Romney's "Tar Baby" Comment

I agree completely with Eugene Volokh that the furor over Mitt Romney's use of the term "tar baby" in a comment about the Big Dig the other day is a pointless tempest in a teapot. He sums up the reasons perfectly:

"Tar baby" is one of many words that has a standard and common meaning that is not pejorative, and that isn't even derived from a pejorative concept or strengthened by its association with a pejorative concept, but at the same time has a completely different meaning than is derogatory. Using it in a context where there's no reason to think the speaker is saying something pejorative (such as this context) is no more offensive than saying "a chink in his armor," "spic and span," or "nip it in the bud" where there's no reason to think the speaker is trying to insult the Chinese, Hispanics, or the Japanese.

I've used the term "tar baby", as have most longtime internet users, I suspect. It has a perfectly valid meaning, identical to the one Romney intended. Persistent trolls on the internet are often referred to as tar babies because, like the original usage of the term in the Uncle Remus stories, once you pick them up you're stuck with them. We need to get over this idea that words have intrinsic meanings. Meaning changes across both time and context, and what matters is what someone intended.

Tags

More like this

Ironic. The standard story of the tar baby comes out of the Uncle Remus stories, doesn't it? Was that not a collection of folk tails that had proliferated, especially among African Americans, and wasn't that a migration of African American literature into the mainstream?

And now somebody is complaining about it?

Is Romney's use supposed to be racist against rabbits? Have the critics ever read the story?

Seems that those who are complaining are being niggardly with their tolerance.

The Uncle Remus stories were written by Joel Chandler Harris. He was white, but the stories were collected from oral traditional stories of African Americans. I don't know how accurate the dialect he used was; Mark Twain wrote that his own use of dialect in his writings was intended to closely represent the variations in dialects he could recognize in his travels up and down the Mississippi.

It is amazing how many people out there are just looking for an excuse to get offended.

Either that, or just looking for an excuse to critize a politician they oppose. Could be either one in this situation.

What you may be overlooking here, Ed, with respect, is the notion that the Tar Baby image and the Brer Rabbit stories in general are, by there very nature full of racial valences. To suggest that the Tar Baby imagery does not have explicit racial elements is to ignore the origins, context and content of the tale. However, that is a separate issue from the "secular" meaning being described by Volokh. Eugene's examples on that score are fairly poor, in that reference to a "chink" in the armor would merely being equating two different word-meanings whose only relationship is formal or structural. Whereas, in contrast, secular use of the Tar-Baby term is drawn come from a story where the actual word - not a simulacrum or lookalike - is used with the full weight of racial and intraracial overtones. This doesn't preclude the aforementioned "secular" useage, but to deny that the term has racial weight is somewhat spurious.

See here, for a bit more on this:

http://www.uncleremus.com/anatar.html

Great post. Great blog. All the best.

-- MDT

To suggest that the Tar Baby imagery does not have explicit racial elements is to ignore the origins, context and content of the tale.

True enough. Yet let's assume the worst-case scenario: The tar baby of the story really is a black person. What does this story then mean -- in its historical context? Is it not an obvious condemnation of slavery? Doesn't its moral then become: Be careful in picking up slavery, because you won't be able to put it down?

How is this at all a racist message? If anything, it's an anti-slavery message. That it arose from a genuine African-American folk tale only supports this theory all the more.

I hope this sets the record straight. Even though I'm, err, not.

Jason

While I believe Ed's post is, as usual, sensitive and largely correct, Michael Thomas is certainly right to note the historical complexities of such terminology in America. It's at least a little germane to mention that the most famous iteration of the "tar baby" motif, for most of Romney's audience, comes from Disney's avowedly racist paen to Jim Crow, "Song of the South." No doubt some of the hyper-sensitivities come from the close association of the term to that particular movie, whatever other denotative and connotative aspects are lost.

By Dave Snyder (not verified) on 01 Aug 2006 #permalink

The fact that it may historically have "racial overtones" does not make it racist. Making a positive statement about black people also has "racial overtones", but clearly such statements are not racist. As Jason points out, the image has generally been interpreted as anti-slavery. Now, I don't think Romney knows all of that, or cares. The point was, and still is, that there is a perfectly reasonable and common usage of this phrase that is not the least bit insulting to blacks, and that is almost certainly the way he used it. For crying out loud, does anyone really believe that he meant, "I'm not about to pick up that black person" when referring to the Big Dig? This is all an overreaction by people just looking to be offended.

It's a shame that perfectly good words are being savaged because of their perceived racial overtones (the word niggardly is a good example of this). I was going to suggest that people in the spotlight stop using "tar baby" to avoid exactly this kind of overreaction; however, that approach would slowly and insidiously impoverish our language (there are many such words that could be avoided for exactly that reason), and that is far more serious.

