It’s hard to say whether or not the use of ‘hug the tar baby’ in Press Secretary Tony Snow’s first conference had any hidden racial significance or if he genuinely felt that the racist historical significance of the word was unimportant (well maybe not, but I’m trying to be generous here people). What isn’t hard is to see that Mr. Snow’s use of such language is the epitome of what people are talking about when they say ‘privilege’.
Having said that, I don’t want to hug the tar baby of trying to comment on the program… the alleged program, the existence of which I can neither confirm or deny.
First lets look at the etymology of ‘tar baby’. I decided to do a bit of informal ‘research’, which means not extensive, but did consist of about 3 or 4 hours of looking up every possible twist on the phrase and words to get all references I possibly could from the Internet. It seems that many feel it was initially a reference to dark skinned first generation slaves, most recognize it most easily by the late 1800’s story by Joel Chandler Harris of Uncle Remus and the Br’er rabbit series. In one particularly good academic critique of the stories, I found a really interesting interpretation which surfaced regularly in my search, but none so eloquently as by Julie Zbeda:
This story suggests that Br’er Rabbit has dual sides as both the victim and the aggressor. He also has a prideful nature as is shown when he refers to himself as “respectable” in comparison towards the tar baby. As racial and moral characterization is a big part of the Br’er Rabbit stories, the relationship between Br’er Rabbit and the tar baby may represent the subtleties of race relations, in which the tar baby is like a Sambo – an uneducated slave who is mentally bound to slavery as well as physically bound – the ideal creation of Br’er Fox, who represents the slave owner. This also poses the question of who is the dominant and who is the subordinate. Although Br’er Rabbit thought himself higher in the social order than the tar baby, when he gets stuck in the tar, he is at the mercy of the tar baby and its creator, Br’er Fox. This represents a warning for what happens when a position of authority is assumed by a slave in a society where it is not permitted. This tale functions as a commentary of plantation culture in regards to the conflicts between the slave and the master, and between the slaves themselves.
The fact is, most people understand that words can have many meanings (despite tar baby having questionable racist connotations to its very etymology) and can change significantly in different contexts. The question then becomes, is the need to use a word or phrase so crucial to making your point that no other word or phrase will do. In a great thread on the Democratic Underground, Fishwax summed it up pretty well by first addressing that Joel Chandler Harris had actually admitted in his introduction that the stories were done in partial defense of slavery, and that ultimately context does matter:
I think one of the chief flaws of the “outrage at the outrage” in this case is that it relies on a belief that context obliterates connotation. People have appealed to Tony’s context of use as if it were 100 percent conclusive, the final word. But context is most useful for determining denotative meaning. Connotative associations extend beyond the specific topical context of the conversation.
I read that and it really hit home for me. Why would the press secretary for the President of the United States be incapable of seeing if nothing else, that particular reference might cause discomfort. The answer for me was pretty clear – white privilege is about being shielded from discomfort and racism that isn’t experienced by them. I guess it’s hard for a middle-aged white man who lives a comfortable and cushy life to relate to why references that have had racially negative origins might bother some people. It’s also a pretty glaring example of cognitive dissonance. And really, it’s a pretty big stretch to call it necessary or defensible.
Here’s a few other questionable points about Mr. Snow’s history when it comes to the issue of racism and the need for sensitivity to other races and cultures:
The O’Reilly Factor on June 30th, 2005: Snow said that calling racism and poverty systemic is “making excuses” for cultural problems in the U.S. rather than trying to understand the situation of the poor. “When you say systemic, it sounds like you’re trying to make excuses…in other words, it sounds like you’re giving people a copout.”
Fox News, Sunday, October 30th, 1998: Snow said, “I love Thanksgiving. It is the least politically correct of all our holidays. It celebrates the old-fashioned bourgeois family. It praises God, who’s creator non grata in most of our public schools, and it bespeaks our national faith in higher truths and greater goods, as well as in our neighbors and ourselves.”
Chicago Tribune, November 20th, 1991: As a White House speechwriter Tony Snow defended former KKK leader David Duke, saying, “Duke is talking about things people really care about: high taxes, crummy schools, crime-ridden streets, welfare dependency, equal opportunity. A lot of politicians aren’t talking about these things.”
Fox News, Sunday, October 5th, 2003: Snow spoke about Rush Limbaugh’s controversial comments that Donovan McNabb was overrated and that reporters are disposed towards black quarterbacks. “The comment wasn’t racist,” Snow said, “but that did not stop political opportunists from accusing Rush of bias.” Snow added, “Racism isn’t that big a deal anymore.”
Stormfront Article, December 31, 1999: An article written by Tony Snow with a debunking theory of Kwanzaa for Stormfront that is archived on Martinlutherking.org. The site itself is worth looking at to get a better understanding of who Mr. Snow has worked for and with in the past – it’s a Martin Luther King hate site and that is littered with examples like this (please keep in mind this quote is not from Snow):
The political affiliations of Martin Luther King that Sen. Jesse Helms so courageously exposed are thus only pointers to the real danger that the King holiday represents. The logical meaning of the holiday is the ultimate destruction of the American Republic as it has been conceived and defined throughout our history, and until the charter for revolution that it represents is repealed, we can expect only further installations of the destruction and dispossession it promises.
And to finish this rather winding ramble of mine off, I found this quote from the Stormfront.org forums in defense of Tony Snow:
Anyone in the newsmedia who attempts to give a fair balanced presentation on the White Nationalist movement can expect to be slammed by the powers-that-be. We all know who those powers are and no elaboration is needed.
So while Tony Snow and the hill might feel comfortable in blithely brushing off the elephant in the room, I’m just sayin’….
Pingback: Ally Work
Pingback: Rachel’s Tavern
Pingback: feminist blogs
Pingback: FeministBlogosphere
Probably because of my white privilege, I was unaware that “tar baby” signified anything other than a confusing children’s story. However, I’m not the White House secretary using it as a metaphor to a room full or reporters. Some might claim that he didn’t know, but if he’s speaking publicly for the Executive Branch, he has a responsibility to know what his words mean.
Reviewing Tony Snow’s own words in several contexts on my own, I’m confident the man’s racist, whether conscious of it or not. He also appears to be a Dominionist, advocate of libertarian economic policies, and American imperialist. In other words, his presence anywhere near power is alarming.
I used to very frequently hear some internet trolls referred to as “tar babies” — they had a talent for getting you gummed up into a fight you wanted no part of… So when I heard Snow use the term “tar baby,” I understood it to mean something that you get stuck in and can’t extract yourself from.
Having said that, however, I still think he’s a racist.
What they said. Robert Anton Wilson has more than once referred to the Tar Baby Principle — you are attached to what you attack — and applied it to champions of social Order like Snow and his friends.
To those of us who haven’t devoted substantial portions of our lives to studying the history of racism—a set which very likely includes Tony Snow—it’s just a children’s story. It’s unreasonable to expect him even to suspect that the phrase might offend anyone, and it’s also unreasonable to take offense when there was obviously no ill intent.
Of the other quotes, the only ones I see as even potentially objectionable are the ones about David Duke and the White Nationalist movement, and even those are hard to evaluate without context.
Actually, I didn’t realize that the quote about the White Nationalist movement wasn’t from Tony Snow. And the one about David Duke is completely innocuous in context.
This is the reason I no longer take accusations of racism seriously. The signal-to-noise ratio is just too low.
So Brandon, 2-4 hours is a substantial portion of your life?
I guess you really were born yesterday.
I’d say more, but your signal to noise ration is far too low.
It’s certainly indicative of the progress that has been made on the issue of racism, that this is the kind of stuff being blogged about and thought about.
1920: black people are getting murdered by the mob
1950: black people are being denied access to public accommodations
1970: black people are being discriminated against in employment
1990: black people are getting taken for granted by the Democratic party
2006: white people are getting offended by other white people making literary references to old racist texts
It’s good to see this trend line.
On Fox News Sunday, Snow once smirked that members of the NAACP are “slaves to a failed ideology.” Har-de-har-har, Tony.
Yes, Robert, the only sign of racism left in America is that Tony Snow makes reference to Tar Babies, thinks that David Duke’s appeal on the issue “crime in our streets” isn’t racist, is a racism denier, etc.
The fact that something gets talked about doesn’t mean it is the worst thing around. The fact that something isn’t the worst thing around doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be talked about.
