Is "tar baby" in "All in the Family"?

[Wilson Gray]

On Sat, Aug 6, 2011 at 8:44 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> One nuance is obviously, "a very black person," not just a black person.

Something along the lines of the way that black people say,

"two shades blacker than Bell telephone"
"black enough to leave a streak through tar"
"Of Indian deacent, Choctaw. The lightest is chocolate, the darkest is tar"

perhaps?

Or do you have in mind what "tar-baby" means when white people use it,
such as when - in literature, anyway, white people describe black
people as "plum-blue; coal-black; purple-black; so black that even the
whites of his eyes were brown"; "ebon-hued;" and it's not intended
that the reader, of whatever subdivision of humanity, is  should feel
that any of this is meant to be other than a racial - and racist -
slight?

I've long felt that that was the case. But,

Youneverknow.

It's always pleasant to have your worst fears confirmed. Here, I've
lived nearly three-quarters of a century without ever realizing before
that, if a white person speaks or writes "tar-baby," he means it as an
insult.

Good to know!

> My brothers and sister used to call me "tar baby." That would hurt me.

Some black person is saying this, I take it?

FWIW, certain members of my family used to call me stuff. That would hurt me.

IAC, four documented examples of "tar-baby" outside of Harris's
Meisterstueck! That has to prove something that *far* more meaningful
than anything that I could undocumentedly say. But I can't figure out
what it is.

--
-Wilson Gray
-----
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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