What was so racist about Michele Bachmann's tar baby comment?

[Jamaal510]

Earlier this week, she accused PBO of "waving a tar baby in the air". I watched the Young Turks yesterday, and Trisha Rose said she thought there was subtle racism in that comment, in addition to the "Obama is not working" sign at Willard Mitt Romney's gathering in Ohio.

Don't get me wrong--I don't in any way condone the politics of Romney nor Bachmann, nor will I ever consider voting for them. But I don't get what was so racist about that.

[kentuck]

1. "Tar baby" is synonymous with Little Black Sambo..

They are old racist terms. I only mention them for clarification.

[RC]

28. Sorry, Little Black Sambo" is not synonymous with "Tar baby."

One has nothing to do with the other.
Little Black Sambo is story about a East Indian boy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Little_Black_Sambo

The story:
http://www.sterlingtimes.co.uk/sambo.htm

There is nothing racist about "Little Black Sambo" either.
The term "Tar Baby", depending on its usage, probably is racist, or at least derogatory.

[kentuck]

29. I'm sure you will not get the hell beat out of you..

when you use it in casual conversation. Don't say you were not warned...

[RC]

30. Use what?

Tar baby or Sambo?

[BumRushDaShow]

33. Here is the problem

This was the original intended imagery//story:



And THIS is what it was morphed into in multiple reprints/publications:





Do you see why there is an issue with even that term?

The ugly imagery is so pervasive and had gone on for so long in book illustrations, advertisements for products, and even artwork for postcards, posters, painting, sculptures, dolls, figurines, etc., let alone in the entertainment business with vaudeville, radio, film, television, and videos, that it will probably take another century to purge it.

[WCGreen]

31. Brer Rabbit is where Tar Bab comes from, I believe....

http://americanfolklore.net/folklore/2010/07/brer_rabbit_meets_a_tar_baby.html

Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby

A Georgia Folktale

retold by

S.E. Schlosser

Well now, that rascal Brer Fox hated Brer Rabbit on account of he was always cutting capers and bossing everyone around. So Brer Fox decided to capture and kill Brer Rabbit if it was the last thing he ever did! He thought and he thought until he came up with a plan. He would make a tar baby! Brer Fox went and got some tar and he mixed it with some turpentine and he sculpted it into the figure of a cute little baby. Then he stuck a hat on the Tar Baby and sat her in the middle of the road.

Brer Fox hid himself in the bushes near the road and he waited and waited for Brer Rabbit to come along. At long last, he heard someone whistling and chuckling to himself, and he knew that Brer Rabbit was coming up over the hill. As he reached the top, Brer Rabbit spotted the cute little Tar Baby. Brer Rabbit was surprised. He stopped and stared at this strange creature. He had never seen anything like it before!

[noiretextatique]

39. have that everyday conversation in harlem or compton

and tell me how it works out for you.

[Bolo Boffin]

2. She then called him infantile.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/1477/saturday-night-live-word-association

Maybe this classic SNL skit will explain it to you.

[11 Bravo]

41. Thanks for sharing that! I knew what it would be before I clicked on your link, but ...

it was great to revisit. (Richard Pryor was a genius!)

[bigtree]

3. consider the source

[proud2BlibKansan]

4. The term "tar baby" is often viewed as racist.

Although the term's provenance rests in African folklore (i.e., the gum doll Anansi created to trap Mmoatia, the dwarf), some Americans consider "tar baby" to be a pejorative term for African Americans.[6] The Oxford English Dictionary defines "tar baby" as "a difficult problem which is only aggravated by attempts to solve it",[7] but the subscription-only version adds a second definition: "a derogatory term for a Blac (U.S.) or a Maori (N.Z.)".[8][9]
Several United States politicians — including presidential candidates John McCain, John Kerry, Michele Bachmann, and Mitt Romney — have been criticized by civil rights leaders, the media, and fellow politicians for using the "tar baby" metaphor.[10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] An article in The New Republic argued that people are "unaware that some consider it to have a second meaning as a slur" and it "is an obscure slur, not even known to be so by a substantial proportion of the population." It continued that, "those who feel that tar baby's status as a slur is patently obvious are judging from the fact that it sounds like a racial slur" (italics in original text).[22] In other countries, the phrase continues to refer to problems of an intractable nature[vague] worsened by intervention.[23]
[edit]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_baby#Racist_interpretation

