Well this was still bugging me, even a day later, so I asked a friend who is African-American if the term was racist. Her immediate response: "Yes. It's offensive."
I told her a little more of the context for why I was asking, and quoted Romney's statment. As soon as she heard that he was talking about the project, and not applying the term to a person, she softened her opinion. She still wasn't comfortable with the term, she explained, largely because of Song of the South, and having heard it used as a euphemism for blacks. Nevertheless, she understood that there was no racial dimension to Romney's statement.
I remember Song of the South from my childhood. I think I watched it on a Sunday night episode of the Wonderful World of Disney. The movie really does draw on those minstrel stereotypes heavilly, and the offense, I believe is in images like that of a slave singing:
Zip-a-dee do dah, zip-a-dee-ay
My oh my, what a wonderful day
Plenty of sunshine headin' my way
Zip-a-dee do dah, zip-a-dee-ay
Mr. Bluebird's on my shoulder
It's the truth, it's "actch'll"
Everythin' is "satisfact'chall."
The image of a Uncle Remus as happy is problematic because it doesn't just imply, it comes right out and *says* he's satisfied with life. He might as well be singing "I'm a slave and everything's great!" Disney's got a good reason to want to put it in a vault.
So does that make the story of Bre'r Rabbit and the Tar Baby racist? Does it make the term itself racist? Clearly it can be used both pejoratively and in a way that contains no hostle intent. (And does an absence of "bad" intent exonerate a statement from being racist?)
I've got to side with Romney on this particular incident, but I think the jury is still out on the term itself. Language is a moving target, and the dictionary is just a blury snapshot as it gallops past. And yes, an online dictionary is more like a movie camera, but it still give us just a flat image, with the illusion of depth and motion. The true experience of a language takes place in intercourse, and thus my question here.
OP
