Angel Post #2

I had never considered that race issues may come up during the reading of Tar Baby until this discussion. While I respected the views of my classmates as they expressed their concern for the potential racism in the piece, I felt much differently. I had no racial issues with the stories, and even felt that they helped to preserve a racial identity.

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Racial implications?
WADKINS, BILL
4/6/2011

I've been reading the posts and there is a lot of discussion about racial issues. I know I mentioned some of this in an earlier reply but it sounded like a good discussion. I'm still not sure if there really are any racial implications in the original version by Harris. I had a children's book with Uncle Remus tales in it as a kid and never read anything racial into them--child innocence I guess. But I also had the stories told to me by adults and I remember them saying the Tar-baby represented black children.
After reading the original (JCH version)again, it appeared to me that Brer Rabbit uses the same southern African-American dialect as Brer Fox and Brer Bear, that is one reason why I don't think Brer Rabbit represented white people. And I do think that the Tar-baby was just simply a device used to catch the rabbit.

If anyone is interested I found some old cartoons of Uncle Remus tales on YouTube. They give an interesting view into the story. I can't remember who, but someone mentioned in their post that there are numerous versions of the story. There really is a lot of different versions and it is really amazing how the slightest change from the original makes a big change in the story itself. Could it have been that maybe the original was as simple as teaching us to be nice and then later versions blew it out of proportion, or maybe there was some deep hidden meaning in the original and people realized it and brought it out in the newer versions? I'm really curious because I don't know.

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RE: Racial implications?
PEACOCK, MELISSA
4/7/2011

I do not find this story to be racist in any way (even though I am very sensitive about racial issues). You are right...the dialect is carried between the characters. This story, like so many others, is simply a written version of an oral tradition, so they do vary slightly between versions.

I find this to be a folk tale, not a story that represents tar baby as black people. Perhaps I am far off base, but I like to think that this is merely a story with great visualizations that we as adults (and perhaps as a post-modern, politically correct society) tend to be overly sensitive about. Kids typically read books with childlike minds without reading into things that we adults try to analyze. While racial sensitivity is important, I don't find this story to be offensive.