Some rethuglican uses the term tar-baby within a few breaths of mentioning Barack Obama. Crooks and Liars, one of my otherwise favorite blogs, calls this racist…why, exactly?
Oh, I know, it must be that making allusions to African/African-American folktales reminds us all that black people are just a few generations removed from being primitive, backwards jungle monkeys. And for the sake of all that is liberal, we have to, HAVE TO pretend that they aren’t. Let’s all close our eyes and pretend that those niggers can be as sophisticated and cosmopolitan as white people. Not doing that is racist!
Really, he may have wanted it to be racist, but shouldn’t it be a triumph of liberal multiculturalism/ integration/ diversity that even rethugs can make references to African folklore? It’s often been noted before that liberals have already won the argument (on most things), and so conservatives try to shoehorn their corrupt values into liberal sounding rhetoric so they don’t come off sounding evil. On the other hand, they try, but they’re usually really bad at it, and yet they get plenty of support anyway. /shrug
Anyway, casually tossing off tar-baby (in the correct context) is not racist, even if the rethug uttering it really, really wanted it to be.
