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

[Jonathan Lighter]

The relativistic nature of "tar baby" means your own personal race doesn't
matter.  There's always somebody else you can call "tar baby," and they'll
hate it.

Which is probably why such terms have survived.

JL



On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 4:28 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Is "tar baby" in "All in the Family"?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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