Robert, that’s hardly the case. This is about a man that is representing the highest office and leadership of the united states making commentary that is dismissive, belittling, inflammatory that he knows could be construed as racist.
I feel like I should repeat the word ‘dismissive’ over and over again to help people get past what I referred to earlier in the post as cognitive dissonance. Dismissing the historical connotation and feigning ignorance is not what people with integrity and decency do. And quite honestly, after reading all that I did on Snow, I think Berg’s comments about how Snow isn’t an expert is amusing considering Snow seems to think he is with his comments and even articles on the issue – he knew the related context and he didn’t give a damn. I almost get the feeling that he throws these sorts of words out to get away with it because it tickles his fancy. He also used ‘segregation’ in a comment of his in the first conference – which is innocent enough in most cases, but really, when looking at his history of dismissing racism it has to make you wonder if he gets a bit of a jolly this way.
Also Robert;
Pay no attention to the racial profiling that still goes on today. Pay no attention to the aggregious statistics of black men in prison today. Pay no attention to the disenfranchisment tactics employed in the past few elections in many states such as Florida and Ohio. Pay no attention to the fact that it somehow mattered to call the alleged victim in the Duke Rape Case needed to be repeatedly identified as a ‘black’ stripper.
Pay no attention to the fact that to many people in our country that still believe that black is less than white, and that all of these things that I am mentioning are naturally occurring coincidences. Not looking at the elephant doesn’t make it disappear.
Whether Tony Snow is or is not a racist does not actually determine whether the “tar baby” comment had racist intentions. I am thoroughly disgusted by his defense of David Duke, among other of the comments Kim rooted out, but I remain unconvinced that he should be roundly chastised for his “tar baby” remark.
Any NYers on here? Because we had an interesting issue in the 2005 mayoral election, wherein one candidate, C. Virginia Fields, used the word “paddy wagon”, seemingly unaware of the term’s violent anti-Irish history and connotations. Fields was a civil rights activist who marched with Dr. King whose language had at no other time reflected animosity toward the Irish-American community. Luckily, the jumping on her for her misstep was not taken seriously for very long. It was understood that she simply didn’t know. Was it her “privilege” that kept her from being aware of the history of her language? Or did she just not know and needed to be told?
As Brandon Berg said:
People are often not aware of the correct language outside their realm of experience and expertise, (especially those without much education, or those who didn’t grow up in multiracial urban areas). As a black woman, C. Virginia Fields would likely have known “tar baby” but didn’t know “paddy wagon”. Not because she hates Irish people.
It’s no wonder our open conversations about race and ethnicity in this culture are rare, and when they exist, are stilted. It’s not the usual fear of saying something wrong and simply being respectfully corrected; there’s the fear of unknowingly saying something wrong and having their hearts and souls indicted.
Again, I don’t think it’s a stretch to call Snow racist on the basis of the other comments Kim posted here. I do think it’s troublesome to call him racist on the basis of one ignorant choice of words.
If he says “tar baby” again, then I’m ready to tar him. But let’s hope he learned from it. I know a lot of Americans probably did.
Kim, you’re probably right that Tony Snow is dismissive of left hypersensitivity on racial questions.
He’s right to be dismissive. Trivia should be dismissed, so we can focus energy on things that are important.
We’ve moved from people getting killed, to people being hated, to people being disdained, to people having their feelings hurt.
Once you get to the point of people getting their feelings hurt, it’s time to move on and find a real issue. I don’t find your laundry list of racial grievances compelling. Serious analysis of those issues doesn’t support the racism boogeyman that the sensitive left seems to feel compelled to parade behind.
If you want to talk about black disenfranchisement, how about this: most black people want school choice and they want it bad, and most people on the left won’t even talk about it with them. How non-racist can a political movement be, if it won’t even address the issues that the minority group wants to address?
El, I completely agree that many people have the most innocous of intent when using some terms that have held negative cultural or ethnic connotations in the past. What I keep stumbling on in this scenario, however, is the abundance of rather dismissal and blythe comments that seem to haunt the press secretary.
Regardless, I’m not pounding my chest for anything to be done other than for Mr. Snow to correct himself and for at least a general acknowledgement that it might not be the most respectful of tactics to use questionable terminology when addressing the entire country. I can’t shake the feeling that Snow somehow was under the impression that those who he addressed were all white middle to upper class American’s who held the same sort of privilege to dismiss and ignore in the manner he has in the past, and it seems in the present.
Conservatives like Tony Snow and Robert are why conservatives don’t get much minority support. Now, Robert has just told us that our issues aren’t real issues and our feelings don’t count. This is the message we get- hey, you can get school vouchers if you pretend you’re not a human being deserving of respect. Folks may want vouchers, but they aren’t going to sell their whole community out to get them. Now, I’m not all for the Democrats- they aren’t perfect people. They have blindspots. But when I see a whole group of white men chattering about how my feelings don’t count, without even a glance at any information about racism, or listening to us about how our lives are, I’m not going to vote for them. Especially after the common conservative tactic of ‘you hurt my feelings so I can’t pay attention to your issues” shows that they do care about feelings- just not mine.
Not to mention, why the fake tears about folks being called racist? Heck, if someone is called racist white folks all but give them a parade.
Shannon, the issues facing black Americans are real issues. It is the left-wing view of those issues that is trivial, wrong-headed and non-productive. I suspect that black (not minority) non-voting for Republicans is locked in a circle at this point. Unfortunately for black people, that makes black votes less important to everyone. We’re not going to do the dance of pretending that talking to the NAACP is going to make an electoral difference, and white liberals aren’t going to do the dance of pretending to care about the real black issues – we know that we’re not going to get black votes, and white liberals know blacks have no place else to go.
It isn’t that your feelings don’t count; it’s that when the issue comes down to your hurt feelings, that’s no longer a particularly important political element to people on the other side of the fence. When a group is being murdered by the hundreds, that’s a damn important political element that has to be dealt with. When allies of the group are having their feelings hurt by someone using an old allusion – big whoop.
To put it in starkly utilitarian terms, when people are killing you or brutally oppressing you, I don’t have to expect to get something in return for it to be my duty to care and to try and help you – I owe you help on the grounds of decency, even if you’re still not going to vote with me. But when people are making you feel bad, I’m perfectly entitled to expect something in return in exchange for helping you with your trivial-ass problem. I care about the feelings of people who are on my side; people sworn to oppose me, well, sucks to be them when they’re crying because Mean Mr. Snow said a Naughty Thing.
Non productive for who? I think we can decide what is productive for me, and what I can feel bad about. We’re all supposed to cater to white people’s feelings- call them racist and they’ll throw a tanturm. Heck, the whole AA thing is based on white people having their feelings hurt because some people of color are smarter than them and better at jobs. Your hypocrasy stinks to the high heavens. If you don’t want black votes because you think we’re not valuable people, fine, but don’t talk about how we should vote some way when we know you feel nothing but contempt for minorities daring to think we deserve respect. I don’t see why we should be on your side, because you (near sociopathic lack of empathy) us.
Charles:
The 2-4 hours were for this one issue. It would take much, much more time than that to learn enough to avoid ever saying anything that might possibly offend someone.
EL:
Tony Snow only appears to have been defending David Duke because his words were taken out of context. See the article to which I linked in my previous comment for details.
Kim:
Being knowledgeable about race relations does not necessarily entail exhaustive knowledge of obscure racial slurs. And even if he did know (you say he did—what makes you so sure?), so what? If he had called someone a tar baby, that would be totally unacceptable, but it’s patently obvious that he wasn’t using it as a racial slur. The quote only makes sense if the term is interpreted as a reference to Br’er Rabbit hugging a doll made out of tar. This reminds me of nothing more than that silly “niggardly” kerfuffle.
Also, this isn’t 1960. Racism isn’t socially acceptable anymore, and anyone who’s genuinely racist is going to have an extremely difficult time making it into some position of authority. So it’s good policy to take allegations of racism with a grain of salt, and if you’re going to repeat stuff like the allegation that Snow defended David Duke, you have to check the facts first. How is it that you found 2-4 hours to research the history of the term “tar baby,” but couldn’t find five minutes to check the validity of an allegation as serious and as dubious as that?
Non productive for who? I think we can decide what is productive for me, and what I can feel bad about.
Yes, and so can everybody else.
We’re all supposed to cater to white people’s feelings- call them racist and they’ll throw a tanturm.
