Tar Baby – Is this

Tar Baby – Is this letter that appeared in the Washington Post today a parody? You decide.

I am extremely upset about the use of the word “tar baby” in George F. Will’s Sept. 19 op-ed column. In case your paper and Will have forgotten, this is an offensive, racist term for African Americans. For you to display this article so prominently reinforces to me that you couldn’t care less about the sensitivities of your subscribers. Further, to apply this racist slur to the United Nations, an organization composed of multiple races and cultures, is doubly insulting. This shows a lack of respect for basic human dignity.

[Notes: 1) Will’s column, “Stuck to the U.N. Tar Baby,” warned Bush about getting entangled with the U.N. 2) I raised a question the other day about the propriety of republishing “entire articles” on one’s blog without permission, but I’m not sure a letter to the editor qualifies as an article. I would have contacted the author for permission, but no contact information was given. I assume that most letter writers would like to have their letters distributed as widely as possible, but if this author is upset at my republishing her letter I would be glad to turn over to her all the royalties I derive from it.]

I am sure that “tar baby” is occasionally used in a pejorative manner, as here. It is my impression, however, that its connotations are far more complex than our outraged writer recognizes.

See, for example, this somewhat stilted lit-crit discussion from a University of Virginia site:

In many ways, the racial characterization is as blurred as the moral characterization. If the tale is to be read as the depiction of one race triumphing over another, who is the victor in Tar-Baby? Contemporary literary critics, like Houston Baker, have suggested that the trickster figure–Brer Rabbit–frequently represents the way slaves saw themselves–getting along in a white plantation culture through subversion and cleverness. If this is the case, then why does Brer rabbit assume a superior attitude when dealing with the unresponsive Tar-Baby. Certainly his reaction may be attributed to pride, but Harris may also be documenting the subtleties of race relations. Is Brer Rabbit asserting his own superiority over one who is lower than he is one the social order? Does the silent Tar-Baby represent the lowest tier of plantation culture–the slave who has neither the education or the desire to assert himself in a white dominated world?

When Brer Rabbit is caught in the sticky substance of the Tar-Baby, the social implications of the tale shift. Instead of lording his “respectubbleness” over the Tar-Baby, Brer Rabbit is at the mercy of the Tar-Baby and its creator–Brer Fox. Is this a subtle reminder from the slave tradition of the dangers of assuming a position of superiority in a culture that hinges on the relationship between the dominant and the subordinate? Was the tale intended to function as a commentary of the plantation culture? Or, were they as Harris suggested–pithy anecdotes passed down for entertainment value?

Or see “Tar Baby and Womanist Theology,” by Karen Baker-Fletcher, an assistant professor of Theology and Culture at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, which analyzes Toni Morrison’s well-known novel (you guessed it), Tar Baby:

“Tar has funky qualities. It is thick, black, sticky, shiny, and powerful in its ability to hold things together. It is a symbol of black women’s cohesive power. There is something very earthy about tar. It has body. Tar comes from the earth and is ancient. It has an elemental quality… One might employ Morrison’s ‘tar baby’ metaphor to represent black women as the tar women of the church, who hold churches together.” ….

In Tar Baby, Morrison reenvisions the African origins of the Southern folk tale of Br’er Rabbit. She explores the wealth of black women’s spiritual and creative heritage. According to Morrison, the “tar baby” of Southern folklore originates from a myth of a “tar lady” in ancient Africa. She was originally a powerful symbol of black womanhood. For Morrison, the tar lady is a black woman who holds things together; she is a builder and cohesive force. If a mythological, pre-Christian ancestor of black women was a “tar lady,” what is the meaning of such mythology for black womanhood? Morrison suggests that myths that are African in origin have been reinvented from one period of history to the next by blacks and whites, so that we must uncover the original meaning of myths to consider seriously possible meanings for today’s world. [Footnotes omitted]

Now, if you don’t mind, I will emulate Br’er Fox and lay low….