[immoderate]

18. I'm careful about it. It's racist to people who think it's racist. Too bad.

The Uncle Remus tales are African -- not racist. They are derived from legitimate folk tales collected from oral tradition by Joel Chandler Harris. Harris was also a journalist, and promoted progressive causes during Reconstruction. It's like Alon Lomax collecting field hollers.

The problem is that people think it's racist, so it is. It's a favorite fable of mine, but I don't make the reference because people "don't get it."

--imm

[Canuckistanian]

21. I like that analysis

I've always thought of it as "an intractable problem".

I never knew about its racist meanings until years later.

[Cleita]

5. That is not subtle racism but full blown!

It comes from Uncle Remus, a black slave, stories where a tar baby was used to capture a rabbit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_baby

Today, it's as offensive as the N word to call out tar babies. She's speaking in code to her constituency.

[Bolo Boffin]

7. Plus, from the context, she obviously means "red herring." Waving a tar baby to distract

doesn't make sense. She's forcing the tar baby phrase in where it doesn't fit so she can say it.

That's not even dog whistling anymore. That is full blown, indeed. And with Romney's new campaign slogan intentional calling up racist imagery of the "Lazy, Shiftless Negroes" here in April, it is going to be a long, hot summer and excruciating fall.

[freshwest]

11. Yes, it was gratuitous. And, yes, it's going to get even uglier.

[ZombieHorde]

6. Black people are sometimes referred to as "tar babies."

Black people are sometimes accused of choosing to be on welfare, as opposed to working.

[Ikonoklast]

8. Read your own sigline, and go from there.

Bless your heart.

[liberal N proud]

9. Here is a 2006 Time article that includes Romeny about tar baby

Why "Tar Baby" Is Such a Sticky Phrase


By TA-NEHISI PAUL COATES Tuesday, Aug. 01, 2006

Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is taking flak this week for his use of the term "tar baby" while addressing a group of Iowa Republicans on July 29 in a reference to Boston's troubled Big Dig highway project. Was he offensive in doing so? The head of the NAACP, Bruce Gordon, believes the governor "made a bad choice" in using such a term, the civil-rights leader told the Boston Herald. But Romney has his defenders as well, among them a minister in the Nation of Islam. Romney's spokesman apologized on his behalf, saying the governor simply meant to refer to "a sticky situation."

In wandering into that territory, Romney has plenty of company. In May, rookie White House spokesman Tony Snow was asked about the government covertly collecting phone records. "I don't want to hug the tar baby of trying to comment on the program...," Snow replied, which brought him an instant round of static. Two years ago, TIME used the phrase, reporting that John Kerry's presidential advisers were telling him to get away from "the Iraq tar baby."

Is tar baby a racist term? Like most elements of language, that depends on context. Calling the Big Dig a tar baby is a lot different than calling a person one. But sensitivity is not unwarranted. Among etymologists, a slur's validity hangs heavily on history. The concept of tar baby goes way back, according to Words@Random from Random House: "The tar baby is a form of a character widespread in African folklore. In various folktales, gum, wax or other sticky material is used to trap a person." The term itself was popularized by the 19th-century Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris, in which the character Br'er Fox makes a doll out of tar to ensnare his nemesis Br'er Rabbit. The Oxford American Dictionary defines tar baby much like Romney used it, "a difficult problem, that is only aggravated by attempts to solve it." But the term also has had racial implications. In his book Coup, John Updike says of a white woman who prefers the company of black men, "some questing chromosome within holds her sexually fast to the tar baby." The Oxford English Dictionary (but not the print version of its American counterpart) says that tar baby is a derogatory term used for "a black or a Maori."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1221764,00.html#ixzz1siVyRHgu

[wandy]

10. Some phrases were, are, and allways will be delibrate insults...

Some nicknames may have lesser insult value over time, but some do not fade away.
You might call me a whop, you might call me a polack.
After three generations, I'de just hope the joke was funny.

