Virginia lawmaker uses "tar baby" in speech about Medicaid debate

[TexasTowelie]

RICHMOND (AP) -- There's still no sign of compromise between Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Republican leaders in the House of Delegates over whether Virginia should accept federal Medicaid funds in order to expanded health insurance coverage to as many as 400,000 residents.

-snip-

Meantime, Sen. Frank Ruff (R-15th D.) is taking some heat for using the term "tar baby" during a speech on the Medicaid debate to the Chamber of Commerce.

Ruff told the Virginian-Pilot he didn't mean anything racial by it, insisting he used the term to indicate it's a sticky situation.

Gov. McAuliffe (D-VA)said, "Oh, horrible comments. I know he's apologized, but there is no place in the debate that we are having today to be using that kind of language."

More at http://www.khou.com/news/politics/Virginia-lawmaker-uses-tar-baby-in-speech-about-Medicaid-debate-251191391.html .

[pangaia]

1. "....... insisting he used the term to indicate it's a sticky situation. "

It's Sat afternoon and I'm watching B-Ball.
But-- holy fucking shit..
Why don't some of our oh-so-smart Democratic campaign geniuses start a list of every stupid, ignorant racist comments made by re-vomits..and start making ads. Show them over and over--everywhere..
I mean.. how much brainpower does this take???

That sick, slimball Gingrich was on one of the talking upchuck shows. ..( I was at the gym...:&gt ) I don't watch that crap by choice.) Where are 'our guys?' Where our our very few liberals???

[joeglow3]

7. Because it is not a racist term

[alp227]

11. actually it is...would you ever call a black person "tar baby" to his face?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_baby#Racist_interpretation

[Bonx]

16. The "Racist interpretation" is stupid. nt

[joeglow3]

19. Your "proof" that it is racist is a politician placating ignorant people calling it racist

Sorry, but that doesn't work.

[Nye Bevan]

28. How could a person be a "sticky situation"?

That's not racist, it's just stupid.

[Igel]

48. There's an easy solution to the dilemma.

When you're using it wrt a person, it's racist.

When you're using it wrt a situation, it's not. In fact, it's using the word more or less as the blacks that told Harris the tale in the 1880s and 1890s used it. Perhaps the Southern blacks were racists? Let's not go there.

Its the way we deal with a lot of words. I don't take personal offense if somebody says, "Step over the piece of shit on the sidewalk." I do take personal offense if somebody says, "You're a piece of shit." If I say, "My kid has a rash on his dick" that's one thing; if I say, "My kid is a rash dick" it's quite another thing.


Since very few people refer to situations as a person, there's little chance of confusion provided we first understand what's said before jumping to some conclusion and shutting down the language-processing and reasoning portions of our brains.

"The entire situation with Medicare is an African-American that I wish to insult" makes no sense; "The entire situation with Medicare is a sticky mess, once you grab it you have trouble getting rid of it" does. Yet those who claim it's entirely a racist term are forced to somehow say how it *does* make sense to refer to a situation as a person, or they have to say that they're offended not by a meaning, or a usage, but by a series of sounds emanating from a white person's lips. One gets the impression that they really didn't try to understand, they just flew off the handle.

[HooptieWagon]

64. Brer Rabbit and the Tarbaby is an old folklore tale.

http://americanfolklore.net/folklore/2010/07/brer_rabbit_meets_a_tar_baby.html

While " tarbaby" is infrequently used as a racial slur, the context in which it is used determines whether it is an offensive slur.

[oldhippie]

24. Everything is a racist term to those .....

.... who want it to be bad enough. We have no problem changing accepted definitions to suit our needs.

[Drahthaardogs]

58. I did not grow up in the south, but rather out west. I did not know this term was racist

I thought it was a reference to the trap to catch Brier Rabbit. I had the Disney book when I was young.

[pscot]

2. I've never understood this one

The tar baby is about tar and it's properties, not race. I know tar is black, but that fact has no bearing on the story, which is actually quite clever and funny. Fire away.

[Throd]

4. I use the term "tar baby" for situations that are difficult to get away from once involved.

[catbyte]

21. You must not have seen the Disney movie

[pscot]

42. Song of the South; Long ago

I think Disney pulled it. As I recall it, Remus was a wise old man who befriended a lonely little boy. I fully understand that many people do not construe it that way. But the stories themselves have deep roots in African American folklore and Disney treats them with the respect of a good story teller for his material. I guess the complaint would be that he airbrushed slavery, but Disney airbrushed everything. If you scrunch up your eyes a certain way you can see racism wherever you look. Remus rises above that.

