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Not keeping up with racial slurs is now called ignorant?
I bet you believe that George Allen simply had no clue a word he thought he made up just so happened to also be a racial slur against the ethnicity of the person he was targeting right. That was just a coincidence, and so is Lamborn, just a coincidence that he happened to use a term he had "no idea" was racist. That is it right??
Not keeping up with racial slurs is now called ignorant?
It's a very old racial slur, not something new you have "keep up with". I could understand people under 30 not knowing it but a man as old as Rep. Lamborn certainly knew the term and understood it for the racial slur that it is. You don't just pick a phrase like that out of a hat.
It is definitely racist. When I was a kid 30 years ago, my grandmother used to use the term "tar babies" in reference to blacks. I heard that a lot where I am from. She also would refer to the rocks we pulled out of the creeks as "ni**er heads."
She voted for FDR!
This is not something new. There is no conspiracy or misunderstanding here. That term is absolutely racist to those of a certain generation.
Interesting how just because some C-D'ers never heard the term used racially means it's not a racist term.
Will (sort of) give the Rep the benefit of the doubt, but it's definitely a word with racial connotations. Not sure why he had to pick that one.......was he deliberately trying to be sensational?
I've only known the term in its Uncle Remus meaning, i.e. getting trapped into something unpleasant that you can't get free of. It seems ironic, too, since the tar baby character (as used in Uncle Remus) comes from African folklore.
I'm reading now that Toni Morrison once wrote that the term was used by whites to refer to black girls. I'd never heard that, though I'm well aware of another derogatory term for black children that more people have probably heard. I grew up in the South in the early 70s and certainly heard my share of racist talk but this term used in a racist way seems to have escaped my ears.
Was there outrage over the Marvel Comics character "Tar Baby"?
Do we need to expurgate the Uncle Remus tales, the way some call for bowdlerizing Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn?
I think some are too quick to ascribe the remark to ill intent.
Quote:
Originally Posted by freemkt
While there are certainly some people who use the term with derogatory intent, I think it has largely passed out of the mainstream of American cultural literacy, and its use today probably more often reflects a lack of cultural literacy.
I've long had the sense that the term carries some sort of racial "baggage" but I've never read the stories and have never quite gotten the context.
Quote:
Originally Posted by andrea3821
I have no idea what a tar baby is or how it should be interpreted. Or whatever racial connotations you're asserting about the term.
I'm certain that the person in question was using the term to mean that it's frustrating (or something similar) to work with Obama.
ETA:
People will spin anything to try to make whites and/or conservatives look racist.
Funny just how ignorant many on the left are, and how little they know of American literature and history. From Wiki:
Quote:
The Tar-Baby is a doll made of tar and turpentine used to entrap Br'er Rabbit in the second of the Uncle Remus stories. The more that Br'er Rabbit fights the Tar-Baby, the more entangled he becomes. In modern usage, "tar baby" refers to any "sticky situation" that is only aggravated by additional contact.[1] The tar baby is a trap that should be avoided
.
Of course, when you have no arguement and try to make everything about race and racism, I suppose that's to be expected.
It's a very old racial slur, not something new you have "keep up with". I could understand people under 30 not knowing it but a man as old as Rep. Lamborn certainly knew the term and understood it for the racial slur that it is. You don't just pick a phrase like that out of a hat.
ITA. I don't think many things are racist (I'm black) but tar baby is a racist slur used years ago and an older person would know that.
Wanted to add, I don't like Brer Rabbit either (since I believe that is was just another artistic theft but won't get all into that) and Toni Morrison's title was titled as such due to the negative connotation of the slur.
ITA. I don't think many things are racist (I'm black) but tar baby is a racist slur used years ago and an older person would know that.....
I'm not so sure about that. I'll be 50 next year and had never heard it used as a racially derrogatory term. It may depend on who one associates with as to who has used/heard the term used that way.
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