Actually, if you call at least THIS white person racist (and provide context for it so that I have something to evaluate), it generally causes me to throw a self-evaluation fit. I’m a southerner by breeding and raising, and I know the terrible history of our region. Like any southerner of decent feeling, racism is something I constantly check myself on.
And with that said, there are some accusations of racism, that come from certain viewpoints, that don’t provoke that response – that instead provoke an eyeroll, a sigh, and a “whatever.” Those accusations tend to come from the point of view where Tony Snow idly referencing part of our common culture is a Major Event.
The reason for the eyeroll and the whatever? The repeated experience of such a viewpoint’s complete non-seriousness.
If you don’t want black votes because you think we’re not valuable people, fine, but don’t talk about how we should vote some way when we know you feel nothing but contempt for minorities daring to think we deserve respect.
We don’t want black votes because the cost of earning them is too high. From a cold and calculating point of view, your votes are priced above their market value to us. Democrats can buy your votes on a cash basis, and fairly cheaply, too. Republicans would have to change too many fundamental principles in order to ally with the agenda embraced by the black leadership, AND pay more cash in the bargain, AND enact/support policy prescriptions which we think are terrible. The game isn’t worth the candle.
That doesn’t mean you’re not valuable as people. It just means that a particular quantum of minority-outreach effort nets a lot more Hispanics than it does blacks, and so that’s where our effort goes.
I don’t see why we should be on your side, because you (near sociopathic lack of empathy) us.
I think we have plenty of empathy, on a personal level. I don’t see the connection with politics. Black people want things that we can’t give them, so we don’t bother caring about the political ramifications of our not caring.
One of my former co-workers was black, and we were on friendly terms. If she had expressed distress or dismay (or if I suspected she felt those emotions) because of what Tony Snow said, I would think “God, C, I’m so sorry!” And I would talk with her and listen with her and be just as empathetic as I am capable of being. (As I would be with you, if I knew you well enough to have formed a personal connection, if you’re terribly distressed by what Snow said.)
What does that have to do with embracing her political opinions? As best I gathered, she was an honestly loyal Clinton Democrat, which, fine. But is my empathy as a person dependent on accepting her ideas? Or yours, or anybody else’s?
If it is, then that’s a view of empathy that I just can’t and won’t embrace – whether it nets Republicans zero votes or twenty million.
Robert,
References to tar babies, who cares, but active association with Stormfront? Tony Snow isn’t merely admired by the fine Stormfront folks because they suspect he is on their side, he has written articles for them. If the press secretary for a Democratic president had written for MIM and constantly made veiled references to the blood of the working class, would you find it silly and empty to wonder if he was a hard core communist, and feel that maybe the voice of the president shouldn’t be someone who holds views like that?
If Snow didn’t have a history of association with racist hate groups, then the tar baby comment would be a good deal less significant.
If you think Tony Snow does the self check in response to accusations of racism, I think you may have been far more gifted with Christian charity than you might ever have hoped you would be.
Or your are just willing to give a partisan blind eye to racist fucks when you think they are on your side.
Some how, Brandon, I don’t think anyone just accidently stumbles into writing dumb-ass anti-Kwanza articles for the web site of a racist hate-group. Not writing for racist hate-groups is probably a pretty good starting point if you would prefer not to be viewed as a racist.
Of course, you (and presumably Tony Snow) don’t care if you are labeled as a racist, since it is a label so easily given out, and not reserved exclusively for those times when someone is wearing a white sheet. And, of course, Tony, just had to get his insightful anti-Kwanza views out to the White Nationalist readership.
Brandon;
I took some time to look up the David Duke quote and stand by putting it up as an example. I will add one missing part of the quote, though:
“You can’t write off Duke’s voters as racists,” he said. “Duke is talking about things people really care about: high taxes, crummy schools, crime-ridden streets, welfare dependency, equal opportunity. A lot of politicians aren’t talking about these things.”
He’s in essence trying to make a case that people shouldn’t be faulted for supporting a known racist if their intentions weren’t to support a racist. Sound familiar? Seems like if a racist like Duke makes office, it’s still a racist in office, regardless of what the intent of the voters who voted for him were. He knows this. You know this. I know this.
But what is interesting is that I found another bit of information about Snow with regards to his questionable ties with racists and personal beliefs:
Oh…what was it that Byrd said that was controversial?
(On Tony’s Fox News show on March 4, 2001)
“There are white niggers. I’ve seen a lot of white niggers in my time; I’m going to use that word.”
Oh, and one other link, because it kind of made me laugh. The source you linked to Brandon, got a bit of egg on his face for his rather sketchy scenario building around Tony Snow’s ‘context’. From Crooked Timber:
Charles, has Snow had “articles” (plural) published in Stormfront? I thought it was just one article. And it doesn’t seem to be clear that the one article I’m aware of (which also appeared on other right-wing websites) was published with permission. If there wasn’t permission given, then probably he can’t be blamed for that.
Brandon, as the link you provided points out, the “full context” used to excuse Snow’s defense of David Duke, is no defense at all.
Robert, I’m extremely sympathetic to your reading of the situation; I think it’s true that the Democrats don’t do nearly enough for Blacks (even when Democrats are in power), due to the fact that there’s not much danger that many Blacks will be willing to vote for Republicans. The Democrats would be unelectable without Black voters, but Black voters aren’t getting much in return.
But all your discussion of race and politics is so baldly partisan that it’s hard to take anything you say seriously. Do you have anything at all to say about race politics which will, in any way, distinguish you from a Republican partisan hack? Is there any substantive way in which you will criticize how the Republican party deals with issues of importance to black voters?
There are two factual statements in this sentence; the first one is wrong, the second one is empty partisan rhetoric.
It’s true that some polls show that most black people favor vouchers – but these are usually polls in which respondents aren’t given an opportunity to choose between vouchers and other possible reforms; and in which no cost for the vouchers are ever mentions. (Apparently the money to pay for voucher comes from magic pixies, rather than from cutting other programs or raising taxes).
If even a hint of where the funding comes from is included in the polling question – as in this survey by the St. Petersburg Times – the support for vouchers goes way down. The same is true in which more alternatives than just vouchers or status quo are presented:
And in the most important kind of poll – the voting booth – it’s simply not true that the majority of blacks consistently support voucher programs.
See the exit polls from California and Michigan, for example (scroll to the bottom). When it came time to vote on voucher ballot measures, black voters were two times (CA) or three times (MI) more likely to vote against than for vouchers.
Charles, nobody has presented the slightest shred of evidence that Tony Snow has any connection to StormFront. He didn’t write that article FOR StormFront; they reprinted it, without permission, from the looks of things. I seem to remember reading that article in the paper when it first came out.
Amp, your points on choice are fair. But it seems to me that if some substantial portion of the black electorate wants something, then the party claiming to represent black interests ought to at least have the question on the table. Instead, the Dems have been very clear that their loyalty to the teacher’s unions automatically trump their loyalty to black Americans.
Do you have anything at all to say about race politics which will, in any way, distinguish you from a Republican partisan hack? Is there any substantive way in which you will criticize how the Republican party deals with issues of importance to black voters?
Sure. My positions on race politics are pretty differentiated than the Republican party line; I’m not sure why you think differently. Rather than me write four paragraphs, why don’t you pick some narrow points and cite the Republican partisan hack position, and I’ll explain my differences. Similarly, on the second point, what Republican position do you want me to critique?
Robert, I’ll spell it out; Amp just quoted you making a GOP-hack-like statement, and proceeded to demolish it.
Ampersand:
Ah! You’re right about the Berube post. I completely missed the irony. I guess that’s the risk you run when you substitute snark for an actual argument. This should be easy enough to settle—I’ll just go to the library and find the original column.
I make no apologies for Tony Snow. But this is one of those things that’s hard for me to analyze. I really and truly never understood that tar baby was an expression that had racist overtones — I should have realized it when I read Toni Morrison’s book, named, yes, “Tar Baby,” but I did not even then understand the significance of the title vis a vis the subject matter. When growing up in a Northern City I used to play a childhood game called, yes, that’s right, “Tar Baby,” and I thought TM’s use of the term came from that game, which I thought was one of those universal childhood phenomena. I don’t think I’m stupid but this was over my head until it was pointed out to me. So if someone asked me whether the use of the term tar baby, in isolation, signified a racist mentality, I really would have to demur. Obviously, Tony Snow has a whole history of commentary for public consumption, and that’s what I would focus on.