[Hekate]

52. That's my childhood recollection as well.I also read some of Joel Chandler Harris's stories as a kid

African American folklore is a real entity, and shouldn't be bleached out of existence, if you take my meaning. It's too valuable to lose just because it's not 21st century.

[JimboBillyBubbaBob]

27. Read Joel Chandler Harris,

the Georgia writer from the late nineteenth century. It will all come together.

[CBGLuthier]

3. I guess screaming one more fucking time that the term is not racist would be a waste

of time around here nowadays for sure.

It's Not Racist. Get an education people.

[B2G]

6. Stupidity abounds

I swear to god, some people get up in the morning looking for ways to be offended.

[FreedRadical]

10. So You are now the authority on what is and is not racist?

Is that a position you get voted in to?

[B2G]

12. Yes. You have been unseated.

[FreedRadical]

15. My skin begs to differ.

But knock yourself out. Please please. Tell me Mr. Man, what words now constitute racism.

[B2G]

18. I don't care if you're purple.

It's not a racist term.

[FreedRadical]

30. Thank you. That settles it then.

I can now discard a lifetime of experiences and bow to your authoritarian view.

I am relieved.

[Cha]

66. Yeah, ya hear that from some anonymous poster on the net?..

"It's not a racist term".. so what.. get over it? Love how people tell others about their life experiences when they have no fucking clue.

[FreeJoe]

33. It is like the word "niggardly"

It's meaning and etymology might not be racist, but it has come to be perceived that way by a significant number of people. What is more important, the current dictionary definition or the perception of people offended?

[Nye Bevan]

34. I would say the current dictionary definition.

Instead of removing words from the language because of people's ignorance, those offended should learn that the word is not racist.

[FreeJoe]

37. But the dictionary...

simply codifies how people use a word. If a phrase like "tar baby", regardless of what it originally meant and where it came from, starts being used as a racial slur, the dictionary will add that usage. Language evolves, for good and bad.

[Nye Bevan]

40. All the more reason to nip the incorrect interpretation in the bud.

Is it still OK to say "nip"?

[pscot]

43. nope

[oldhippie]

35. We bow to the perceptions .....

.... of stupid people. Great.

[Throd]

36. It works for the Republican Party

[oldhippie]

41. Apparently.

And for us, too.

Sad.

[cthulu2016]

5. It isn't racist but elected officials shouldn't use it

Elected officials and public speakers should also probably also not go out of their way to use "niggardly" and "thespian," or refer to "the mau-mau rebellion" (as Newt Gingrich does)

[pscot]

9. Thespian? Doesn't that derive from some Greek muse?

And the Mau Mau uprising is a matter of historical fact. How Gingrich uses it is of course a whole nother issue.

[Nye Bevan]

29. And never mention the countries of Niger or Nigeria.

Just to be on the safe side.

[Politicalboi]

8. Not a racist term

But why use it? If these assholes can avoid saying swear words, tar baby should be another to avoid. He may say it to give a wink to his mouth breather constituents who do take it as racist, and approve.

[alp227]

13. i'd disagree about "tar baby" being not a racist term,

because it carries the same dog-whistle baggage as Reagan talking about states' rights in a campaign speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi...16 years after civil rights activists were murdered in that town.

[adirondacker]

20. I agree. I was stunned when I came across this place in NC.

[B2G]

23. It's in SC

North Myrtle Beach. And they do have amazing pancakes.

[LittleBlue]

14. The origin of the "tar baby" concept is apparently African

A very similar West African tale is told of the mythical hero Anansi. In this version it is Anansi who creates a wooden doll and covers it over with gum, then puts a plate of yams in its lap, in order to capture the she-fairy Mmoatia (sometimes described as an "elf" or "dwarf&quot . Mmoatia takes the bait and eats the yams, but grows angry when the doll does not respond and strikes it, becoming stuck in the process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_baby

Racist?

[Bonx]

17. Anything is racist if you want it to be bad enough.

[alp227]

22. are you sure you want to post this kind of claim on a progressive message board?

you are framing this issue as people looking for ways to be offended. Think about Reagan's "states' rights" speech in Mississippi. Do you not think loaded language exists?

[Jamaal510]

25. +1

[Igel]

46. Perhaps, but nobody knew that at the time.

It's from the folklore of African-Americans as recorded in the late 1800s in the South.

The roots were forgotten by that time.

[Nye Bevan]

26. Should words and phrases such as "tar baby" and "picnic" be avoided

just because some ignorant people wrongly consider them to be racist?

Although not taught in American learning institutions and literature, it is noted in most Black history professional circles and literature that the origin of the term "picnic" derives from the acts of lynching African-Americans. The word "picnic" is rooted from the whole theme of "Pick A Nigger." This is where individuals would "pic" a Black person to lynch and make this into a family gathering. There would be music and a "picnic." ("Nic" being the white acronym for "nigger.&quot Scenes of this were depicted in the movie "Rosewood."

