"tar baby" in the news

[Ron Butters]

"parody for white readers" strikes me as wrong on two counts. Was it really parody, or simply dialect literature (a genre that was extremely popular in its day)? And were nonwhites forbidden to read it and enjoy it?

Sent from my Droid Charge on Verizon 4GLTE

------Original Message------
From: Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Date: Thursday, August 4, 2011 12:43:22 AM GMT-0400
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] "tar baby" in the news

Wilson,

Back in the forties, when I was little, I had an Uncle Remus story
book including the tar baby story.  I remember the picture of the tar
baby looking very like a cartoon image of a black baby.  Harris used
eye dialect to parody black speech for white readers, so I suspect the
racism of the image wasn't accidental, even if he may not have been
responsible for the specific illustration in my story book.

Herb



On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 2:14 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "tar baby" in the news
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Tue, Aug 2, 2011 at 4:37 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERVUGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>> Subject: Â  Â  Â "tar baby" in the news
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> U.S. representative apologizes for 'tar baby' comment
>>
>> http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/08/02/us.rep.tar.baby/index.html
>>
>> LH
>>
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>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
> "It can refer to a sticky problem or situation but _[it] also is
> understood as a derogatory term for African-Americans_."
>
> Really? I did not know that.
>
> FWIW, back in the day - who knows what PC hath wrought since the '70's
> - The Compton, California - the Hub City - High School used "Tartars"
> as the nickname of its athletic teams. Those teams were routinely
> referred to in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan-area press as the
>
> _Tar-Babies_
>
> At the time, it struck me as trivially odd that the Compton High
> student body was apparently cool with the school's teams being named
> after a "graven image," so to speak, of a baby made out of tar. OTOH,
> in those days, it was certainly true that schools that had to play
> against the Tar-Babies usually found themselves in a sticky situation.
>
> That "tar-baby" was ever a reference to black people, individually or
> severally, living or dead, real or imagined, even now, strikes me as
> unreal, and I ain't going for it.
>
> Maybe I need to _read_ me some Joel Chandler Harris. My only knowledge
> of this masterpiece is based on the Disney cartoon strip, based upon
> the "Uncle Remus" tales, that once appeared in the Sunday funny
> papers. If the tar-baby in the relevant tale was intended to represent
> a stereotypical, infant pickaninny, well, as is the case WRT the
> author of _Hole in the Mattress_, I Mr. Cumpleetleigh.
>
> I think that this was yet another example of the Republican strategy
> of bending over backward WRT trivia - especially when the situation
> can be tarred with some refernce to race - but standing like a stone
> wall WRT important matters, such as being willing to bankrupt the
> country, if necessary, to ensure the success of their stated intention
> to destroy the Democrats in general and Obama in particular.
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
> to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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