HF, with all due respect – and I’ve enjoyed your comments on “Alas” quite a lot – this particular comment seems to me to be adding noise rather than signal.
Brandon, I guess that is the risk Berube runs – but he does snark so, so, so well!
However, in this case, I think that Berube’s post included real arguments presented in snark form.
Robert:
Since they’ve been “very clear” on this, perhaps you can quote where the party platform says so. Or the official DLC statement saying so. Or even Senator Clinton saying so.
I think that this is one of those instances of “very clear” that’s mainly “clear” in the eyes of GOP partisans.
It’s not that Democrats – or leftists, as you more broadly claimed earlier – think that vouchers would probably be great, but aren’t willing to support them because of teacher’s unions. The reason most leftists of all races oppose vouchers is that they believe vouchers are genuinely bad public policy.
With all due respect, nothing you say anywhere in this thread demonstrates that differentiation. If you have opinions about any policy issues relating to race that can’t be summarized as “democrats bad bad bad, republicans good good good,” then it’s up to you to say them, not to me to prompt you to say them.
OK, I’ll pick an issue, then. How about racial disparities in the death penalty?
Republicans basically ignore the issue, or argue that the real cause of the disparity is differences in crime rates. I don’t say that; I say that the answer to racial disparities in the death penalty is to more aggressively prosecute white criminals. Is “kill more white people” a featured element of Republican hackery?
Two things:
1. The post claims that Tony Snow wrote a Kwanzaa article “for Stormfront,” which is a Nazi group. Other commenters echo this charge. This is a lie. As you could find out simply by using Google, Tony Snow has a syndicated column, and the column on Kwanzaa was simply one of the syndicated columns. I have absolutely no doubt that if Stormfront reprinted Snow’s piece, they did so without permission. Why would Tony Snow get mixed up with a Nazi site? Even if you think he’s a Nazi (which is ludicrous), wouldn’t he have better sense than to make it public?
2. I see no legitimate reason for people to get upset over the use of the term “tar baby.” Snow wasn’t referring to any black person, and he wasn’t even talking about a racial issue. Even if that term has ever been used as a racial insult (which I have yet to see substantiated), Snow was using it as the vast majority of educated people might use it: As a literary reference to a situation that sucks you in and won’t let you go, and without a shred of racial connotations whatsoever.
The way I look at it is, everybody says inadvertently sexist or racist things in their lives. It never occurred to me before all this either that “tar baby” has a racist history. But, as I am a person who cares about equality and wants to be cognizant of my privilege, if I were to say that phrase in public and I were to be called out on it, I would immediately apologize and not use that phrase again. There are ways of communicating that don’t depend on putting a group of people down, but if I loudly insist that I should be able to say things that I know are offensive and not be ever criticized for it because I don’t mean to be racist or sexist, then that might be a pretty good sign that I am, in fact, racist or sexist.
Analogy: If Tony Snow had said that he felt like “the Dutch boy putting his finger in the dyke,” the same people would try to gin up another fake controversy. “He said ‘Dyke’! Didn’t he know that’s an insulting term? Shame on him!”
I second what Denise said. Anyone might make a careless comment without realizing that it might be offensive. But why continue to defend the right to make the same comment once you know it is offensive?
I second what Denise said. Anyone might make a careless comment without realizing that it might be offensive. But why continue to defend the right to make the same comment once you know it is offensive?
Consider Denise thirded.
There are Muslim fundamentalists who are offended that you show your face in public, Dianne. I can see going out unveiled in public before you realized how offensive it was. But why continue to defend your right to bare your face (in defiance of God’s Law, no less!) once you know it is offensive?
The answer, of course, is that you don’t have an obligation to refrain from offending people. You may choose to do so, if you think their offense is reasonable – “huh, I guess maybe saying Jews are grasping and duplicitous was unnecessarily offensive, and I guess I won’t say that any more, seeing as how it hurt Alice’s feelings” – but if you DON’T think the offense was reasonable, then you won’t modify your behavior. I imagine you’re going to continue to go unveiled, even though other people have incredibly strong feelings about it – feelings much stronger than anyone has thus far expressed about “tar baby”, by the way.
And I imagine that other people are going to make allusions to Harris’ writing, too. And too bad for the offensensitives among us.
“Tar Baby” does have a racist history as derogatory against African-Americans in its usage. It’s also used in other countries against people of color, by Whites. Its use in stories goes back hundreds of years.
Why use it at all? And as it’s been said, why continue to use or defend its use when told it is offensive? Because the feelings of those who are offended by it don’t matter, because whether or not your feelings matter is part and parcel of the racial privilage held by Whites in situations like this, as is ignorance about the use of words that offend members of other racial groups.
Hmm. Are you sure about this? I’ve seen racists climb up the ladders of power and like someone said here, get their own parade if they are accused of anything racist either involving word or deed. This is not an infrequent thing either.
Anyone might make a careless comment without realizing that it might be offensive. But why continue to defend the right to make the same comment once you know it is offensive?
As Robert said, when some people say that they’re offended, what they have said is meaningful and worthy of respect. In other circumstances, the person who claims to be offended is being irrational, and is in fact just seeking an excuse to boss other people around.
There are a lot of people in this country who would be “offended” if they saw many of the discussions that take place on this site. Do those people have a right to demand that you keep your offensive opinions to yourself?
It’s also used in other countries against people of color, by Whites. Its use in stories goes back hundreds of years.
Says who? This page says that the trickster concept was used in folk tales from India and Africa, but it says nothing about “Whites” using the story “against people of color,” whatever that is supposed to mean.
Sure they have that right. And I have the right to ignore them, as does everyone else here.
But I hope that I’d actually pay attention to what they say, if the request is as mild and reasonable as what’s requested here. “Tar baby” was used as a racial epitaph, just like “nigger” and “kike” and “wetback.” (I didn’t even know it had another meaning until this week, because I had never read the Br’er Rabbit stories).
That’s not something folks have just made up; it was in fact used as a racial epitaph. It’s no more irrational to want people to avoid saying “tar baby” in casual conversation than it is to want people to avoid saying other racial epitaphs.
So once knowing the history of the phrase, and knowing that some people – and in particular, many members of racial minorities – feel excluded by the use of racial epitaphs, why keep on saying it? Just because you have a right to say it doesn’t mean you have to say it, after all. What’s so horrible about saying “oh, sorry, I didn’t know that was a racial epitaph,” and moving on?
It’s like the way David Duke had a right to run for office. He did have that right, and Snow had the right to praise a Klansman’s campaign for office, which he did. But no one forced Tony Snow to defend the act of voting for Duke, and it’s not unfair to hold that against Snow.
For too many white conservatives, the idea that any effort, however insignificant, should be expended trying to avoid using language in a way that says to some blacks “you are not welcome here, you are not part of the mainstream of this society” is a horrible affront.
In fact, the vast majority of people I’ve seen make a big deal of this are conservatives who are offended by black people not liking racial epitaphs. If the only people in the room were ordinary black folks and a few sane white folks, the conversation would go like this:
Seriously, nine times out of ten, unintended offense can be handled as quickly and easily as wiping a booger off your nose when someone says “you should wipe your nose.” What makes it a big deal is that too many white people can’t hear the word “racist” without completely losing their ability to hold a rational conversation.
(On the other hand, publicly defending voting for David Duke isn’t so easy to wipe away.)
Robert, avoiding saying “tar baby” is not even remotely comparable to living in a society in which some people will throw acid in your face should it be uncovered on the street. There’s a difference between being asked to avoid doing something that offends or else people will be offended, and being asked to avoid doing something that offends or else you’ll be violently assaulted or murdered. Just as importantly, the sacrifice being asked of whites – to avoid the phrase “tar baby” – is trivial. It’s not at all comparable to the sacrifice of being asked never to show one’s face in public again.
Robert, avoiding saying “tar baby” is not even remotely comparable to living in a society in which some people will throw acid in your face should it be uncovered on the street. There’s a difference between being asked to avoid doing something that offends or else people will be offended, and being asked to avoid doing something that offends or else you’ll be violently assaulted or murdered.
Who’s talking about a foreign society? There are Muslims in America who think women should cover their faces in public. They don’t go throwing acid in people’s faces; they’re just offended.
Are you saying that if some black people were going to engage in violence against people who say “tar baby”, that would mean they were wrong that it’s offensive? I’m not understanding your point here.
Just as importantly, the sacrifice being asked of whites – to avoid the phrase “tar baby” – is trivial.
