Ian Afflerbach, University of North Georgia – How “Selling Out” Started with Political Corruption

We hear of people and rock bands being called sell outs. Where did this term come from?

Ian Afflerbach, associate professor of American literature at the University of North Georgia, delves in to find out.

Ian Afflerbach is an Associate Professor at the University of North Georgia. He teaches courses on Modern American Fiction, African American Literature, and Popular Genres like Science Fiction. He’s currently working on his second book, “Sellouts! The Story of an American Insult.” His first book, Making Liberalism New (2021) was shortlisted for the Modernist Studies Association’s Best First Book prize. He has written for Public Books and The Conversation, and his articles have appeared in journals like PMLA, African American Review, and Novel.

How “Selling Out” Started with Political Corruption

What do Bob Dylan, Oprah Winfrey, and Donald Trump have in common? All of them have been accused of “selling out.” Calling someone a “sellout” implies that they have been corrupted by their success, betraying their core values and their community.

But where did this insult originate?

Until the mid- nineteenth century, Americans used the phrase “selling out” in its primary, positive sense of completing sales. A shopkeeper who “sold out” his stock of pork belly was a happy man.

During the Gilded Age, however, the United States began to experience a series of economic crises, driven by financial speculation and massive new corporations. Corruption became a national concern.

In the 1870s, a new meaning to the word “sellout” began to appear in print. Newspapers started to use it as a label for any political representative who compromised their morals in pursuit of illicit personal gain.

One political scandal played a key role in popularizing this term: the Tweed Ring. William Tweed was the “Boss” of Tammany Hall, running the Democratic Party in New York City through a vast network of bribery and graft. In 1870, the New York Times launched an unprecedented exposé of his ring, a series of editorials that used “selling out” and “sellout” to describe what these corrupted officials were doing to the public trust. Eventually, the Times printed ledgers proving this corruption, and landing Tweed in jail. This scandal simultaneously elevated the reputation of the Times, turned “Tweed” and “Tammany” into synonyms for corruption, and introduced countless Americans to the idea of “selling out.”

In coming decades, this term would spread into debates about labor, race relations, sports, and the arts, until it became the portable term for social treason that we all know today.

Read More:
[The Conversation] – How organized labor shames its traitors − the story of the ‘scab’
[Public Books] – B-Sides: George S. Schuyler’s “Black Empire”
[Cambridge University Press] – On the Literary History of Selling Out: Craft, Identity, and Commercial Recognition