I'm not denying that people out in the world have used the term derisively; the point is that such usage is waaay less common, to the point that it is almost unknown to most people who use the original meaning. And it's not that it doesn't exist in any dictionary anywhere, but that it is uncommon enough that many do not include it.
That the OED includes it without a
rare or
obsolete tag to me signifies that the most comprehensive dictionary of our language feels it still has currency.
The secondary meaning almost certainly comes from the fact that it sounds like a racial slur, which becomes somewhat self-fulfilling (this is what AA's quote ended up saying).
While you may be right that its denigratory aspect arises "from the fact that it
sounds like a racial slur", I think that correspondence is aided by the context from which the principal definition arose (plantation south stories, recorded by a white man, in a tone some today feel patronizing to the African Americans depicted therein).
I don't know how you could have read Toni Morrison's Tar Baby and not gotten the "sticky problem" meaning. Morrison is hardly known for the subtleties of her metaphors, especially the ones in the dang title. I haven't read that one, but I just can't imagine she doesn't explain the story and the moral.
I actually haven't read that book; I had
Sula in mind when I mentioned Morrison. But it comes up as an epithet, or with racially-charged connotations, in other of her works,
and certainly she was very aware of its racial implications when questioned about the 1981 title:
"I use that old story because, despite its funny, happy ending, it used to frighten me. The story has a tar baby in it which is used by a white man to catch a rabbit. Tar Baby is also a name, like "******," that white people call black children, black girls, as I recall…. At one time, a tar pit was a holy place, at least an important place, because tar was used to build things…. It held together things like Moses' little boat and the pyramids. For me, the tar baby came to mean the black woman who can hold things together."
(I'd also add I think Morrison can be quite subtle, when she wants to be, but that's neither here nor there at the moment.)
I have ask, just how often are you hearing people call black kids "tar babies"? I've literally never heard that in my own personal life (though I accept that it surely happens and believe AA when he says it happened to him). Seems weird to me that you would have heard this so often as to have a strong memory of it, but never heard the original meaning. In contemporary news, it mostly just comes up when old white politicians get yelled at for using it in the non-racial way.
Not that often, any more. But I had plenty of
those kind of extended relatives in Santa Rosa county—the kind with a special name for Brazil nuts, too—which is doubtless where my first exposure arose. Meanwhile, as I said, I've never read the Br'er Rabbit stories (though I'm a lot more familiar with them after this little discussion).
Gotta disagree here; I think your own anecdote shows how it mirrors niggardly, even if not perfectly exact. You said were personally unaware of the original completely non-racist meaning of the term until just now, and have been assuming it is an insult (I am guessing based on how it sounded combined with scant personal exposure; anyone with a full familiarity with the term would know the original meaning). I also think my comparison to the word "monkey" still holds, perhaps more accurately. The main meaning is non-racial, but calling a person such a thing is an obvious racial slur.
I'm still going to hold with "somewhat different species" of confusion, here, because niggardly comes from a totally different, entirely unrelated milieu; the only point of confusion is homophony. Meanwhile, "tar baby"—even in its meaning of "sticky situation"—was forged in a crucible of American slavery, so I think it's more natural that it accrued layers of racial charge over the past century-plus.
But hey: we may be closer here than we think. Even if the two confusions "mirror" each other, all I'm really saying is that taking offense at "tar baby" is at least somewhat more justifiable, because of historical context and a much more established history of pejorative usage. And either way, if you're on old white politician, it might be better to just find a synonym—it's not like English isn't rotten with them.
I not sure how this makes the origin of the term "racist" in any facet. It's not like calling the Big Dipper the Drinking Gourd is somehow a racial epithet.
Gourds are inherently hateful.
