Today’s Reading List – August 1, 2006 | Article VI Blog

From John:

Romney’s poor word choice isn’t going away – at least not yet. Re-emphasizing my position, I don’t think he had any ill intent, but I find his lack of knowledge that the term was an issue baffling. Tough question, but I feel like we should address it, so Lowell, is it possible Romney’s ignorance of this particular taboo, as well as your self-confessed own, could be a remnant of the CJCLDS’s darker racist days of several decades ago?

Lowell responds: Well, the “tar baby” comment does continue to draw attention, but it’s not clear it will last long:

“According to sources, Romney did not know that the phrase has been used to denigrate African Americans. What is even more interesting is that a CNN.com poll shows that two-thirds of responders don’t even consider the phrase to be a racial slur.”

(Well, the poll does not quite say that, but it’s close.)

As I noted below, I remember, during college, reading David Halberstam’s The Best and The Brightest — perhaps the iconic liberal work of the 60′s. His reference to “the Vietnam tar baby” stands out in my mind, because I had read the Uncle Remus stories as a child and had seen Walt Disney’s “Song of the South.” Disney comic books also told the stories of crafty Br’er Rabbit, who always outsmarted Br’er Fox. I found Halberstam’s metaphor especially apt, and I never dreamed that such a liberal hero would use a racially offensive term. It was not until I was an adult and was thinking about borrowing Halberstam’s metaphor in a piece of professional writing that a colleague noted that she was not sure, but she did not think “tar baby” was then politically correct. Once I knew some found the term offensive, I dropped it from my vocabulary from that point on. I would bet (and the CNN poll supports this) that most people who were born after 1950, and grew up outside the South, have the same attitude toward the term. At worst, that’s naivete, but it sure isn’t racism. And, John, in light of all that, it’s not surprising that so many people (including Romney) share that view. In other words, I find it baffling that you find that baffling!

I also think that it’s a huge stretch to tie this incident to a Mormon Church policy (ended in 1978) that withheld its lay priesthood from African-Americans. That was a complex and difficult time, and the policy was not easy to explain; all Mormons are glad those days are in the distant past. But whatever else that policy might have been, it was not based on “racism,” if one accepts the Merriam-Webster definition: “A belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.”

Most important, if any candidate is going to fry for uttering an offensive remark, shouldn’t the remark be one that he or she actually knew was offensive?

In the meantime, a milblogger rants and rants of the topic.Â Lowell:Â So does the ever-idiotic Jack Cafferty.

This may cross the religion/politics line.

From Lowell:

Time for a little humor:Â Monday morning Kate O’Beirne of National Review was on Laura Ingraham’s radio show. (Podcast here.) Among other subjects, O’Beirne commented on presidential politics. Reviewing the current field of likely or potential GOP candidates and their potential appeal to conservative values-oriented voters, she noted that all the candidates but one had divorces in their past: Giuliani and Gingrich are on their third marriages, and Allen and McCain are on their second, while Romney’s been married to the same woman for 30-plus years.

Thus, O’Beirne noted, “The candidate in the race with the fewest wives is the Mormon!”