"tar baby" in the news

Thu Aug 4 14:26:35 UTC 2011

This was supposed to go to everyone but didn't:

On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 10:25 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Harris got bashed and re-bashed in the '60s.  The fact that was a Geirgia
> white man didn't help.
>
> I guarandamntee you that when I watched Disney's "Song of the South" at the
> age of about seven, it never occurred to me that anynody was parodying
> anything. Uncle Remus was a great. The animals had no race.  The tar baby
> was made out of tar.
>
> Years later I read many of the original stories and found nothing
> offensive. But of course, I'm disqualified as a judge in some extreme
> quarters.
>
> The rap against the Uncle Remus stories seems to be:
>
> 1. As a white man, Harris was not authorized to write about black people,
> even though Uncle Remus is clearly intended to be no more than an Aesop
> figure.
>
> 2. Harris has Remus speak in dialect, which is degrading and insulting.
> (When Huck Finn speaks in dialect, that's degrading and insulting too,
> but only because he uses the N-word.)
>
> 3. Remus never protests racism.
>
> 4. There isn't enough racism in the stories for Remus to protest: so Harris
> lies to children about the South.
>
> 5. Remus exists only to tell clever stories to a wealthy little white kid.
> So instead of Superfly, he's just an Amos 'n Andy fantasy.
>
> 6. Harris dreamed up most of the stories instead of being a black man
> telling authentic folk tales passed down over the centuries from Africa.
>
> But the point is that I never took the tar baby to be a slam at black
> people.  I suppose the "baby" might have been made of, I don't
> know, vanilla-wafer dough instead of black tar, but then Br'er Rabbit
> wouldn't have gotten quite as stuck.
>
> HDAS has several exx. of "tar baby" in the contemptuous sense, however. All
> after "Song
> of the South."
>
> JL
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 9:29 AM, Ron Butters <ronbutters at aol.com> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Ron Butters <ronbutters at AOL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: "tar baby" in the news
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> "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
>> >>
>> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> >> 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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>> >
>>
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>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>

-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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