima are some of the ones that have come up in the last few months. Are you trying to argue that a name of a fictitious character cannot be used as a shorthand racial/ethnic slur against people of a particular race/ethnicity? Do you have any idea of the history of the term "shylock", and why it is used as a slur against ****** people?
Finally, why would you think that it would "probably be OK in my book" to use the term Uncle Tom? Again, there are a lot of terms that can be used to call someone a traitor or sellout to one's race/ethnicity, but "Uncle Tom" is only used against Black people. There are a lot of terms to call someone "weak and ineffectual" (in your words), but "Fredo" is only used against Italian people.
For the record, anyone who has actually read The Godfather would know that Fredo was NOT "weak", he was considered to be the toughest of the sons while growing up. But he was not as intelligent as Santino and Michael, and he was not as ruthless. So the "Fredo" slur involves an insult against a less intelligent Italian. Oh, crap, I should have done an imitation of Empirical and called that a "fun fact".