"tar baby" remains a direct affront on one's origan.
Not to be used in polite conversation.

[zbdent]

12. I found the "Obama is not working" interesting ...

um, what is Mitt's job, anyway? Professional Presidential Candidate?

[Jamaal510]

35. ...More like professional Etch-a-Sketcher.

[madrchsod]

13. well in my day that was racist as hell...

[BumRushDaShow]

14. Does this make it clearer what the problem is?

[Jamaal510]

36. Yes

[lunatica]

15. It's whistlespeak for tarring and feathering

which was a practice in the South against Blacks. The mental image of tar, which is black and a baby conjures up a stereotype of black people too.

Besides she used it wrong. Traditionally a 'tar baby' is when someone step in it and can't extricate themselves. Kind of like she did with that statement, or Ted Nugent and Rush Limbaugh have done.

[petronius]

16. I assess it this way: a tar baby as a literary reference is clearly

not something you wave in the air. However, for people who don't know where the phrase comes from, it functions as a racist term for African Americans (they probably think of it as a 'polite' form of the 'n' word, or something). From the inept usage, Bachmann clearly doesn't know the classical (correct) meaning of tar baby; but, the phrase was on her mind when speaking of Pres. Obama. Why?

[CBGLuthier]

17. Since America is fundamentally illiterate it must be racist

Because everything that SOME asshole makes racist must be stricken from the universe.

[cali]

20. is the picture in post 14 racist?

[noiretextatique]

40. it's the context...and yes, as it has been used in america "tar baby" has a racist connotation

and all the politician who use the term are aware of the context.

[WingDinger]

19. She meant it in the sense of flypaper, but you dont swing that either.

She is about as bright as Archie Bunkers malapropisms. I dont get spun up at it being racist so much, at least not more than all their other dog whistles.

She should be slammed though, as a "PALIN". Too unraveled to make sense.

And, she should be asked if her husbands shock treatments meant to cure gay might help her racism. But I think they likely think Gay is a disease, and racism is rational.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. Listen, you youngsters who don't remember the 1950s, let me explain it

The term "tar baby" comes from the Uncle Remus stories of Joel Chandler Harris, a white writer from the South, who wrote in Black dialect in the 19th century.

Disney made cartoons out of the stories in the 1940s, and they used to be shown on TV until it was decided that the movie they came from, "Song of the South," with its live action depictions of happy slaves, interspersed among the cartoon stories, was no longer in line with the sensibilities of the era.

Anyway, Michele Bachmann's quote is a malapropism, because in the original story, a Brer Fox, one of the continuing characters, makes a tar baby--a scarecrow-like creature made of tar--in order to trap Brer Rabbit. Brer Rabbit sees the tar baby, thinks it's a real person, and greets it. When it doesn't answer, he gets mad and hits it. Of course, he gets stuck. The more he struggles, the more he gets stuck.

A "tar baby" is therefore a situation in which you get stuck, and the more you try to get out of it, the worse your situation becomes.

"Waving a tar baby in the air" makes no sense at all. It doesn't even make sense in the context of restrictions on oil companies. Unless only your hand was stuck and you were really strong, you COULDN'T wave a tar baby in the air.

Misusing that phrase, given the fact that the tar baby in the story is black and that the story comes from a white Southern writer who wrote in Black dialect and from a Disney movie that depicts happy slaves, shows underlying racism...and typical Michelle Bachmann stupidity.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

25. I kind of had to laugh when I heard what she said -

that ninny can't even apply racial slurs correctly. As you said, "tar baby," as it was used in the Uncle Remus stories and the Disney cartoon based on them, simply referred to a situation that got worse the more you struggled with it. More recently, and likely at least in part because of the overall context of "Song of the South," the term has taken on racist overtones, and those politicians who own at least half a brain avoid it and find other, more appropriate metaphors.

