Posted on 05/27/2006 1:28:53 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Those who have recently been decrying a "racist use" of the image of the Tar Baby might benefit from knowing more about the allusion and its origins.
Tony Snow, now the White House press secretary, certainly found himself in the proverbial Brier Patch when he used the image to describe his predicament when facing his first meeting with the Washington press corps.
The infamous Tar Baby originated as a figure in a grand scheme detailed in an African-American Brer Rabbit slave tale. These stories, in which the sly rabbit always manages to outwit those who are stronger and more powerful than he, were shared by slaves who took great pleasure in the trickster rabbit's exploits.
Brer Rabbit is supposedly weaker than those around him, just as the slaves were, but in hundreds of tales based on African lore he manages not just to escape but also to outwit and embarrass his persecutors. Shortly after the Civil War ended, the Brer Rabbit tales were appropriated by Joel Chandler Harris, a white journalist who created an old former slave character, Uncle Remus, to tell the stories.
Uncle Remus narrated these comic tales in columns that Harris wrote for the Atlanta Constitution. Eventually the tales were collected into a series of books that made Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit famous (Harris was invited to the White House by Teddy Roosevelt, a great fan of the tales).
The stories have a common plan: Uncle Remus tells the Brer Rabbit tales to a little white boy, the son of the old black man's former owner. While Uncle Remus might seem to be an Uncle Tom, a slave who loved his masters and looks back fondly on the times before the war, Remus clearly relishes explaining the rabbit's wily ways.
Harris once explained to his readers that his character Uncle Remus understood all too well how the balance of power in the Slave South worked against all slaves, who in order to survive had to depend on quick-wittedness and deception.
So we come to the most famous of all the Brer Rabbit tales, the Tar Baby story. In Uncle Remus' tale, the sticky doll is designed by Brer Fox as a way to catch Brer Rabbit. Brer Fox knows that Brer Rabbit will insist that it speak to him, as a sign of respect.
Sure enough, when Brer Rabbit encounters the Tar Baby on his path, he is insulted when the doll refuses to acknowledge his greeting, and he grabs hold of the sticky arm and soon finds himself hopelessly stuck (Snow's analogy to his own situation in the Bush White House might be all too appropriate).
In Uncle Remus' story, it looks as though Brer Rabbit's goose is cooked, to mix a metaphor. Brer Fox thinks he has finally caught his prey, until the rabbit, in a wonderful example of reverse psychology, tells Brer Fox to go ahead and do anything he wants, but "Please don't throw me in that Brier Patch."
Brer Fox can't resist the opportunity to make his enemy suffer the worst of all fates, so he does exactly what Brer Rabbit begged him not to do. Once in the briers, Brer Rabbit, free of the sticky tar, hops happily away with a final taunt: "I's born and bred in the Brier Patch, Brer Fox."
In some circles today, the Tar Baby seems to have evolved into a racist stereotype insulting to African-Americans. Harris was not immune to prejudice against blacks in his own time. However, he understood the slaves' ability to survive, and he never altered the plots of the Brer Rabbit tales that he had heard when he worked on a plantation himself, as a white boy living in poverty in middle Georgia.
The Tar Baby story celebrates the ingenuity of the slave and his determination to get free at any cost. The plantation South was the slaves' brier patch, and the Tar Baby just one of many traps set by a powerful foe.
Snow's reference to the tale, given the workplace he has just joined, seems to fit. And instead of being insulted, people of color today can take pride in the fact that, in the original story, they are the literary descendants not of the Tar Baby but of its nemesis, the persistent, victorious Brer Rabbit, who knows a good Brier Patch when he sees one.
I guess "Black Beauty" is racist now too.
sheesh.
Illiterate, PC nazis.
"Sure enough, when Brer Rabbit encounters the Tar Baby on his path, he is insulted when the doll refuses to acknowledge his greeting, and he grabs hold of the sticky arm and soon finds himself hopelessly stuck (Snow's analogy to his own situation in the Bush White House might be all too appropriate)."
This college professor is using one of my favorites to make another silly leftist point.
How long has Snow been with the White House, 2 or 3 weeks, a month?
In the modern version of The Tar Baby does Brer Fox get taxed to provide welfare to Brer Rabbit's litter? Does Brer Rabbit ask for reparations for years of being hunted?
A D.C. govt. official used that one and lost his job over it.
tar-baby, catch a tiger by the toe, Brazil nuts, Indian-giver, Jaw the price down, Or you might get Gypted --- All phrases from my childhood, that I KNOW were taught to me innocently, but which now, cannot be used.
My recommendation -- In all cases substitute Christian words -- That done each phrase is politically acceptable.
Xian-baby {Use the X version all you wish}, Catch a Preacher by the toe, Preacher-toes, Deacon-giver, Oral the price down, or you might get Falwelled.
I once convinced someone that the phrase was referring to Egyptians and not gypsies. :)
My favorite Joel Chandler Harris epigram is on the subject of money, to the effect: "What is money? It cannot revive the dead dreams of youth; it cannot restore the shattered portals of a broken home or mend a broken heart. I speak, of course, of Confederate money."
I was taught that gypsies were muslims from Egypt, in europe.
i absolutely live to piss off these racist leftists. i love it when they make complete fools of themselves over these non-issues.
Harris was an amateur anthropologist. He had traced the origins of these stories through the slave trade to as far as India. Harris had seen many versions of them but preferred those told by black slaves. They are ancient. They were taught to the children of white masters. He was so taken by their wisdom and love for the people who told them that he wanted to capture them for posterity, using the phonetic puns in the text that was a popular vehicle for humor in that day.
His was a powerful intellect expressing the antithesis of racism. That the "Politically Correct" have removed these stories depicting a rich and sophisticated side of black culture from the literature IS an act of racism.
Methinks they didn't want the children of the welfare state to learn how they were being had.
I love ethic jokes, as well as other jokes.
I explain that I can tell them because I'm Cherokee/Norwegian and you can't get much more screwed up than that.
There are way too many thinned skinned people in this country. We need to laugh more, and take offense less.
All I know about gypsies is that my grandmother used to threaten us by saying she would lock us outside at night and let the gypsies steal us.
I once convinced someone that the phrase was referring to Egyptians and not gypsies.
gypted, isn't that what Maha Rushie does when he broadcasts portions of live press conferences on his show?
I thought gypted was when you stole Kennedy's last bottle of booze.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.