Tar Baby bites Mitt Romney, page 5

Please don't blame this on me. I did not label anyone racist. However you and the others made sure that perception took place, didn't you? That's just another one of your little tactics when you don't want to seriously deal with race relations and complain about Blacks.

The attacks started when you introduced this thread with your title. You only wanted to thwart a progessive discussion about race relations. You had no intention of making it serious. You did it so you could complain about how political correctness has gone awry. You also did it in the same fashion to put down yet another set of Black leaders for their dissent against Mr. Romney's actions.

This thread was never meant to be serious in the first place. It was only an outlet for people against diversity. So yes, "they" can be that sinister if they want it to be.

Joel Chandler Harris came from Georgia. His literature focused on painting an "idyllic" and "happy" life on a plantation. Because of his willingness to put a happy face on slavery and Plantation life, he has done much to try and embellish Confederate life while stealing the stories of African-American slaves and turning them into novels.

His works are highly contested as a result. And the people who find his work of value are "sympathizers".

This is even shown when trying to equate his literature to "American culture and lore". The sad part of it is, that "American culture" is not the "high culture" that praises art for art sake. Harris' literature is one that glorifies the Old Confederate South and its institutions. He nefariously makes them into "children's stories" so that kids are lured into thinking that was the way things happened before and during the Civil War.

So, to make a long story short (pardon the pun), the people who support this terminology are "Confederate sympathizers".

I agree with Semper's assessment of the term, with a few dissenting points. Tar baby is a highly contested term that has outlived its use. But there are those few that will bring it back and use it daringly in order to show their contempt and lack of caring about the sensitivities of African-Americans.

You can cut it in many ways when it comes to Gov. Romney and his use of the term. You can even say that it was "innocent". But when it comes down to it, "tar baby" is a racial slur and for a lot of people in the South this was especially the case. For Black people who were raised in the South, Whites didn't use the "proper meaning" of this term. They used it as a racial slur.

So, this term is not as benign in its usage as some would believe. This term is problematic--just as "cracker-crat".

What it comes down to is that the people who use it don't care about Black people. They won't consider for one moment about how others feel in mixed company. And when others defend the utterers of the term, it shows me the lack of conscience and consideration for those that that term has hurt through the era of Jim Crow. Here too, those who perpetuate the usage of this term grew up during Jim Crow before the Civil Rights Era.

So to me, it's not any different when people defend Mitt Romney. What do you expect when a guy comes from the same state as Charles Stuart?

Mr. Stuart blamed his own crime on a Black person. As a result, the Boston Police falsely searched a lot of Black homes and unjustly arrested African-Americans due the fact of Mr. Stuart's stereotypical description of Black people. In the same way, he fueled the same sort of prejudice about Black people due to what others perceived of them. In the end, Mr. Stuart didn't even confess to shooting himself and his wife. He committed suicide, the coward's way out.

To me, you are no different than Charles Stuart. Just like he did, you are capitalizing on the stereotypes of Black people and leaders to incite prejudice while trying to play the "choir boy".

Charles Stuart embraced his victimhood, played the race card and "screamed about race". Because of his efforts he did a lot to ruin race-relations because of his own short-sited opinions of African-Americans and the perception of crime.

That is why support of such terms are dangerous just because of that. And, I have no illusions about Mr. Romney. He used the term with utter disregard.

The perception of those defending Mitt Romney only feel that serious dialogue ended because their agenda of striking down "political correctness" and berating diversity was thwarted.

Of course, only a thread with serious discussion can be allowed if there aren't any dissenting voices who openly question and criticize those who salivate for a pre-Civil Rights era society.

That is why the use of "cracker-crat" in this thread was highly important despite its incindiary insertion. It showed that even people who willingly want to embrace a term like tar baby with the utter disregard for others have their limits when other offensive terms come into play.

[edit on 7-8-2006 by ceci2006]