Did I make the cut this year?
Big deal! So some hypersensitive liberal African American can’t get beyond the culture he or his parents grew up in. Why doesn’t he just embrace the phrase in a historical context thereby taking back venom that might be intended, or let it go.
Actually…it was “tar mixed up wiff some turkemtime.” Ya…you just can’t go reading those stories unless they’re written in the dialect. They lose something in proper English.
I did come accross a PC version of Sambo. It had a prologue which was very self-satisfied that “Sambo” had been renamed to “Babaji.” He lived with his Mamaji and Papaji. :rolleyes: Of course, we all know that Sambo couldn’t possibly have been of African decent as he was beset by tigers. And tigers are notably scarce in Africa.
I’m not doubting that the posters who say they never heard it used that way aren’t being truthful; nor am I saying the term is inherently racist; nor am I accusing Romney.
I was simply trying to point out that there is some history to the term some obviously racist and some not and it’s dishonest to scream cries of PC run amok when that’s pointed out; and may be the cause of some people wondering why’s this white guy talking about tar babies?
Can I inquire about the rolleyes there? I think those are the equivalents of Mommy and Daddy.
Actually, you, monstro, and Askia are all fast approaching that status… you’ll know when you make the proclamation and the AP hangs it on you!
Whatchoo talking about, “fast approaching?” I vouched for all y’all two years ago.
I don’t think the guy is liberal.
And I’m not thinking he’s the only guy who needs to “go beyond his culture”. Plenty of posters here have drawn the conclusion that since they haven’t heard the term being used in a racist way, that means it’s not racist. Or that you have to be PC, “liberal”, or “hypersensitive” to see it that way. Sorry, but that just ain’t so.
I don’t think Romney should have to apologize or retract what he said. I don’t even think it was a poor choice of words. But it’s clear to me people don’t know all the baggage associated with “tar baby” Folks really should before they go spouting off about these “liberal black leaders”.
I grew up reading the Bre’r Rabbit stories. I have seen Song of the South. I have been to Joel Chandler Harris’ birthplace, and I have had my picture taken in front of the statue there of Bre’r Rabbit.
I loved the tar baby story most of all. I never considered it racist in the least, heck, I wanted to find some tar to trick my brother. Sure I have heard it used as a racial slur. I’ve heard Casper/Wonder Bread/etc used as slurs. These characters/items are still being sold.
Now, as a proud, crazy southern woman, who majored in cultural anthropology and has been described as the least racist person someone knew. I will say this:
Just because some backwoods, idiotic, politically correct, jumping on a bandwagon, fear mongering dolt wants to SAY something is racist doesn’t make it so. Just because some backwoods idiotic racist wants to use a phrase that implies more than their two brain cells can rub together and come up with, does NOT make it racist.
This is as idiotic as the newscaster that bungled the words boon and coup and came out with coon and got fired. Even though coon wouldn’t have fit in that sentence no matter how tightly it was corsetted.
Back, the, heck, off. There is plenty of actual, bonified racist stuff going on we don’t need to make EVERYTHING humanly possible as racist.
I am so stinkin’ glad I not only have JC Harris’ biography, but OLD versions of his stories so my daughter can learn the stories of my childhood. This country has a history, there are good parts and bad parts, she can learn them all, but I assure you, hearing the tales of Bre’r Rabbit and the Tar Baby, damned sure ain’t the bad parts.
Is the old woman still allowed to live in a shoe?
Is Jack Sprat’s wife still allowed to be fat?
Can blackbirds still be baked in a pie?
Can Mary’s Lamb still be “white as snow?”
How about the Black Sheep?
Is the Farmer in the Dell discriminatory towards alternative lifestyles?
Askia… sorry 'bout that. I guess Al Sharpton’s falling off, so that leaves space for some new blood…
I actually think that Romney’s approach was perfectly fine. Someone pointed out to him that his words might be offensive in some circles, he clarified what he meant, but acknowledged that it might of offended some although he didn’t mean it that way (through a spokesperson) and apologized. Case closed. It shows to me that he listens, instead of getting in a stupid argument about what the term means, etc. (Not belittling what’s happening here, this is actually informative and I think people are learning stuff.) He actually gets a little bump up in my estimation (not that it’s going to help him re: my vote in 2008)…
From the O.E.D.
1881 - original use in Harris’s work
later
The citation for the first meaning is Mark Twain’s autobiography, 1910, and for the later meaning, Sinclair Lewis’s Kingsblood Royal, 1948.
If you have an earlier citation, you are welcome to provide it. If you have a citation to an actual reference prior to Harris’s use of it in 1881, that would tend to support your belief that Harris, himself, used it to identify the “black” nature of the image, but failing that, I will go with the O.E.D.
My reference was to the motif that runs through numerous stories originating in various African cultures, in which a trap is set using wax or tar or gum or other sticky substance. My guess would be that Harris would have felt that tar was a more readily available (and recognizable) substance to the people of the U.S. than gum and that he would not have felt that wax would have had sufficient properties of strength plus stickiness to subdue a rabbit. On the other hand, tar was both sufficiently familar to his audience and sufficiently strong and sticky to his purpose.
