It’s obvious that Romney wasn’t saying anything racist himself, and he really doesn’t deserve that much criticism for (at the most) cluelessness. It was a poor choice of words and I can believe he didn’t know about the racist meaning, so the uproar is a waste. But I also didn’t know that the other meaning of “tar baby” was a secret. I’m a lifelong New Yorker and I’m in my mid-20s, so I figured more people would have heard it.
Thanks.
This is a really great summary of it, so I’ll just quote it.
(Also, I always want to ask people - “black leaders”? Seems kind of weird. Did the black people vote on them? Do black people even want them as leaders? Or are they all self-appointed? I always get a weird vibe from that sort of phrase…who would say “white leaders” anyway? It would sound like the KKK. But that’s just my opinion of course. )
And I’m from the North and have never heard it as a racial slur.
Interesting discussion here.
http://medianation.blogspot.com/2006/07/sticking-to-romney.html
Can anyone confirm the claim that the OED recognizes it as a slur? Does it cite a source for this conclusion?
Heh. The governor needs to read Toni Morrison, as do many of you.
I am endlessly amused by some people’s cluelessness, just as I am by others’ kneejerk defensiveness of other people’s cluelessness.
Of course “Tar Baby”, as a racial eptithet. Of course it has to do with race. Tar is black. “Tar Babies” are dark skinned black people. The Tar Baby in the story is made up to look like a dark-skinned slave, in a story told by a dark-skinned slave. The fact it has come to mean, in some circles, “a sticky situation” is quite secondary, euphemistic and incidental.
White bigots/supremacists/racists have coined and co-opted SO MANY racial epithets I’m sure its hard for you non-racists out there to keep track. I certainly sympathize with the challenge of never hearing some of these terms sneered at you or your loved ones and knowing their hateful origins.
Saying stuff like, “Black leaders need to loosen up” is kinda silly. Saying stuff like "The “black leaders” should be praising Romney, a rich, white Mormon from Michigan, for being familiar enough with black folkore to even know the term “tar baby,” is knee-bucklingly funny.
Anyone in the public eye needs to choose their words carefully, and if they say something unwittingly offensive, apologize quickly and move on. I know it irks the shit of some of you to be expected to do that with regard to some lesser known black slurs… but HEY.
Now let’s all settle down and play a nice quiet game of cards, hm?
Who’s up for a game of Cooncan?
But your own cite has “a sticky situatioon” as the primary meaning, and has the racial slur as “occasional”. As I noted when I cited the original African tale, in the Anansi story it isn’t even “tar” that holds Anansi down – it’s (non-black) sticky sap. The story has nothing to do with race at all, although people’s misperception has made it that way, obviously.
Nobody remembers nowadays that “Little Black Sambo” was Indian. Go look up the original. But you’d be stupid to make any reference to “Sambo” anywhere where people might take it as a racial slur. I guarantee that they would. But “tar baby” as a racial slur is new to me.
Can I still make a “reservation” at a restaurant without offending nearby American Indians? Can I buy tickets from a scalper?
Poor examples, since I’m not aware of racists co-opting the meaning of those words.
It doesn’t make much sense to refer to the Big Dig as a racial epithet. It makes more sense to refer to it as a sticky situation. If he had said, “the cotton pickin’ thing was nigger-rigged”, I could see the outrage.
Because it’s new to you, doesn’t mean it’s not new to other people. I don’t except all of us, to know every slur of every group of people, but when you have a least a few posters, telling you it’s a racial slur; at least have enough respect to acknowlegde that and not hand wave it away.
Even if you’re never heard it before.
I was half-serious. But the point remains - Romney was using this word with no racial connotations whatsoever. He was using it as a metaphor for a “sticky situation,” as others have said - a metaphor that originates from the African folk tale. That’s all he was trying to say.
If Romney was a racist man, that would be another issue. If he had a history of making racist remarks, the “black leaders” would have a leg to stand on in this debate. As it is now, they are simply being pompous and pretentious by finding meaning where there was none intended. The fact that “Tar Baby” is in some rare occasions taken as a racial slur does not invalidate its other usages.
This reminds me of an incident in the Tom Wolfe novel I Am Charlotte Simmons where a professor, referring to four basketball players in his class (one white, three black) calls them “my four monkeys, speak nothing, hear nothing, see nothing, and comprehend nothing whatsoever.” The president of the university then says, “Are you sure you want to say monkeys, Jerry?” In other words, insinuating that the professor had intended a racist meaning (comparing blacks to monkeys) whereas the professor was actually referring to the old “see no evil” monkeys and had no intention of being racist (in fact, one of the players was white.) The whole book, and that incident in particular, highlights the absurdity of political correctness run amok.