Really?
“Tar baby” used to reference a sticky situation is a referent to part of our collective culture. I’m not sure I’d characterize asking people to expunge part of their culture from living memory as “trivial”.
Additionally, however small the particular instance may be, the principle being asserted is not trivial; it is fundamental and hugely important. Giving any group the power to control the discourse of another group is most decidedly non-trivial.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask white people not to use “tar baby” as a negative slur against blacks. But that’s not how it’s commonly used anymore, and it’s not how it’s been used here.
Robert;
It’s true, from what I’ve been able to find, though Snow was aware of the article and didn’t make attempts at having it removed that are known of, it does appear to be a syndicated piece and not written expressly for Stormfront. That said, while I’m willing to ease up on the idea that he wrote the article for Stormfront as was my initial impression, the article, where it’s been posted, his knowledge of it and general disregard are not enough to convince me that he isn’t an overprivileged racist (through complicity) schmuck.
Barbara;
You mentioned you’d focus on his whole history – that’s pretty much what I did. The tar baby comment first caught my attention (my grandfather used it as a racial epithet) as being a racist remark, and then I started reading the stir. Because I was confused about how it was not being seen as racist, I dug around for as much etymology as possible. But in doing so, I also kept coming across more and more information that seemed to build a real case rather than a ‘question’ as to whether or not Tony Snow has some potentially dangerous belief sets when it comes to racism.
Denise;
Exactly right! That’s what I was attempting to convey to Robert in an earlier response in this thread.
And finally, in general I keep hearing people trying to make an analogy of ‘Tar Baby’ to the misuse of a word; take the niggardly example. Why this is incorrect, is because the phrase ‘Tar Baby’ all stems from the same etymology and has had different interpretations. Both the sticky and the racial origins can be traced directly back to the Br’er rabbit with regards to what people are discussing. In the example of ‘niggardly’, we’re talking about a genuinely different word being used in correct context that people are -believing- is of the same root as ‘nigger’.
Regardless, you can call me a bleeding heart if you like, but I personally would even avoid the use of the word ‘niggardly’ since stingy suffices just fine if I thought it would end up hurting someone.
“Tar baby” was used as a racial epitaph, just like “nigger” and “kike” and “wetback.” (I didn’t even know it had another meaning until this week, because I had never read the Br’er Rabbit stories).
Well, I’m the opposite: I’ve seen the Brer Rabbit stories, but I have never in my life even imagined that anyone had ever used that phrase in a racial context. (FYI, by the way: I don’t think you mean to use the word “epitaph” here.)
So once knowing the history of the phrase, and knowing that some people – and in particular, many members of racial minorities – feel excluded by the use of racial epitaphs, why keep on saying it?
Again, to anyone who is familiar with American literature, this is exactly as if lesbians tried to demand that no one refer to the classic tale of the Dutch boy who stuck his finger in the “dyke.” Do you see why some people might resist such a request? I.e., they might say, “Gee, I’m sorry you’re offended, but you have no right to be offended in the first place, because I wasn’t using the word in that sense AT ALL. I was referring to a classic work of children’s literature that SHOULD be common knowledge. And now that you know what I meant, it’s just bullying if you continue to demand that I retract an innocent expression.”
See, the people reacting to Snow aren’t racial minorities who were in Snow’s presence. In fact, a lot of them aren’t even racial minorities at all. Instead, most of the reaction has come from white liberals at places like Media Matters or ThinkProgress, who have no interest in this issue except to manufacture a partisan controversy. I guarantee you, if Snow were speaking for a Democratic administration, those sorts of websites would be the first to leap to his defense, and point out how truly innocent it was, and how irrational it would be to get upset, etc.
If I used that term in a black person’s presence, and he/she seemed offended, I’d apologize and move on, no question. But if I used the term in a roomful of white journalists, and then I saw a bunch of partisan websites trying to publicize the term for the sole purpose of stirring up a meaningless controversy, I’d say, “Look, I meant it innocently –as you damn well know — and I’m not going to give in to a political culture that makes everyone walk around on pins and needles for fear of saying something that partisan hacks on the other side will twist out of context.”
2 comments. 1st, ok, so the article wasn’t written FOR a white supremicist group, isn’t the fact that the group thought it worthy of publication on their website something of note? I mean, even if he didn’t write it for that group, the fact that the group thought it was such a compelling piece tells me something about it’s racist content – overt or otherwise.
Second, I’m a reasonably well educated person, and while I didn’t know the Br’er Rabbit cartoons were racist as a child, I could tell you as an adult they were most certainly racist, and tar baby is most definitely a racist slur. I didn’t need to do any research on the history of it, I don’t need anyone to tell that to me, it seems blatently obvious to me. And quite frankly, unless you are the least bit familiar with it in the first place, why would that phrase come to mind? I’d completely forgotton about Br’er Rabbit cartoons till now… I knew the reference immediately, but it’s not something that would just roll off my tongue. I have to wonder why he’s so familiar with it? If he wants to claim ignorance on this particular issue, then I guess my issue is why is someone who lacks so much common sense in such a powerful position in our country (ok, please don’t start on the well, look who his boss is comments… )? Racist or not (and I must admit I’m pretty convinced he is) he doesn’t appear to be very bright to me, and that in and of itself is a problem.
Kate — check out this piece for the right way to interpret the “tar baby” story from Brer Rabbit. (The original story, not whatever “cartoons” you might have seen.)
E.g.: “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.”
Yep, I said epithet in the very same post as well though, to show how quickly I can switch back and forth between grammatical lucidity and chaotic mad libs. My mind is fuzzy since having had children. What can I say – tenet/tenant, epitaph/epithet, geographical survey/biology – it’s all the same!
Again, to anyone who is familiar with American literature, this is exactly as if lesbians tried to demand that no one refer to the classic tale of the Dutch boy who stuck his finger in the “dyke.”
Only, it isn’t. I’m very familiar with the literature — the collection of stories that popularized “tar baby” in the American imagination is rooted in the Plantation Tradition, a bundle of literature which was produced after the civil war out of nostalgia for slavery. It presents freedom as something which injured slaves, who are presented as being happy and carefree during slavery. One particularly egregious example includes a monologue spoken by a black character who defends slavery by explaining how being beaten never bothered him because “he has no ability to feel pain” – though he claims to have pretended to experience pain in order to “please his master.” Chandler Harris’s book was the most popular and best known of these pieces of literature — as seen by the fact that it is still known and read today.
Although it can be difficult for young folks like myself who grew up in an era after “Roots” had aired to understand, there is a long tradition of denying that slavery was damaging to blacks. On the academic side of the fence, slave narratives were ignored — because black people’s narratives of what happened to themselves werent’ considered “reliable.” Instead, people trusted depictions like Joel Chandler Harris’s to tell them what slavery was like — and Joel Chandler Harris’s stories (which are presented within a racist frame) were one of those sources.
The Disney adaptation of Joel Chandler Harris, Songs of the Old South, contained some very impressive animation and the song “Zippidi do dah” (which I’m sure I’ve just spelled incorrectly). Yet despite the fact that its innovative special effects techniques make it a landmark film, Disney refuses to distribute the film in the United States because they no longer wish to be associated with its racist connotations.
I beg your pardon, ANon, but an opinion piece written after the Snow issue is the ‘right’ way? Says who? That is one professors clearly very ‘defensive for Snow’ biased opinion. At least the academic interpretation I pulled up had dated well before Snow and had zero to do with any debate, but instead was genuine interpretation.
Anono writes:
Kate … check out this piece for the right way to interpret the “tar baby” story from Brer Rabbit. (The original story, not whatever “cartoons” you might have seen.)
There is no “right way” to interpret the Brer Rabbit story. Academics debate over whether Joel Chandler Harris can be read as transgressive or not. Apparently, the academic who wrote the statement you quote argues he is. The traditional reading argues that he isn’t.
And whether or not Joel Chandler Harris was some secret anti-racist acting through his writing to undermine the plantiation tradition — the reality is that at the time his work was interpreted as firmly belonging to the plantation tradition. It has always been read as a work supporting slavery. Only recently have transgressive interpretations appeared on the scene. Whether or not one can make out JCH or the stories to have a transgressive subtext, this doesn’t alter the fact that the stories are deeply enmeshed in a racist historical tradition.
Oh wait a minute – I didn’t use epitaph! It wasn’t me this time! YAY!
