goodbye, tar baby
July 31st, 2006 by herichon
Sometimes political correctness is, to put it succinctly, a pain in the ass.
Mitt Romney of Massachusetts got himself into hot water on Saturday by referring to Boston’s Big Dig as a “tar baby”:
The best thing for me to do politically is stay away from the Big Dig – just get as far away from that tar baby as I possibly can… But I got elected as governor of Massachusetts. It’s part of my job to do what I think is the right thing.
Just a couple of months ago Tony Snow did the same thing, and per Wikipedia, George Will found himself in similarly sticky straits back in 2002.
What all of these gentleman have in common is the fact that all of them caught some heat for using the expression, but none of them used the term in a racial context or intended any offense by it. They used it for the same reason I’ve used it, and many other well-spoken writers and speakers of English have used it over the years – it’s a particularly vivid and descriptive image that conveys precisely the meaning that they intended to convey. I can’t think of any other term that’s quite as effective. There’s “quagmire”, but the fundamental meaning is different – a quagmire specifically refers to an area of waterlogged ground that sinks underfoot. One avoids a quagmire because it’s an area that won’t support their weight and is liable to get them into a muddy mess. One avoids a tar baby for similar reasons – it’s apparently safe to touch but will result in a sticky mess – but a tar baby is fundamentally different in that the attempt to extricate oneself from a tar baby inevitably leads to further entrapment. This shade of meaning isn’t carried by “quagmire” or any other common term. “Sticky situation” is a hollow substitute, not to mention twice the syllables. “Chinese finger cuffs” convey the second meaning but not the first. Really, the harder you look, the more you realize that there’s nothing quite like “tar baby” for describing this kind of situation.
Unfortunately, “tar baby” is itself a tar baby. According to Larry Jones, quoted prominently in most articles about Romney’s recent press problem, “Tar baby is a totally inappropriate phrase in the 21st century. If Calvin Coolidge didn’t use it, why the hell should Mitt Romney? He thinks he’s presidential timber, but all he’s shown us is arrogance.” My initial response to this is, who the hell is Larry Jones? He’s universally described as “a black Republican and civil rights activist”, but he doesn’t come up anywhere in Google’s top results for “Larry Jones”, and further details are nowhere to be found. I have to assume that he’s a relatively low-level functionary who seized on Romney’s faux pas to get his name in the news, since there’s certainly no mention of him under any other context.
But it’s not just Mr. Jones who feels this way, apparently. Nobel and Pulizer Prize winner Toni Morrison has said as much herself. In explaining the name of her 1981 novel Tar Baby, Ms. Morrison explained:
Tar Baby is also a name, like “nigger,” that white people call black children, black girls, as I recall.
So as much as I might quibble with this “Larry Jones”, I can’t justify arguing this with Toni Morrison. Sadly, anyone who’s concerned with making sure their speech or writing are free from unintended offense will have to avoid the term for the foreseeable future. It’s hard to feel good about this though. There’s really no suitable replacement in the English language, so what we gain in political correctness, we ultimately lose in the richness of our language. As Frederic Schwarz, scholar and senior editor of American Heritage magazine, recently concluded:
There are two ways this situation could resolve itself. Either the people who have been using the phrase will avoid it for fear that it might be misunderstood, and a colorful metaphor and a classic bit of folklore will be lost from American speech, or else the people who have been objecting to the phrase will come to understand its origin and lighten up. For anyone who has lived in the United States over the last few decades, it’s not hard to guess which outcome is more likely.
Lets not forget about that long-time favorite “niggardly”. Back in ‘99, David Howard was forced to resign for using the term during a speech. There was also an incident with a University of Wisconsin professor using the term in a speech and having a student in the class complain to the school administration because the word “hurt her”. All because of a word which is guilty of no other crime than containing a similar sequence of letters as a racial slur.
Now, if you’ll pardon me, I have to edit all of my writing to remove any references to the words “spices”, “mickey”, and “towel” lest I inadvertently offend someone’s sensitive sensibilities.