.....

Meanwhile, things are not peachy on the campus of SUNY/Albany. The university wanted to honour baseball legend Jackie Robinson by having a picnic. But the university's equity office said this must not occur because the word "picnic" referred originally to gatherings held to lynch Blacks. In fact, as one of their own English professors (rather less committed to historical revisionism than RMC's Dr. Robinson) pointed out, the word "picnic" actually comes from a 17th-century French word that denotes a party at which everyone brings food. But Zaheer Mustafa, the equity officer, nevertheless decreed that "picnic" not be used because "the point is — the word offends." So the university decided to call it an "outing." Then, homosexual students took objection to that, and SUNY decided to publicize the event without using any noun to describe it.

http://www.snopes.com/language/offense/picnic.asp

[TexasTowelie]

31. I just learned something.

I never knew that the word "picnic" had any type of racial overtones. Thanks for the info.

[pscot]

44. It doesn't

That was the point.

[TexasTowelie]

45. Maybe for you or I,

but for some others it apparently does. I know that I'll use the word more carefully depending upon the context just like I would for using the word "outing".

[Igel]

47. It didn't.

Until the 1990s when somebody made up yet another story to provoke offense and feel justified in feeling offended. The words were similar, and it felt good to be mad.

It's a fiction that's become a lie that we're all forced to kowtow to because of somebody's belief. It functions as a kind of social control and marker of power: If you don't have economic and social power, you arrogate social power to yourself to show that you can boss people around. It's social manipulation, in a nutshell, and there's a lot of that that goes on. Some people are genuinely offended and outraged, firmly believing the lie. More's the pity. Can't cure stupid.

[RC]

32. Not racist.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Tar Baby" redirects here. For other uses, see Tar Baby (disambiguation).

The Tar-Baby is a fictional character in the second of the Uncle Remus stories published in 1881; it is a doll made of tar and turpentine used to entrap Br'er Rabbit. The more that Br'er Rabbit fights the Tar-Baby, the more entangled he becomes.

In modern usage, "tar baby" refers to any "sticky situation" that is only aggravated by additional contact.

Story
Br'er Rabbit attacking the Tar-Baby, 1895 illustration,

In one tale, Br'er Fox constructs a doll out of a lump of tar and dresses it with some clothes. When Br'er Rabbit comes along he addresses the tar "baby" amiably, but receives no response. Br'er Rabbit becomes offended by what he perceives as the Tar-Baby's lack of manners, punches it, and in doing so becomes stuck. The more Br'er Rabbit punches and kicks the tar "baby" out of rage, the worse he gets stuck.

Now that Br'er Rabbit is stuck, Br'er Fox ponders how to dispose of him. The helpless but cunning Br'er Rabbit pleads, "but do please, Br'er Fox, don't fling me in dat brier-patch," prompting Fox to do exactly that. As rabbits are at home in thickets, the resourceful Br'er Rabbit escapes. Using the phrases "but do please, Br'er Fox, don't fling me in dat brier-patch", and tar baby to refer to the idea of "a problem that gets worse the more one struggles against it" became part of the wider culture of the United States.

The story was originally published in Harper's Weekly by Robert Roosevelt; years later Joel Chandler Harris wrote of the Tar-Baby in his Uncle Remus stories. A similar tale from African folklore in West Africa has the trickster Anansi the Spider in the role of Br'er Fox, but in a Jamaican variant, Anansi takes the role of Br'er Rabbit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar-Baby

Anything can be made racist by association. Fried chicken, watermelon, Wrong side of the tracks...

[northoftheborder]

54. That's where I learned the story of Tar-Baby, from Uncle Remus stories. I do not consider it an,,,

,,,,inherently racist word at all, but suppose it could be used that way.

I'm a little irritated by people adapting a perfectly innocent word to mean something racist, sexual, or political. In my case, red is one of my favorite colors, as well as bright blue and turquoise. I refuse to let red be interpreted as a "Republican" color. The red and blue color designation came from one of the networks who used those colors on an election map one year, and now, that is standard use.

[RC]

57. Just like the PC crowd around here at one time.

They had a whole long list of words, at one time, that were supposedly derogatory to one group or another and any use was greeted with; "We do not use those words on DU". As if they had an actual say over the rest of DU, as the owners do. Never mind facts, normal usage, or actual meaning.
They got shot down real quick over the word fuck. That was fun. The rest of the bullshit word wars finally died down.
This thread reminds me of those PC word wars. "I'm offended (rightly or wrongly), so therefore you must be also."
Sorry, I'll decide for myself when I offended.