But not Michele. I don't believe for an instant that she is unaware of the racist connotations of "tar baby," but she used the metaphor so strangely (a tar baby isn't something you wave in the air if you want to catch a rabbit with it) that it was apparent she was stretching in order to use a term that would be insulting to a black person.

Does anyone hear the distant trill of a dog whistle?

[LeftyMom]

26. This is the correct answer.

I had a storybook based on the movie when I was small. That was the eighties, so it must have been a hand-me-down many times over, I'm surprised and disappointed that nobody "misplaced" it along the way, at least until I took it to school- I suspect my teacher might have called home and explained things, because I don't recall it being around after that.

[cyglet]

23. Ah, good old Michele. She's back

throwing around incendiary comments to get attention.

If you've seen the district she represents, you understand (hint: white bread and rural, high unemployment, high foreclosure rate...racists abound). They don't even mind that she goes around shooting her mouth off instead of, you know, representing them.

[Jamaal510]

37. I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt,

but I guess she truly is warped.

[Politicalboi]

24. She meant it to be racist

But she knows she can say it without too much backlash. How many times did the word "tar baby" come out of ANYONE'S mouth prior to 01/20/09? I don't ever recall hearing that term during Bush, Clinton, Bush I. It's just another notch in her belt. I just wish she wore that belt like a scarf.

[bluesbassman]

27. Maybe a gag would be better.

Great points by the way. The GOP is expert at this sort of thing. Say something highly incendiary, but with just enough wiggle room that they can be "shocked" that anyone would assume the comment was/is racist, homophobic, misogynistic, etc.

My gut feeling though is that the majority of Americans are starting to see through this, and see the GOP for what they truly are.

[coalition_unwilling]

32. Some enterprising reporter should ask Bachmann to explain exactly what

she meant by her mixed metaphor, i.e., you can't wave a tar baby. So did she mean "waving a bloody shirt"?? Just what did she mean. Of course that presumes a level of critical intellect among today's reporters that is sadly lacking.

Even if she meant 'tar baby' as a proxy for the N-word, the metaphor still makes no sense, for why would PBO be waving a n****er in the air?

[Iggo]

34. She's a racist.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

38. Wouldn't be surprised

Her district includes a lot of white flight suburbs, people who moved there when the north side of Minneapolis "went colored," as they used to say.

[SomethingFishy]

42. "A little subtle racism"?

LMAO.. wow. Um first of all the whole "waving a tar baby" comment had nothing at all to do with what she was talking about. It made no sense at all, none, a "tar baby" is a trap, a sticky situation you can't get out of. Talking about "waving one in the air" makes no fucking sense at all.

Ask yourself this. When is the last time you heard anyone ever, use the word "tar baby" to describe something someone white was doing. Please, find me a single incidence where the words "tar baby" were used to describe something a white person was doing. One incident. I hadn't heard that term since I was a kid and saw Song Of The South. So for me I hadn't heard the term in over 40 years, now that we have a black president I have heard it twice in 4 years. But hey, I'm sure Bachmann couldn't find a better way to express what she meant.

[TheKentuckian]

43. It is difficult to be definitive because the statement makes no sense

in any known contest but considering the history and long disuse, it would seem to be failed dog whistle.

Michelle isn't worth the consideration but I am curious if the failure was a willful misdirection that allows the"hidden message" out there or is she just that inept and/or parroting poorly in a Palinesque fashion something she doesn't quite "get".

Assuming the best, what the hell does Obama waving a tar baby supposed to mean and who the fuck was it meant to address that would process it into meaningful metaphor of a decent nature?

The Republicans are a racist, bigoted, terrorist, radical organization of economic royalists. The best bet is they are acting true to form. Once that is understood they are seldom a surprise and their antics rarely befuddle.