“Tar Baby.”
Virginian Representative Tom Davis, who previously fought against gay rights, had some choice - and rude - words about Barack Obama in a recent memo: “Hispanic voters are a swing group in this election and future elections. John McCain, being from a border state, may be out of sync with many Republicans but he has standing among Hispanics. Barrack [sic] Obama has not made the sale to Hispanic voters. Thus, this issue is a tar baby for anyone who touches it, with land mines everywhere.” Tar baby, of course, is an archaic racial epithet. [Politico]
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I don’t think this is racist. This is what the term tar baby means taken from Wikipedia this morning:
Tar-Baby was 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 fought the Tar-Baby, the more entangled he became. In contemporary usage, a tar baby refers to any “sticky situation” that is only aggravated by efforts to solve it.
So maybe this senator was saying that the issue with Obama and Hispanic voters is a sticky situation.
Excuse me, I said senator. He is a representative.
I agree with Matt in this instance. He should have said “quicksand” or some other thing you can become stuck in. Very poor word choice given the situation.
First, someone explain to me how appealing to Latino voters is a “sticky situation” or like “quicksand.”
This is one reason why I like Obama. He does not speak in code words where you have to go to fucking wikipedia to decipher something he said.
BTW, wikipedia also says this about “tar baby”: “Although the term’s provenance arose in African folklore, some now consider “tar baby” to have negative connotations revolving around pejorative images of African-Americans. Specific reasons why the term developed negative racial aspects are difficult to identify. In recent years, several politicians who have publicly used the term have encountered some controversy, mocking, and censure from African-American civil rights leaders, members of the popular daily media, and other politicians.”
So are we to believe someone who has opposed gay civil rights did not have the intent to use the word in a pejorative manner?
Mike, I guess I should have read farther down on the webpage. But I still believe it wasn’t used in this manner. I mean if you plug in the racial definition and take out the word tar-baby. It doesn’t make much sense to me.
Rep Davis,
Need a hand getting the jackboot out of your mouth?
Another racist for Hillary, at least this one didn’t use altered graphics darkening and broadening Barack’s face.
‘Tar baby’ isnt of itself a racist remark.
However in this context, as in who is doing the speaking and who he is speaking ABOUT, perhaps it’s not so farfetched to see something insidious in his statement.