[YarnAddict]

38. Isn't that from an Aesop's fable, or something?

I remember reading the story in school, must have been about 3rd grade. the "Tar baby" was a trap. Someone was lured in by an inocuous looking item, and then got stuck to it.

[jazzimov]

49. Br'er Rabbit. nt

[TroglodyteScholar]

39. "Tar baby" is a legitimate but widely misunderstood term

It refers to a situation or person you get involved with that ends up being unshakable or causing more trouble than you expected. Similar to an albatross maybe. This definition has absolutely fuckall to do with race.

That said, it just sounds ugly, and has been misused in an ugly way by ugly people. Oh well.

[Ron Green]

50. I'm much more offended by Corporate Terry McAuliffe

than by the Tar Baby or its use.

[HooptieWagon]

65. +1

[Spider Jerusalem]

51. It's dismaying to see how many people are, apparently, incredibly ignorant.

Tar baby: A sticky situation from which one cannot easily extricate oneself. (This is the only context in which I've ever heard the term used, and it doesn't have any racist connotation.)

[Warpy]

53. Damn Disney

It's only because of his personification of the term "tar baby" that it's a pejorative outside the south.

It refers to any really difficult situation that resists any attempt to extricate oneself from, as difficult as cleaning a huge glob of sticky tar off one's person.

So 'scuse me if I don't join in the general outrage.

[hedgehog]

61. I think you may have the situation reversed - I think it was used by some in the South

as a pejorative term, but that for most Northerners, it's a reference to a story. Regardless, given that it can be heard as a pejorative, best not to use the phrase.


Ironically - the "tar" in the original story is pine tar or pine sap, not asphalt!

[Warpy]

62. Have you ever tried to get pine tar off your hands?

I'm afraid you're the one who has it backwards.

"Song of the South" was the first to turn the saying into a pejorative for a black child.

I remember dads down south describing some fiasco or other at work as a tarbaby they just couldn't seem to get loose from.

[libodem]

55. Loved Uncle Remus

And Little Black Sambo. And Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.

[Hekate]

59. Look up The Story of Little Babaji for an update of Helen Bannerman's lost classic

We loved Little Black Sambo too, growing up in the 1950s, but by the time my babies were born in the late 1970s it was understandably gone. I really could not have read it aloud to my toddlers anyway.

It was brought back in 1996 by an intelligent recasting to India, where it really belonged all along. Bannerman spent 30 years there, after all, and the tigers and melted butter (ghee) are native to India and not Africa. Fred Marcellino is the new illustrator, and the family are named Mamaji, Papaji, and Little Babaji. He still gets his lovely new pair of Purple shoes with Crimson Soles and Crimson Linings, and the tiger that takes them away to wear them on his ears still thinks he is the Grandest Tiger in the Jungle.

I'm so glad.

As for Tom and Huck, I endorse the ongoing battle over correct representation of the times versus correct language usage now. These books will endure.

[libodem]

67. I've been on a current reading run

In adult fiction, starting with Poisonwood Bible, Cane River, and I'm starting on The Help. I read, Girl with the Pearl Earring, to break up the theme. We started young, eh?

[Hekate]

56. Brer Rabbit is the direct descendent of the Trickster Hero Anansi, from West Africa

Because public education is so niggardly in its choices of cultural curriculum and reading assignments, not to mention spelling and breadth of vocabulary of the English/American language that is our common heritage, it appears more and more of our citizens are so ignorant it's breathtaking.

Suppressing African American folk tales (which are both African and American) out of sheer ignorance, does a disservice to all of us. When you strip away the old attempts to record dialect they become more understandable to the modern eye and ear, but they retain their cunning, humor, wisdom, and teachings of traditional Trickster stories of Anansi, Coyote, Brer Rabbit, and their kin.

The Tar Baby is black because it's made out of tar, a common substance at the time the stories were told. "Don't throw me in that briar patch!" is the Trickster's way of getting his old rival the Fox to toss him back into his very home, where he will be safe from capture.

If there are any words or concepts in what I have written here that you take offense at, I suggest you look them up in the dictionary, with particular emphasis on the etymology of the words. Beware of false etymology.

And get yourself a book of American folklore before it's gone forever.

Meanwhile, Brer Fox, he lay low.

[TexasTowelie]

63. No offense taken.

However, with the mixed usage and connotations of this term it was certainly an awkward choice that probably should have been avoided.

[Hekate]

68. Some of the responses, though...

... make me want to

[Donald Ian Rankin]

60. Sad that he felt that he had to apologise, and shame on the people who condemned him.

Go look up what the term means.