Is that the Slave 1 hovering in the background of the last panel? Is that racist?

(was recently listening to yet another bitchmoan about the phrase "tar baby," which I don't think was ever racist, it's a friggin' baby made of TAR, used to trap Bre'r Rabbit, but for all I know, was an existing term, like "jiminy crickets," used by Joel Chandler Harris to piss off illiterates 130 years in the future)

Saw a test screening of a Nic Cage movie today. It has no release date yet, but I hear it will be some time in 2012. It was pretty good, but I like Nic, and enjoyed the National Treasures (they are working on the 3rd on comming up with a 3rd one). I'd tell you more, but I could get sued for over $5 million.

Because of my grandfather I reached a depressing age before learning I shouldn't say the following things:

"tar baby" in reference to a black child.
"porch monkey" in reference to a black child.
"****** knocking" in reference to knocking on a neighbor's door and running away.
"****** toes" in reference to Brazil nuts.

My Mom's childhood dog was named Tar Baby :rolleyes:

Tar Baby is definitely taken as a slur - handily illustrated in this classic sketch from Saturday Night Live with Chevy Chase and Richard Pryor:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6341HeJDgU

I remember this one well. It appeared in audio form on the SNL lp record released sometime in the late 70s. I recall kids at my nearly-all-white school memorizing and performing it.

From what I understand it initially really did start as just meaning a sticky situation that gets worse the more you struggle, and in fact has roots in African folk lore. Somewhere along the line it took on the racist connotation. And therein lies the trickiness.

I mean, is it racist if I look at a small mammal with a black mask and rings on its tail and say, "Look, a coon!"? Is it homophobic to pull out a box of cigarettes and offer you a fag? Am I offending Chinese people if I talk about a chink in someone's armor?

I honestly don't know how commonly used tar baby has ever been, in either of its forms. At this point, you're probably pretty smart to avoid using it no matter what the real history is, clearly it's evolved to the point where using it is, well, a sticky trap that will just get you stuck and get worse as you struggle to get out of it.

Definitely, several politicians have been in trouble in recent years and I am confident in all cases (that I'm familiar with), despite the outcry, that the use was not intended to be in any way racial or coded.

I tend to agree with James McWhorter's take (as I do on most things related to language and usage) on this.

Yeah, that's exactly how I feel about it.

Would it be kosher to suggest that such semantic traps are a real ****** in the woodpile?