Sticky Race Baiting

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In a cable news/opinion/entertainment show about ruff and tumble politics with Reverend Al Sharpton, Pat Buchanan referred to Sharpton’s political ally, his main man Obama, his “everything,” as “your boy.”

While moving from humble pastor to the people, Al Sharp has been enriched by his practiced race baiting on grand exhibit recently when he feigned shock and referred to Buchanan’s remark with a “What did you say”, insisting that Obama was his President, everyone’s President, implying what? Other than smearing wastefully, I am not sure.

Buchanan replied in this vein ,”you know, your boy in the ring.” Duh, who did you think I meant?

Republican congressman Doug Lamborn of Colorado is in hot water after saying on a radio show that working with President Obama on the debt ceiling was like “touching a tar baby.”

The term “tar baby,” which landed Senator John McCain and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and even Democratic Poster “Boy” John Kerry, in trouble in the past, refers to being in a sticky situation. But racial activists, particularly African Americans also look at the word as racist, it seems to profitably enlarge and enrage their base.

In an unattributed Opinion column, BND.com condemns Lamborn and many others when he speaks from on high as follows:

Tar baby is derogatory and racially offensive; there is no other interpretation.

Following are some of the comments to this opinion. Seems the majority of the author’s readers believes history shows him to be wrong. But then, he may profitably be a practicing race baiter and in this economy we need all the paying jobs we can get. Opposing comments included:

The term “tar baby” comes from the Uncle Remus stories which originated from tales told by slaves themselves. These are folk tales of African Americans from the deep south. They are not slurs from white culture. The term is not implicitly racist. Had a white man called a situation involving another white man a “tar baby” would that be racist as well? No, it would mean what it means “a sticky situation.”  I’m glad this is an opinion column and not posing as fact. I own a coonhound.  It is an AKC registered breed.  Should I stop calling it what it is because someone, somewhere is going to pretend to be offended by the breed name which means something completely different than what their own racist mind might imagine?  Ridiculous.  Get tougher skin and a better sense of historical context in word usage.

The concept of tar baby goes way back, according to Words@Random from Random House: “The tar baby is a form of a character widespread in African folklore. In various folktales, gum, wax or other sticky material is used to trap a person.” The term itself was popularized by the 19th-century Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris, in which the character Br’er Fox makes a doll out of tar to ensnare his nemesis Br’er Rabbit. The Oxford American Dictionary defines tar baby much like Romney used it, “a difficult problem, that is only aggravated by attempts to solve it.”

Wikipedia also describes the term as having multicultural versions, not a single one owned by the African American community like that N word they can say but I can’t even in discourse about it’s awful associations.

Variations on the tar baby legend are spread among the folklores of more than one culture. In the Journal of American Folklore, Aurelio M. Espinosa examined 267 versions of the tar baby story.^[2] The mythical West African hero Anansi is recorded as once being similarly trapped.^[3] In a Spanish language version told in the mountainous parts of Colombia, an unnamed rabbit is trapped by the “Muñeco de Brea” (tar doll). A Buddhist myth tells of Prince Five-weapons (the Future Buddha) who encounters the ogre, Sticky Hair, in a forest.^[4]

The Tar Baby theme is present in the lores in various tribes of Meso-America and of South America : it is to be found such stories^[5] as the Nahuatl (of Mexico) “Lazy Boy and Little Rabbit” (González Casanova 1946, pp. 55–67), Pipil (of El Salvador) “Rabbit and Little Fox” (Schultes 1977, pp. 113–116), and Palenquero (of Colombia) “Rabbit, Toad, and Tiger” (Patiño Rosselli 1983, pp. 224–229).

According to James Mooney in “Myths of the Cherokee”,^[6] the tar baby story may have been influenced in America by the Cherokee “Tar Wolf” story, which is unlikely to have been derived from similar African stories: “Some of these animal stories are common to widely separated [Native American] tribes among whom there can be no suspicion of [African] influences. Thus the famous “tar baby” story has variants, not only among the Cherokee, but also in New Mexico, Washington [State], and southern Alaska—wherever, in fact, the pine supplies enough gum to be molded into a ball for [Native American] uses…”.

In the national discussion on race, remember this is how race baiters talk:

There is no other interpretation. Tar baby is derogatory and racially offensive - omd.com opinion.

Anyone who only wants to help with smoothing out human relations and tendencies in the present and future, especially relating to likes and dislikes, should avoid race baiting for any such thing is not a conversation on race that will help.

But if that is not the real goal, well then, it works just fine.