I’m a healthy, 25 year old, white guy. I want to get a tattoo depicting the br’er rabbit and the briar patch story. I’m often in tricky situations that reflect the facetious attitude of “oh no, don’t throw me in that briar patch!”
Now I know there are some straight up racist connotations to the tar baby story, but are the Br’er Rabbit stories in general racist?
I don’t want to come across as racist or insensitive. Also, from time to time I’ve found myself doing community organizing with afro-centric and black power black folk. I’m not close enough friends with any of them to ask this ignorant ass question straight up. However, it means that even if the racist connotations are esoteric and not generally understood, I may be in a working relationship with those people who would understand it and be offended from it, which would suck even more since I’d be trying to develop some kind of social bond with them.
If somebody saw a picture of Br’er wolf holding Br’er rabbit above a briar patch on my arm, would they gasp in horror?
I think Br’er Rabbit is, at this point, obscure enough that it’d be safe either way. Most folks would just think it was an odd cartoon bunny.
Sadly, a Golden Bookish version of the Tar Baby story was one of my favorite picture books of childhood. I’d love to get a tattoo of the tar baby. Not gonna happen.
It’s too bad that Br’er Rabbit is now associated with racism when he is simply the Trickster, common to many cultures, who uses his wits to protect himself.
Br’er Rabbit is a trickster character and many of the stories featuring were collected from oral folklore (though Joel Chandler Harris did add some new ones). In that light, it’s just continuing traditional black storytelling from the South and harks back to African sources. Harris memorized these stories and used them for the Uncle Remus tales and, in many cases, they are the only source. In that, he did a service by keeping these stories alive.
Uncle Remus himself is the bigger issue. Harris did not intend him to be anything more than a vehicle or telling the stories, and Remus was not designed as a racist stereotype. However, the fact that he was a Black man on a plantation telling stories in dialect (even though Harris took great pains to actually replicate the dialect of the Gullah) makes it offensive today.
I thought Br’er Rabbit represented the smart black guy, who is able to outwit his nominally stronger, but dim, oppressor (= Br’er Fox = whitey). I.e, the Br’er Rabbit stories (supposedly told by a slave, of course) are actually anti-racist.
Both Br’er Rabbit and the Tar Baby have a lineage in West African and also Cherokee folktales, and the specific stories we know largely took form in slave culture. Joel Chandler Harris did not invent them,* nor Walt Disney. It is truly sad that the modern view now often sees a taint of racism in any reference thereto–as if the culture of the people who told these stories to one another (and later to Harris) was itself wrong because they happened to be slaves.
RealityChuck says he did, some? It’s been a long time since I’ve read anything scholarly on the matter.
The only time I ever heard of Br’er Rabbit before this thread was from a joke my dad used to tell. Br’er Bear and Br’er Rabbit in the woods, Br’ear Bear says to Br’er Rabbit “Does shit stick to your fur?”
You know something - on further thought, please, OP, do not get this tattoo. The people you associate with are going to view it as a white boy co-opting their culture.
Since, as RealityChuck noted, they came out of the black storytelling tradition, they’re not inherently racist. The problematic part is that they’ve been used in things like Disney’s film Song of the South, which have been subject to controversy because they’ve been accused of being racist. Some older threads on the matter:
This. The stories are not nearly as popular these days as they were when I was a kid, back in the '50s. And there’s no racism in the story you have in mind . . . the briar patch. But I agree, stay away from any Tar Baby reference. And L.B. Sambo too, which was another of my childhood favorites.
So for the dim among us (ie, me), is there a joke that goes with that punchline? I’ll probably feel like:smack: when I see it, but for now, I’m lost.
And I’d say not a good idea to the tat. If you foresee problems and explanation are necessary, it’s not gonna be worth it.