 Blacks who held such bias maintained that assimilating with whites could bolster their appeals for equal treatment.Therefore, they geographically and socially removed themselves from other blacks, trying to gain the social acceptance of whites, supposing that if blacks were "more respectable,", "well behaved", "more well-to-do", and so on, they would incur less resentment and racism.However, this strategy for obtaining equal treatment usually backfired, as such blacks found themselves ostracized by both whites, who labeled them "uppity", and blacks, who labeled them "Uncle Toms".