I mean, even if he didn’t write it for that group, the fact that the group thought it was such a compelling piece tells me something about it’s racist content – overt or otherwise.
It could, but in this case I don’t think it does.
Black people – being humans – are on occasion going to do and create things that are lame, stupid, weak, etc. White racists are going to seize on examples of those things as proof of the correctness of their beliefs. That doesn’t mean that when (say) Toni Morrison writes a crappy novel, white critics can’t write a bad review of it, just because the bad review will make a Klansman happy.
Kwanzaa is a lame idea, badly laid out. It is a ripe and deserving target for scorn and criticism. It’s possible to make that critique in a racist fashion – “look at how the stupid black people try to copy white holidays!” – but Snow didn’t make that critique, or anything similar. Instead, he focused on the holiday’s inconsistencies, its disconnection from the authentic black American experience, the problems with some of the values that it endorses, and so on.
Whites used “tar baby” as a slur against other people of color in several countries. It was used in New Zealand for example, against Maories who are the indigenous people there and I think also Great Britain as well as the United States.
I’m intrigued by the fact that according to the article that I linked above (here, the Brer Rabbit stories were really slave stories based on African folklore, and what’s more, Joel Harris supposedly “never altered the plots of the Brer Rabbit tales that he had heard when he worked on a plantation himself.”
I’m sure that you can find racist elements in the stories, but this isn’t a story about “slavery” — is it? So it’s not really relevant that “Mandolin” can point to other stories by other authors that portray slavery in a good light.
No one has yet come up with a good reason (or any reason at all) to think of the “tar baby” element as racist. I’m at a loss to imagine how the “tar baby” story was racist in its original form — in Africa . (Read about it here.) And it just doesn’t make sense: An African folktale about a tar baby gets passed down to American slaves, and then passes mostly unchanged into the hands of Harris, who writes a book where Uncle Remus (a black guy) is telling a story about how Brer Rabbit outwitted the fox.
So after all of that, the moral of the story was supposed to be “beware of tar babies, who are black people”? That doesn’t compute as an interpretation.
Interesting, ANon, however in this part of the lesson that I’ve come across a few times as well in my etymology searches, I’ve found that tar wasn’t one of the sticky substances in the original myths, but instead wax or gum.
Point being, a lot of sources point to different ideas about it, but it can be agreed that there is historical racial connotations that surround it as well, even if it began as an african folk tale and was ultimately hijacked by a well-meaning but still racist southern white man that wrote for newspapers. And again, you seem to be completely willing to all but disregard the academic paper I quoted from that was done by Julie Zbeda. Why is that?
Anyways, here’s another link that discusses the Toni Morrison interpretation in her book ‘Tar Baby’ that I found interesting.
I also found a great site on the Uncle Remus stories done by a few academics a while ago that include the introductions of the stories, giving a bit of insight into Chandler’s motivations:
Regardless all that, I can’t really see how people would argue with the fact that for many people tar baby is seen as a derogatory and racist expression, with an etymology of racist roots. At best Chandler who introduced the African folk-lore to America through his publications painted a fairly conflicted view that was torn between his confederate sympathies with his slave sympathies.
Okay, if he was merely reprinted without permission, that is far less extreme.
So that lowers him down to generic racist apologist/ denier in my book. His excuses for David Duke’s supporters and his denial of the existence of systemic racism in the US are the main ones that stick in my craw.
Robert, how do you propose to increase the rate at which we kill white men, without simultaneously increasing the rate at which we kill black men? Doesn’t achieving parity, either by killing more whites or fewer blacks, require correcting the bias in the system?
Also, where’s that bias on your time line? For that matter, where is the bias in every single step of the judicial system in your time line?
Robert, how do you propose to increase the rate at which we kill white men, without simultaneously increasing the rate at which we kill black men? Doesn’t achieving parity, either by killing more whites or fewer blacks, require correcting the bias in the system?
I’m confused. I was under the impression that black people were being treated unfairly by the criminal justice system. I’m all for harsh treatment of criminals; CJ systems can’t rehabilitate so they might as well punish. Accordingly, treating all criminals as harshly as we treat black criminals should result in an increase in the number of white criminals being executed / doing hard time, without doing anything to the figures for blacks.
I don’t understand what you mean about timelines, sorry.
I don’t want anyone executed. But that aside, I can’t imagine what possible policy could achieve “execute more white people” while being both effective and constitutional.
Robert,
You’d have to describe some of the steps you’d recommend to increase the brutality and injustice of the police system that would specifically target Whites. Simply allowing the police and DAs greater freedom to, say, search without adequate warrants, or giving them greater license to shoot anyone they please at any time, would provide no assurance that they would not use their new powers to engage in even greater abuse of black and Hispanic people, rather than spreading out their abuse to, say, shoot you or me in an arbitrary and inexplicably hostile vehicle stop.
Since your stated goal is to ensure that white people like you and me get needlessly shot down by the police as often as black people are, you need to explain how you will ensure that the police change the targeting of their arbitrary violence to hurt whites, instead of them simply using whatever arbitrary police powers you would give them to go after black people even harder.
Likewise, if you gave police the explicit right to search any location or person without warrant or probable cause, I suspect they would use these powers to arrest even more black drug users, rather than using the new super powers to go after white drug users like you or me.
Likewise, if you gave the police the power to use torture to extract admissible confessions, I suspect the rate of framing people (some of whom might even be guilty) who were black would still exceed the rate of framing people who were white.
Unless you specifically deal with the racist police culture (and the racism of the law and order aspects of the larger culture), then whatever powers you give the police, the DAs and the courts will continue to be used disproportionately and unjustly against black people.
Now, you could balance out the racist culture by imposing quotas (shoot an unarmed black man? now you have to go shoot 6 unarmed non-Hispanic whites, a Hispanic, and an Asian), or by reducing the civil rights exclusively of white people to make it so easy to frame a white guy or to raid his house or car without a warrant that the police just can’t resist the temptation. The list could go on, but I begin to disgust myself, by treating the problem with the unseriousness your suggestion requires.
As it stands, your position is a goal without any means to ensure that it is carried out, empty sloganeering, and no different than the hateful rhetoric of plenty of the more vile Republican hacks (you were just spouting the tough on crime line as a dodge from the ‘what racism?’ response, but now you are doing the ‘what racism?’ response as well). I’m sure you won’t have to search far to find Ann Coulter spouting the same idiocy. Your position is both the Republican hack position, and stupid, obscene and crass, as you would see if you started actually describing specific policies to ensure that white people are as abused as black people.
As to time lines, I meant your throw-away initial post in this thread, which you have understandably already forgotten.
I don’t tend to use the term “tar baby” because I think it’s often misused (even when it’s clearly being used in a generic, i.e., non-racial setting). Of course, I won’t use it from now on seeing that it does offend.
However, I have to say that I love the Br’er Rabbit stories. I didn’t know them as a child but my husband did, and we have a tape that our children loved. I am glad these stories survived, even if they did so through the efforts of a racist white journalist. There is almost no way that authentic African American heritage will escape racist allusions and images. It would be a grossly sanitized and inaccurate picture of history if it did, which would, I imagine, be more insulting to Blacks than the real thing. The trustees of Colonial Williamsburg found that many Blacks were somewhat offended and even mystified by the absence of any references to slavery in the portrayal of a supposedly historically authentic colonial experience. So the trustees added many more activities that depicted slaves, which some people found to be upsetting (not that they were added, but that they tried to accurately evoke the era, and people found that, guess what, the experience of slavery WAS and IS an upsetting phenomenon that is filled with spoken and unspoken negative assumptions about race and humanity in general).
My father in law is Southern and has inherited a lot of uniquely Southern stuff through the years, including two “Wanted” posters seeking the return of runaway slaves. About 20 years ago he asked a Black historian what he should do with them and was told to burn them. He was shocked, and now, historians actively seek this stuff in order to reconstruct a more accurate picture of the antebellum South, the one where the slaves were not happy and more than infrequently ran away. Wanted posters help to fill out this research. They are even used for genealogical research.
This is definitely tangential to the original point, but I hope it doesn’t get lost: where something is clearly just being used as an insult (kike, nigger, wetback), there’s no excuse for continuing to use it in polite or official discourse. But where an image or a term has both offensive and inoffensive connotations, it’s important not to let the impulse not to offend or upset get in the way of historical reality. In the case of tar baby, an originally non-racist image from a story became racist — and probably overtook the original for good. But the original was truly part of Black history that most Americans know nothing about. Wouldn’t it be some kind of victory if the original, where the “slave” continually outwitted the “master”, made it back into the collective imagination? (Also, it would be fun to track the stories and images of the “weak outwitting the strong” that run through many different cultures.)