I like your posts and I usually agree with what you say, Askia, but really - whoever these “black leaders” are, they are clearly just looking to stir up shit. I’m sure there are more important issues than Mitt Romney using an obscure term that might be construed by some people as a racial slur.
Piffle.
The earliest references (after Harris) to “tar baby” refer to inescapable situations. References (nearly fifty years after harris) to black persons do not appear in the record for an additional 20 or so years.
I think it is foolish to claim that, just because it was not originally racist, it could not pick up a racist connotation–it certainly has. However, there is no reason to distort history just to make that point.
The baby in the story was black because all the humans in the Bre’r Rabbit stories are black. Whether Harris was “stealing” his stories or respectffully bringing them to a wider audience can be a discussion for another thread, but he clearly did not treat his stories with disrespect and the gum/tar/wax trap was an important element in the stories being told.
I’m going to let other, wiser Dopers answer the rest of your statement. I would just like to truly take offense at this statement. I have heard many hateful things flung at me and my family. I also feel that many people - including you - are rushing to take offense where none was meant.
Of course, your link says just the opposite. The derogatory sense is specifically described as “occasional”, after a discussion of the original, primary meaning(s). No cite is given for the secondary, derogatory meaning.
Here’s the key part of the link:
(Earlier, the link gives the primary meaning from African folklore, and the well-established metaphorical sense that means “a sticky situation”.)
Just so we’re all on the same page here:Tar Baby
tar baby tar baby tar baby
And of course there’s lots of images that have nothing to with “blackness”. I’m not saying that anyone who uses the term “tar baby” is racist. What I am trying to convey, that for some people it do have a history with the term and I think it’s unfair to label it an attack of the PC, just because you’re not familar with the term.
I’m sure that’s all quite accurate – in some cultural circles. You ask a few dozen African-Americans at random and they may well reverse those claims.
I’ll have to wait until I go home to dig it out, but you’ve finally explained to me why there were tigers in the story. Sambo was Indian. Thanks!
I agree with you to this extent: I don not believe Romney is racist, I do not believe he has a history of making racial remarks.
Tar Baby’s usage as a slur has a fairly long history as an epithet, and it’s use in that fashion is merely unfamiliar to you. It’s not that uncommon or rare. The fact that it has another meaning does not mitigate the fact that it has been co-opted by racists or been tainted by association racially troubling material. Romney, now having been made aware of this, now knows better.
And **tom, ** you know I’m about to ask for a cite, right? I find it awfully hard to believe that as popular as the Joel Chandler Harris stories were in Atlanta alone, that the term “tar baby” referring to blacks would not be nearly contemporaneous with it meaning “inescapable situations.”
think there’s been some collateral damage to a statement not meant to descibe you, **Aanamika. **
I’m not offended by Romney’s statement. He’s already apologized. I’m just pointing out that there’s legitimacy to feeling offended by a poor choice of words.
holmes, only one of your pictures is obviously racist (the others depict a black tar baby, because tar is black). I think that if a majority of folks replying haven’t heard of a term as a racist term, it;s reasonable to ask how widespread that term used as an epithet must be. There are certainly a lot of regionalisms that have local meanings not shared by the country at large.
whether Romney was taken by surprise by people too PC or by people who knew the term as racist (and I’ll bet there were both), he himself clearly wasn’t aware of that meaning.
I can see where folks are coming from - my original understanding of the term comes from the Brer Rabbit story - but when you operate in the public sphere, your words travel far and wide. So you might want to be careful when exhuming archaic terms that aren’t part of everyday speech.
I have heard “tar baby” used as a racial epithet - oddly enough, from a Black person - so let’s not kid ourselves and say that the term only has one meaning. I mean, at some point the original meaning of “faggot” was corrupted to the point where you’d have a hard time having people believe that you really meant a bundle of sticks rather than a slur against gay people.
I have no reason to think that Romney’s particularly racist, but I do think that someone aspiring to the national political scene might want to be mindful of how his comments come across to multiple constituencies.
I’d like to point out that some folks had no problem piling on “black leaders” when the article only listed one person registering outrage (way to back up the story AP!). The BET article is far more accurate: “Black folks rip Romney.” And it doesn’t seem like these people were picketing his house or advocating his ouster from office. It sounds as if they were asked for their thoughts regarding his comments. Sorry… anytime I see the term “Black leaders” I immediately get suspicious.
-HH, who has a list of Black leaders in his secret file - not featuring Larry Jones
Once again, Hippy Hollow has read my mind…
Count me in as another person who has heard “tar baby” used as a racial epithet. Perhaps this is one of those “It’s a black thing…you wouldn’t understand” kind of situations?