This presents an interesting possibility. Is it possible that “tar-baby” is most frequently used in the U.S. among the black population who, being familiar with it, cannot imagine that some large segment of the white population is unaware of any racial overtones, despite the fact that many of us have never heard it used racially? (I was surprised at the furor over Romney’s remarks because I have only heard one person use the phrase racially in 55 years–and that was not in a derogatory sense, although I would not have given the speaker high marks for sensitivity. I only discovered the pejorative nature of the word when looking it up after Romney was criticized.)
This would parallel (not tightly) the usage of “white trash” where so many whites have heard it in a context removed from its original setting that while they recognize its meaning of “lower class,” they are unaware of its racist nature, whereas blacks are generally much more aware of the racial subtext (appropriately, since they seem to have coined that phrase).
Nobody said the story was racist. The discussion was about the term.
And so are Harris’s books, I bet. Like it or not, white people occupy a different social position in this country, and most of them are not as worried about being called terms like these. A lot of us find them funny instead of offensive.
Why do people think they need credentials in these kinds of discussions? This comes off as something like “I have plenty of black friends.”
Are you saying that you don’t think the ‘leaders’ in question know what the term means? That’s kind of silly. At best, both Jones and Romney might each have been aware of one meaning of the term and not the other.
The book is explicitly derived from black folklore, and is told through a black narrator in Chandler’s book. I don’t know what the importance of Chandler’s color is – he didn’t create the tarbaby story, he just repeated it.
The reference isn’t at all racist, in that he used it in a way that clearly was more true to its literary originations than any racial epithets. It’s a non-story.
Wait a minute? Black people coined “white trash”? Do you have a cite for this? Not that I’m challenging you, but it’s surprising if it’s true.
Excuse my lack of transition between thoughts. The second sentence regards the person mentioned in the OP, not Chandler. He didn’t do anything wrong, it’s a couple of words taken out of context, it’s an apt description the way he used it, it’s not a big deal, bigger fish to fry, let it go, etc.
I think it’s unfortunate that such a descriptive term has, in some people’s view, taken on such a derogetory nature.
I have heard, mainly through discussions of Disney’s Song of the South, the racial connotation of “tar baby.” I rarely hear the term at all, and never as a racial slur.
I also think it’s unfortunate that when a politician uses a term like this, not knowing its alternative meaning, the result is almost always seems to be “outrage” from leaders of the black community. A more measured, diplomatic response would achieve a similar result without rashly branding (usually by implication) someone a “racist.”
FWIW, leaders of the black community hardly have a monopoly on knee-jerk outrage. It seems to be in the collective DNA of anyone with a political agenda.
This cite intimates “Tar Baby” was a colloquialism for a Negro baby in the U.S. (most likely southern) in the mid-1800s. (Which helps explain the size of the figure in relation to a rabbit in period illustrations.)
If this is correct, the term antedates Joel Chandler Harris’ use in “The Wonderful Tar-Baby.”
That said, tom, I don’t believe Harris intended “tar baby” as a slur, per se – especially not compared to the way it was later used by white supremacists as a general slur and as an intraracial invective by blacks towards other blacks as a remark about dark skin tone.
Walter Windchill. Harris renamed the figure from whetever it was in the original story a “tar baby,” which is a significant alteration. The story may have started in India, not Africa. I’ve never said it was racist – just ill-considered choice of words.
Heh. “House niggers” invented the term, “White trash.” Heh. LoooOOoove the Dope.
BTW, can we stop repeating the "black leaders outraged by “tar baby” since that appears to be patently false?
Tar baby, tar baby, tell me true
Who is really the jigaboo?
Is the white man, the white
Talkin’ that jive
Or the black man, the black
Tryin’ to stay alive?
Ya can’t touch a tar baby, everybody nose
All dress up with a bone in his knows
That’s the way my story goes
That’s the way my story goes
– From “Jump Jim Crow” by Michelle Shocked
Let’s put this myth to rest, shall we? There was no “outrage” from “leaders of the Black community.” One Black Republican stated he had a problem with it. The BET story has more Black people commenting on it - but it doesn’t seem to me that those people called a presser to voice their outrage - rather, the reporter seems to have asked for their thoughts on the incident. They weren’t too impressed, but it seems that they didn’t think much about Trent to begin with. Where’s the outrage?
Secondly, I don’t recall anyone calling Romney a racist - I think reasonable people can note an unfortunate or poorly-thought out comment vs. yet another episode in a career fraught with questionable to racist behavior (see Thurmond, Strom and Lott, Trent).
But should he have apologized? I mean, if you buy that he had no idea that there was any sort of racist conotations, which I think is a safe assumption, because it’s quite unclear whether there ARE actually any racial conoations, then what exactly did he do wrong?