If you’re in a White House press conference and all the journalists (or even 99%, ie all but one or two tokens) are white, doesn’t that suggest that racism is alive and well? I’m not a journalist, but I imagine that representing your newspaper/TV station/internet site/etc at a White House press conference is a fairly high honor. So if there were no racism involved, wouldn’t the room be about 15% black (ie proportional to the US population in general)?
I would further argue that the use of terms like “tar baby”, even or maybe especially when used in ignorance of their nastier connotations, is part of what keeps racism in the US going. If whites aren’t interested enough in black people to know whether what their’s saying is offensive to them muchless to care, how is the residual racism of the country ever going to be eradicated?
Kate L.:
… isn’t the fact that [a white supremacist] group thought [Tony Snow’s Kwaanza column] worthy of publication on their website something of note? I mean, even if he didn’t write it for that group, the fact that the group thought it was such a compelling piece tells me something about it’s racist content – overt or otherwise.
Person A writes something. Person B, a racist, likes its viewpoint on race. Therefore the content is racist, and Person A is racist? Sorry, I can’t quite stretch that far.
I followed the link and read the column. It discusses that Kwaanza, a holiday that’s supposed to celebrate African culture, has a number of inconsistencies with African culture, and does not have the long history that many people these days suppose. It also discusses the reasons and thinking of it’s developer, which is as Snow says not exactly the Hallmark mentality.
I find nothing racist in this. Stormfront might delight in this; I’m not familiar with them, but if their description as a white supremacist group is accurate I can see where they’d delight in anything that might be construed as criticizing any black authority. But that doesn’t make the column or it’s author racist.
I’m getting a headache.
Partly from seeing the n-word spelled out so many times, by Whites like it’s just any other word. I guess I’ve seen it spraypainted on too many people’s homes, schools, walls and vehicles to be comfortable with that. It’s a word that on its face just causes pain.
Well, maybe you’re at a loss because no one actually said the original forms of the stories were racist. I know the term is racist because African-Americans have told me that it is offensive to them. I didn’t need that validated by a group of all White or mostly White journalists(yeah, a sign that racism is still definitely a problem even if Whites do not see it that way) at a press conference. Hey, if any of them realize it might have been a problem, maybe some day they’ll realize the glass ceilings, doors and walls in journalism are at least as much of a problem too.
Mostly, if it is used as a noun to demean someone as it has been used in the countries that I’ve mentioned(to no avail, I guess), but the term itself is problemic for many people. It doesn’t help matters when Whites get all defensive about their choice of words being challenged and then start tossing out terms like “P.C.” and “you’re calling me this!” and “lighten up…”. After all, it’s not like there’s a litany of words in usage that demean Whites, by race. They, particularly White men just aren’t used to having language used against them in the same way and they never like being challenged on their apparent right to be the sole definer of what words mean.
Regarding the different reactions to historical “relics” of the past, White historians can view them as “relics” with a purpose of possibly exposing an inhumane practice and educating people about it because to them, it mostly is just that. Black historians may not be able to separate their feelings from them or might find it very difficult to do so, because it’s their historical experience and too often, too long they weren’t the ones allowed to define or even contribute to its depiction. Also, it can be their ancestors that are depicted on those relics, even if it’s not literally. The potential is there, in a way it will never be for Whites. Racial privilage also allows someone to judge unfairly in my opinion, a Black historian’s wish to destroy a “relic”.
How many “ex-Klansmen” has Snow defended anyway? I counted at least two–Duke(okay to reference to) and Byrd(not as okay to reference to).
Diane said:
I’m not a journalist, but I imagine that representing your newspaper/TV station/internet site/etc at a White House press conference is a fairly high honor. So if there were no racism involved, wouldn’t the room be about 15% black (ie proportional to the US population in general)?
Probably not. Depends where you think racism enters into the picture.
My guess is that representing your media organization at a White House press conference is prestigious, but it’s not allocated to a particular journalist to honor them. It’s a job, and it’s likely assigned to someone who’s got seniority and has demonstrated a high level of competence and responsibility in their profession and in high-visibility and stressful settings. Doing all that takes time, and once someone gets the job they probably don’t rotate out of it very often. I don’t know what the actual racial balance of the White House press corps, but my betting is that it will lag the racial balance of journalism students and journalists overall working for the various major media outlets because of the experience factor. There’s also the issue that there are likely a disproportionately low number of blacks entering journalism school in the first place, given that (I believe, please correct me if I’m wrong) there is a disproportionately lower fraction of blacks vs. whites entering and completing college overall. So on a straight proportionality basis, and presuming that a college degree (and especially one in journalism) is required for entry-level jobs at major media outlets, you’d expect a lower proportion of journalists would be black than in the overall population.
Now, the situation (again, that I anticipate to be true, but have no figures on) that blacks are disproportionately a lower fraction of college graduates/journalism degree holders may itself be due in part to racism, and we could all argue how that happens. But where do you go from there?
Now, media outlets could decide that racial balance in the White House press corps is a factor to include in their choice of correspondents. They could add race/ethnicity considerations when they make their choices for correspondents alongside those of experience, competence, responsibility, etc. This starts to sound like the “all else being equal, vote for a black or female political candidate” thread a while back. It sounds good in theory, but when you go to implement it you find that all else is rarely equal. At what point does a difference in race or other such status outweigh a difference in experience/competence? It’s pretty hard to quantify. Just how important is it to a given media outlet to have their White House correspondent be a non-white non-male, compared to other considerations? Why?
The historians who are most interested in “relics” of African American past are Black — John Hope Franklin or Henry Louis Gates, anyone? I can’t but imagine that studying the history of Africans in America is upsetting when it’s your own history, still being worked out to this day. I feel the same way when I study some subjects related to female subjugation. I continually feel the forces pulling us back in time. But what are you going to do? Leaving it to the other guys just means, most likely, you will never have a say in the public understanding of your own history.
Amp:
I can’t imagine what possible policy could achieve “execute more white people” while being both effective and constitutional.
This seems somewhat at odds with a belief that black people are treated more unfairly by the justice system. I suppose that you could believe that similar levels of white and black guilty people are being caught and prosecuted and punished, but that, in addition innocent blacks are being caught/prosecuted punished; in that case there wouldn’t be any particular slack in the system for catching more whites.
But it was my impression that you thought white people got treated more leniently, and that white people were getting away with stuff that black people couldn’t get away with. In that scenario, simply legitimately tightening the screws on white people is going to shake out more convictions (including, presumably, at the high end of the punitive scale).
Perhaps I was mistaken about your beliefs; I’m sure you’ll straighten me out if I am.
Charles:
You’d have to describe some of the steps you’d recommend to increase the brutality and injustice of the police system that would specifically target Whites…hateful rhetoric…idiocy…Republican hack position…stupid, obscene and crass…
Charles, when you ask me to describe my position, and then inform me of all the flaws in that position and why it is vile and evil before I answer you, it leads the reasonable respondent to decide that perhaps you’ve already made up your mind in advance of the data, and that further response will simply be a waste of time. Life is short.
Dianne:
If whites aren’t interested enough in black people to know whether what their’s saying is offensive to them muchless to care…
Has anyone presented any evidence of widespread offense among blacks at Mr. Snow’s comments? Not at the use of “tar baby” as a slur – everyone acknowledges that to be offensive – at the use of “tar baby” as a reference to a folk tale about sticky situations. So far on this thread we have one hefty passel of white people complaining and (to my knowledge) one black person – all of whom are hugely liberal/left wing. I’ve seen that there’s definitely unhappiness in the left wing segment of the black blogosphere. It’s also true that most whites don’t care what people on the left think, regardless of their color; that’s not racism, it’s disregard for a particular philosophy and its adherents.
Now, it’s certainly possible that I’ve misidentified the race of the people discussing it (for example) on this thread. And I suppose it’s possible (though I doubt it) that I’ve misidentified the political strains involved; maybe Shannon is a Reagan Democrat. Have I made that misidentification?
How the heck can you know that? What characteristics do you look for in a person’s posts (apart, obviously, from self-identification) to discern someone’s race?
