"tar baby" in the news

[Baker, John]

        If you look back to Chandler's originals, e.g., Uncle Remus, His
Songs and His Sayings, http://books.google.com/books?id=Sw4ZAAAAYAAJ, or
Uncle Remus and His Friends,
http://books.google.com/books?id=6d9DAAAAYAAJ, Uncle Remus's animal
stories are as free of racism as anyone could ask (unless you are
bothered, as we may be but Chandler's readers were not, by the extensive
use of dialect), but many of the other stories reflect the perspective
we would expect in 19th century humorous writings featuring an ex-slave.



John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of victor steinbok
Sent: Thursday, August 04, 2011 5:41 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: "tar baby" in the news

Just to be clear we are talking about the same thing--the "Noble
savage" stories were absolutely harmless at the time they were
written. One hundred and fifty years later they don't look so harmless
any more, although no one faults the AUTHORS for writing them /at that
time/. Little Black Sambo has met an unfortunate literary faith long
after it was written. Books called Nappy, Nappy Hair, Happy to Be
Nappy, I Can Do My Own Nappy Hair, and Nappy Hair 101 were all written
by African American authors, mostly about their own hair. But when one
of the children's books showed up on the reading list in NYC, a number
of parents--and some activists--were offended and made a big stink
(chances are that the book was included precisely for multicultural
reasons, so it's one PC faction fighting against another). So there is
a question of who should be sensitive to what, when and why. I suspect
that referring to the first black President as the "Tar-Baby" is not
the most intelligent thing to do even if no offense is intended. In
March, 2007, McCain apologized for his use of "tar-baby"--three years
earlier, Kerry did not have to, as he was not referring to people. I
don't remember what happened when Romney used it in reference to the
Big Dig in 2006. But Colorado Springs is a different world, although
it's not quite South Carolina. Apparently they never heard of these
incidents in those parts. But there is also something to be said about
the current anti-PC sentiment running on the right, where
activists--and sometimes politicians--try to push the envelope on
certain expressions just to see the reaction of the PC crowd. In
common parlance, they are trying to make PC "heads explode". If they
get caught and they get swamped by the tide, they figure they can just
apologize. Most of the time, they just pretend that the comment is
taken out of context.

I am not sure what to make of this in Lamborn's case. He has not been
the most skillful user of polite language. In 2007 he got into hot
water when a Christian conservative couple wrote a letter to the
editor of a local newspaper, complaining about Lamborn voting against
an anti-dog-fighting law.

"It prompted Lamborn to call the Barthas personally, leaving a message
that said, '[T]here are consequences to this kind of thing, but I
would like to work with you in a way that is best for everyone here
concerned.' Shortly thereafter, Lamborn left another message in which
he said, 'I'd rather resolve this on a Scriptural level but if you are
unwilling to do that I will be forced to take other steps, which I
would rather not have to do.' "

VS-)

On 8/4/11, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 3:33 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> But Harris's stories were absolutely harmless - or so it seemed to me
>> forty
>> years ago.
>
> IMO, Harris's stories are _still_ absolutely harmless, WRT their
> intended audience. Always have been. Always will be. Harris probably
> had not the least idea that slaves would ever read anything at all,
> let alone his very audience-specific work.
>
> --
> -Wilson

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