(I see what you did up there…)
Also, I like cheese, but I’ve heard it both ways. I like Manda’s swastika analogy here.
Male, 22, lived in Arkansas my whole life.
I have never heard it used as a racial slur in person, but I have seen it online. I have seen the Br’er Rabbit story in a book I received as a small child and I have seen Song of the South, but that was in the last year or two. As used in the latest incident, I don’t think it was wise but I don’t think it was meant as an ethnic slur.
On an off-topic vector: Every time I hear about Song of the South or Br’er Rabbit, I instantly think of Splash Mountain. Those were fun times, even though it as a little warm at Disney World.
Well, in the tar-baby’s mouth by making the comment–there will be no graceful escape for Doug.
44, raised in Seattle by Southerners. Growing up it was only ever an Uncle Remus story (my handlers never referred to blacks as anything other than “The N Word”). I didn’t see any racial baggage stuck to the tar-baby until the SNL skit, which got me wondering if Br’er Rabbit’s actual tar-baby doll was a joke based on an earlier epithet. But whatever, there are lots of other, BETTER-KNOWN metaphors to use for guilt-by-association. Using one that sometimes is racially charged when referring to a black dude is pretty transparent.
I have never taken or heard or thought of it in a racial way. In the context you post I would simply take it as person, in this case Obama, who would involve you in his/her sticky situation.
I guess it depends on your frame of reference. I grew up reading that story, so the situational analogy makes perfect sense. The tar baby in the Uncle Remus story had zero to do with race and everything to do with someone getting involved with a problem he couldn’t get free from.
No, the Vietnam War. Referring to the Civil War as a tar baby wouldn’t make sense.
And what do y’all make of left-leaning blogs and editorials referring to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or the TSA as “Bush’s Tar Baby”? Has the term suddenly become racist in the past two and a half years?
It’s been longer than just the past 2.5 years. It doesn’t mean it’s the intent behind the user in every context, but the term has and does carry negative connotations with it.
And especially in the American political landscape, it’s a loaded phrase that will set a good number of people off, especially when being mentioned in the same sentence as our current president.
In other words, it’s a matter of using tact to convey your message and ideas, effectively, without being dragged into situations like this.
Mid 40s, south-central US.
I’ve only heard of this as a slur. That is to say, stories like the current one, where people are pointing and yelling “racial slur, racial slur!”.
I’ve never heard it used IRL that way.
Maybe it’s just regional, because there are certainly plenty of slurs tossed around in these parts.
According to Wikipedia, stories of a sticky figure used to entrap someone are found in multiple cultures, and so my own assumption that the term came first and the stories incorporated it ironically is wrong. But, if the stories came first, and subsequently the term became a racial slur, that suggests that if you want blame somebody for stigmatizing what was otherwise a useful metaphor, the blame falls on the racists who decided to repurpose it.
Because it depends on context. I think the term is unusual enough to raise an eyebrow, but when you’re talking about a bad situation it makes sense. When you’re calling a person that? Hell no. You’d be better off calling the person contagious if you want to make it clear people don’t want to go near or associate with them.
It was. You can actually make an educated guess about what the word’s connotations were in 1975 by where it appears in the skit. It comes just after Chevy starts in on the racial terms with “negro.” Negro isn’t offensive per se, and wasn’t terribly uncommon back in 75, but the next one after that is “tar baby.” That confused Pryor’s character and got his back up, but he wasn’t exactly flying off the handle at it. After that it really ramps up into undeniably racist epithets.
It is just a humor skit, but given that the humor partly lies in the audience understanding just how bad the epithets are, I think it’s solid evidence.
I have to nitpick here. Of course the tar baby in the story had to do with race, if only tangentially. B’rer Rabbit got stuck to the tar baby because he thought it was a real person who was disrespecting him by not returning his greeting. Tar is black, ergo the tar baby has to be a black person. Tar is also blacker than a natural skin tone, so it is similar to some of those broad caricatures of black people employed in the past, with the ink black skin and the big red grins. Whether this was intentional in the story I cannot say.
But my answer to the poll is that the use of “tar baby” in current discourse depends on context. Calling a person a tar baby is racism. Using it the term as a metaphor for a sticky situation may not or may not be, but it is unwise.
There is no white substance that is the equivalent of tar. For the sake of story-telling, the tar baby had to be black, because he was made out of, you know, tar, and there isn’t another substance one can substitute. It’s a childrens’ story, but there are always those who choose to find offense at most anything. Hell, Mickey Mouse is black. Does that imply that black people are rodents and Disney was a racist?
Female, 50. Mother’s side of the family is from southern USA, so I was familiar with the Uncle Remus stories. Outside of those stories, I have never heard the term used as anything but a racist slur.
If Mickey is black, then he’s in whiteface. Clearly Disney was racist against whites.
So the standard of comparison is now “sitting US congressmen” vs. “anonymous left leaning blogs that I googled with the hopes that someone once had said it”? Good to know, okay.
Using the term to refer to a situation is marginal, but understandable in context. Using it to refer to a person is racist.
Me neither. The only other time I’ve ever heard of it being a racial term was when another politician got castigated for using the term. Other than that, it just is a ref to the Uncle Remus story.
To be fair, it has morphed over time. The original “Uncle Remus” stories were a surprisingly accurate recounting of old folk stories told by slaves, and recounted in an approximation of the Gullah dialect. This didn’t sit well with many in the black community of the 60s, who considered it demeaning. The tar baby character became a common synonym for situations to avoid, and that’s how I remember it. If AA people find it offensive, well then I’m willing to forego its use.
Male - 46
Raised in midwest and south.
Never heard it used as anything other than a racial slur.