There is, however, another element to this. Most listeners would probably not understand the decidely non-racist meaning of tar baby, and instead only think of its pejorative use as a reference to black people. That in itself is not a reason not to use it, but the speaker must be prepared for misunderstandings to occur. It's very easy to caricature someone as racist for saying "tar baby," even if that charge is completely unfair.

By ThomasHobbes (not verified) on 01 Aug 2006 #permalink

Ed Darrell: Is Romney's use supposed to be racist against rabbits?

What? He said "jungle bunny" too??

Lewis Carroll fixed in the public mind the idea that words have intrinsic meanings by having a non-credible character say; "A word means exactly what I intend it to mean" or words to that effect. He apparently meant to say that communication is impossible if words change or have multiple levels of meaning.

Yet the very idea of context, which really does determine meaning, makes words placeholders for ideas. The simple fact is that language does change and if one is adrift without awareness of context, that is a far worse handicap to communication. The situation is made worse by a number of utterly false etymologies such as the blow-up over niggardly.

I think we should forget the whole thing and just go on a nice picnic.

This is like the poor politician who had to resign after using the word "niggardly" (meaning stingy). He was attacked because it sounded like a slur word. The word, of course, is perfectly acceptable standard English.

I've posted on the topic over at Volokh.com and am not going to repeat the comments here, except to say that "tar baby" has entered the vernacular in a non-racial manner--as, for that matter, has "paddy wagon" (an example I used at Volokh.com). Quite frankly, I'm getting tired of the self-appointed language police attempting to dictate what is and what is not acceptable use of a term that has obviously been accepted into the popular vernacular in a non-pejorative sense.

/rant

BTW, I despise Romney, our carpetbagger governor from Utah, and will be glad when he is gone after the next election.

Hopefully, he will lose the presidential election in 2008, but if he does not, y'all will be subjected to him. On the other hand, if he is elected pResident, maybe he'll start running for ruler of the world a couple of weeks after he is inaugurated. That would be analogous to what he started doing here in Massachusetts shortly after he was inaugurated as governor.

Tar-baby can certainly have racial overtones, or not. But my point is, to argue that the word is DEVOID of any such weight is silly and ignores basic facts about how the word entered the vernacular. Also, for Jason above who suggested that the tar baby story was anti-slavery - the opposite is actually true. The author, Joel Chandler Harris used these stories as a pro-slavery forum, with his narrator, Uncle Remus, a slave who supported the plantation lifestyle and his tales as wistful odes to byegone days. What this boils down to is, for me: saying that tar baby can never be used in common conversation without being racist is ridiculous. However, it is also ridiculous to contend that no one should ever bring up the racial overtones that the word, despite protestations to the contrary, does bear. Doing so doesn't mean that the speaker is racist or wrong, only that the way we use language is open to and bears scrutiny. Paddy wagon is an excellent example of a similar situation. Niggardly is a completely different situation.

Great comments all around. And thanks to Ed for the forum. Take it easy.

But Michael, I didn't say that the word is devoid of racial overtones. I said that the way he used it was devoid of racial overtones. The problem is not that people are saying "that word has racial overtones". The problem is that they're condemning him as a racist when he didn't use the word in any way related to race. It is intent and context that matters. Words are merely symbols for ideas, so what idea was he intending to convey with the word? The idea he was trying to convey had nothing whatsoever to do with race, and there is a perfectly reasonable meaning for the phrase that fits his usage perfectly. Thus, to run off claiming that any usage of the term is racist is absurd, and that is the position I responded to.

It's an interesting discussion and it would be worthwhile to find out more about the original stories and the versions in the book and movie, as well as all their various racial implications. If nothing else, it inspired me to listen to Big Country's Song of the South, which is about apartheid and in the words of the writer, "...I kind of liked the idea of using a Disney title for it to show how the media exploit real suffering for ratings."

Hi Ed. Totally agree with you in the sense that there was no racist intent in the use of the word in this context. However, when I say that "the way we use language is open to and bears scrutiny," it could be also fair to say that spoken language is GOING to be scrutinized, read and misread with regards to malicious intent or insensitivity. Tar-baby is one of those words that bears a certain weight based on its passed usage, despite the harmless intent of those who might use it in common conversation. The simply arguement that the word has developed a common meaning does not entirely innoculate it from criticism, no matter how harmless folks might feel when using it. Another similar example - kids routinely talk about being "gyped" when something doesn't go their way. Their understanding of the meaning of the word is entirely devoid of any descriminatory meaning. And yet, of course, "gyped" has its origins as a slur on the Roma, more commonly known as gypsies. Now I am not saying that tar-baby is some kind of offensive, verboten ther, only that using it creates an opening for a dialog that the speaker may not have intended and potentially puts the speaker in a position to defend their usage. I certainly agree with you that the word has its place in conversation as the representation of a useful concept. However, I am not willing to concede that those who take issue with the term's usage are off their rocker. Thanks again for you thoughts, and the forum.