And if you think that a person’s race (gender, sexual preference, ethnicity, etc) doesn’t affect their bosses’ perception of their competence, ability to handle stress, suitability for a high-visibility situation, etc, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
Ron: Excuse me. I posted without reading the rest of your thread. Although my comment in #66 still stands, I agree that the media outlets are not solely responsible for the racism that leads to fewer blacks and other minorities ending up in the White House press corps. Blacks are also more likely to grow up in poverty, therefore less likely to go to good primary schools, less likely to go to college and J-school, etc. And at each step of the way, they have to prove themselves in ways that white men are never asked to. But the fact that fewer blacks enter college, graduate, go to professional school, and make it to higher ranks of their professions suggests that there is a good deal of residual racism in the country and just saying that the only thing needed for everything to be equal is time is nonsense. The civil rights movement was 40 years ago. That’s several generations. If time alone was all that was needed we’d’ve had equality long ago. More work is needed. I think a lively argument could be had about what sort of work is needed and how best to carry it out, but I don’t think that pretending that everything is ok is going to help.
How the heck can you know that?
Some of them are personally known to me, another group is not personally known to me but have posted pictures of themselves in various places, another group blogs and in the course of their blogging has made their racial identity known, and still others have self-identified in the comments. And, of course, I then acknowledge that maybe I’ve misidentified and invite correction; there are a few people whose racial identities have not been made public.
Hey, if you can expand your position in a way that isn’t stupid, obscene and crass, that will be an accomplishment. And ‘Republican hack’ was the starting point in this little exchange, and it was Amp who put it out there. I’m just pointing out that so far you have completely failed to distinguish yourself from the most extreme partisan hacks like Coulter and Limbaugh.
How do you reduce leniency and increase abuse and wrongful convictions of Whites, while ensuring whatever new police powers you give are not simply used to abuse black people even more? It looks to me like it takes directly adressing the racism in the judicial and police systems, and I so far haven’t seen you acknowledge that.
Fuck it, discussing with you why you want to live in a police state is not something I’m interested in either.
I just want to know, if you’d like to see crime punished so heavily, why don’t you turn yourself in?
Because with a face this pretty, I’d cause riots and violence as the men fought for my favors, darling.
And I don’t want that on my conscience.
This is true, however, I noted in your post that the reaction to the Black historian’s desire to burn the posters was to explain how wrong he was to say that, first by an assumption that he’s not aware of their role in exposing the truth about slavery and that his perception needs correction. Did anyone ask this historian how he would teach slavery? Or is there just this assumption that he’s burning the “relics” because he’s ignorant about how important they are for *proving* slavery was a bad thing.
(I don’t know any African-Americans, conservative, liberal or in between who subscribe to the whole “slavery was good for you” argument.)
Well, it’s hard to believe that those slurs could be used in “polite” discourse unless we go back to the argument of how things like civil discourse and civility are defined and by whom.
So is the decision to use another term besides “tar baby” when making a point not necessarily intended to address race, with other terminology, an impulse not to offend at the expense of historical reality? My decision to do this would be based on being told that the term was offensive and a choice to substitute other language instead, not because I’m intent on disregarding historical reality.
I think somebody needs to go back and reread Shannon’s post, before they rationalize her response to this thread as being because she is liberal(which I assume was why the comment about her being a “Reagan Democrat” was made). She and her feelings gets dismissed so that someone can feel better about his attitudes on race and racism by blaming it on her politics(which have been conveniently assigned to her by someone else), a behavior she covered in her original post btw. I guess there’s nothing like having someone prove your point for you.
The discussion about how to make the criminal justice system as biased, racist, classist to Whites as it is for people of color especially African-Americans. Interesting.
Here’s one thing that might help with the death penalty. Why don’t we assign equal value to all human beings instead of using the death penalty to punish individuals, particularly people of color for killing Whites. That might be a start.
Radfem, I am not sure how much of your post was directed at me.
Regarding the historian who wanted to burn the posters — honestly, I didn’t think and didn’t mean to convey that she (!) advocated doing this out of ignorance but out of a deeply felt, honest emotional response to the idea of slavery and all of its disgusting associations, like posses and bounty hunters. The posters are disgusting. I’ve seen them. What I meant to convey was that, over time, historians in general have become more interested in preserving and analyzing the workaday details of historical phenomena like slavery in all of its ugly manifestations in order to get away from the narrow “great man” view of history. The reason why historical phenomena get studied, above all, is because relics exist, and relics are especially likely to exist for “great men.” Many southerners romanticized slavery — journals of slaves and evidence of runaways gives the lie to this romanticism. As do the Br’er Rabbit stories.
I’m not disagreeing with Kim or Shannon or anyone else. I have never used the term tar baby, have now placed it on my official “do not use” list along with all sorts of other terms, and generally try to be very sensitive to how slurs can figuratively cut and bleed even when used unintentionally. I just don’t want language to be so sanitized that, for instance, you can’t even listen to Br’er Rabbit stories because it includes “tar baby.” And yes, it would delight me if we could get to a place where everyone understood the origin of tar baby and understood that it wasn’t racist. We aren’t going to. I am not in favor of forcing the issue or trying to convince people that they should not be offended, or worse, intentionally offending them to prove a point.
And if you think that a person’s race (gender, sexual preference, ethnicity, etc) doesn’t affect their bosses’ perception of their competence, ability to handle stress, suitability for a high-visibility situation, etc, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
If we were talking about who gets promoted from cashier to assistant manager at Wal-Mart or from sewer worker to sewer inspector for the Streets and Sanitation department in the City of Chicago, I’d agree with you whole-heartedly. But when we’re talking about a highly professional position, I think these factors have much less impact. Especially in something high-visibility where “diversity” is viewed as a positive goal.
I work in information technology. I’ve had minority and female co-workers and bosses. I look around me right now and see both. I would imagine (with no personal experience, obviously) that it’s the same in the media. Heck, just watch the local and network news. Seems to me I see plenty of female and minority people on-camera and working as journalists. I do confess that’s an impression, I haven’t counted.
Forty years ago isn’t several generations. It’s two or maybe 3 (I don’t know if there’s an official measure of what a “generation” is). Heck, I think Helen Thomas has been working in the White House press corps almost that long. Taking into account the factors of education, etc., that you and I have both discussed, ask how long ago acceptably trained and experienced minority candidates for such a position started to exist. I would guess that it’s less than 40 years. Then check for how often the jobs in the White House press corps turn over. A slow turnover means that it takes a while for changes in the minority proportion of the candidates for the jobs to turn into changes in the actual holders of those jobs. Finally, look at what the actual current racial and gender breakdown of the White House press corps actually is; I have no idea, we’ve been talking hypotheticals. It may be that taking into account all those factors, it’s right about where you’d expect.
Of course, there’s also the possibility that media organizations are racist. What I do find very interesting is that the right-wing blogs all hold that the mainstream media (MSM is the accepted acronym) are hopelessly left-wing, whereas the left-wing blogs hold that they are biased towards corporate interests. It’s hard to say. There have been numerous surveys showing that some ridiculous figure like 90% of all journalists state they vote Democratic, have never served in the military, etc., etc. But that doesn’t necessarily speak to the politics, etc. of the people who make hiring decisions.
I work in information technology.
So do I. In nearly 20 years, I have had one African-American co-worker. And he was at the lowest possible level in IT. Programmers and operations folks are overwhelmingly male. In the last 3 years I have had 2 female supervisors, but those are the only 2 that I have ever had. I have worked on both coasts & traveled extensively around the country for work. The pattern in IT is that workers are white and male. Occasionally, you will run into pockets of (east) Indian contract workers. If you look it up, you will find that the statistics on this back up my anecdotal evidence a lot more than yours.
Also, a generation is generally accepted to be 20 years.
I work in information technology.
Huh. The IT workplaces I’m familiar with are super diverse. Location issues?
I’ll send the prospectus for that beach front property to you right away.
Well, ok, I admit that in the limited time I spent searching I didn’t find any particular data on journalism, but I found a good deal of data on academia and medicine, both of which I think you would agree could as highly professional areas.
For example, this study showing that minorities tend to be promoted to tenured positions less frequently than whites
Or this similar study with similar results by different authors.
I’ll stop here because I don’t want to get caught in the spam filter, but I can get more references if you want them.
On a note related to bean’s:
Always Romani, But Never A Gypsy.
Pingback: Most Black Americans Oppose School Vouchers « Creative Destruction