Mickey is mostly black. And he's a vermin. And now a Jew runs the Disney studio. Tsk tsk tsk. Stop the Jewish stereotyping of American black people now!

Those people old enough to have seen this racist movie know that the tar baby was a big glob of tar shapped to look like a little black boy to trick Brer Rabbit. When Brer Rabbit punches the tar baby for not saying "good morning" he gets stuck in a trap. Even as a child growing up Catholic, I never could understand how the hero of the story could be justified for punching someone simply for not speaking.

The term is not racist in and of itself, BUT any cartoon movie for children, particularly made by Disney with dancing slaves, and blatent steryotypical black characters changes the perception.

More importantly, the fact that an entire generation of children that are now grown to adulthood have never seen this movie makes the term that much more difficult to understand. How many Americans today go through their entire childhood without seeing at least a dozen Disney movies? Yet today, the only thing "Song of the South" represents is Splash Mountain at Disneyland.

Zipity Doo Dah! Zipity A. John (the Baptist) McCain's not having a good day.

Uncle Remus was a great American story teller. Yes, he was a slave.

So was Aseop.

Someone asked for words they could use in place of the apparently irreplacable "tar baby." Here are a few for you:

Quagmire

Predicament

Dilemma

Quandary

Sticky situation

A fix

A jam

Difficult situation

Tar Baby is now officially a racial epithet. The racists won.

It's sad, really. The Uncle Remus folk stories, those genuine morality tales passed down to children from mothers and fathers, usually by candle light, have been indelibly smeared by the smirks and taunts of a bunch of long-dead old peckerwoods who could not stand to see even one positive thing that the black people could have for their own. The racists had to find a way to coopt it and make it something vile, something they could use to "keep them niggers in their place."

They heard the Uncle Remus stories. But rather than share in the wisdom and the delight of them, they were insulted and vexed. How dare these people think they could get away with having a culture of their own? So they stole the tar baby, and turned it into real babies, black babies.

And while most of the rest of the country, and the world, read Uncle Remus, or heard the stories correctly, it was just a small bunch of ignorant Southern racists who knew they were on to something. If they kept using tar baby as a pejorative, it would eventually become one.

And so they did.

And everybody lost something beautiful.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tar+baby

"Tar Baby is also a name, like "nigger," that white people call black children, black girls, as I recall…."

("An Interview" 255)1

1. Badt, Karin Luisa. "The Roots of the Body in Toni Morrison: A Matter of "Ancient Properties." African American Review, Winter 1995 v.29 n.4 p.567(11). Online. Encarta Online. Internet. 1 May, 1997. Available: http://www.encarta.cognito.com/cgi-bin/cgi_appl.cgi/2/1/28712/4?xrn_17

accessed at http://www.luminarium.org/contemporary/tonimorrison/taressay.htm

Two tar baby postcards (clearly as pickaninny stereotype)

http://cgi.ebay.com/2-Vintage-black-children-postcards-Tar-Baby-Gravure_W0QQitemZ140059063930QQcmdZViewItem

She further explains that white people call black children "tar baby," especially black girls. It is a name similar to "nigger."

See Thomas LeClair, "The Language Must Not Sweat," The New Republic 184 (March 21, 198 1), pp. 26-27. accessed in http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/apr1993/v50-1-article3.htm#7

Morrison tries to redefine and take back the term Tar Baby and make it positive in her novel by the same name. It has not been historically positive at all.

The tar baby is also a variant on "pickaninny" in white rural Southern vernacular. Klansmen called black children tar babies to minimize their deaths in bombings (for instance in the Birmingham bombings in 1963). It was a way of minimizing black children's humanity.

I'm reminded of the people who saw uproar over the Neshoba County references as "PC" because they were ignorant of the history of the murders of the three Civil Rights workers there in 1964. I remember College Republicans saying "just get over it". I say get some home training. Didn't you mothers tell you regional colloquialism that are low class have no place in formal conversations, anyway?

This not like "niggardly", which is a real word with real English usage and a different meaning by context. We are talking about an old fashioned Southern colloquialism that has had negative connotations since the 1920s. My students, and many non-Southerners of my generation, have no idea what that word means. That makes it an ineffective colloquialism at that.

Why should I have to "suck it up" because you don't know enough rural Southern history not to use the term? Consider it a gentle wake up call.

Yes, the story of B'rer Rabbit and B're fox and the tar baby came from black humor in the old segregated south. I was told the story often as a boy growing up in North Carolina in the 1940s.

But it is a wisdom story, akin to the story in the Bible of Solomon, who, when asked to decide which of two mothers had a legitimate claim to being a baby's mother (they didn't have DNA checks yet), said he was unable to know so he would cut the baby in half and give each mother half. Of course the real mother said, "Give her the baby."

Would we call that story anti-semitic?

I think there are many reasons for not supporting John McCain for president. But using the term tar baby isn't one of them.

If it is no longer possible to use some of these old wisdom folk stories that almost always have specific ehtnic, racial or national origins, our politically correct speech will become even more bland and impoverished.

Pass them little Jimmy Dean sausages over heah and them grits too. And if ya'll don't mind, pass me the "Pick-A-Peppa" sauce too. Biscuits and gravy, Oh my! Yes'm, you can call me anything you want, but jus' call me fo' breakfast. Pass that hot coffee and some cream too, while you at it.