Reading Tar Baby to School Kids
by Hal Jacobs
Brer Rabbit come prancin' `long twel he spy de Tar-Baby, en den he fotch up on his behime legs like he wuz `stonished. De Tar-Baby, she sot dar, she did, en Brer Fox, he lay low.
Although there is still an older generation who view the tar baby as "a racial slur" (in the words of author Toni Morrison), to the first-grade class I recently visited, the tar baby was just a tar baby. A trap for a pesky, good-for-nothing rabbit.
You probably know the story. Brer Fox places a lump of tar dressed as a stranger in the middle of the road. Brer Rabbit comes along, says howdy to the stranger, who doesn't reply. So Rabbit decides to teach him a lesson. He punches, kicks, and headbutts -- and is trapped at last by Fox.
But how to read that Harris' original, nineteenth-century dialect? After a few paragraphs, what I discovered is that the rhythm of the strange words, their vitality, transforms itself into something less like language and more like music. And the kids are enthralled. To them it's silly talk, they think it's hilarious.
They could care less that these funny words correspond to the way people talked a 100 years ago. Or that, as Dr. Kennan explained, the original Buddhist version of the story involves the Buddha overcoming the temptation of the five senses (Rabbit gets stuck in five places.)
Occasionally a child would ask the meaning of a word, but I didn't stop to explain. It's like liturgy, it's best to let the words roll over you. The story makes perfect sense. Everyone knows why Brer Rabbit would confuse a doll made out of tar with a rude stranger on the road, then want to beat the tar out of him. You don't need Psych 101 to know why Brer Fox first wants to kill the rabbit, then changes his mind and tosses him into the briar patch. Those are the kind of raw quicksilver emotions that kids can relate to, while what they usually get is something watered-down or sugar-coated. And Harris' comic timing is perfect.
As I read on to the end of the story, I get to one word I can't say out loud to the kids. The only insulting word so far. "Darky," as in, "the old darky, chuckling slyly."
It's a problem, but history and literature, even family members, are full of problems like this, and denying them serves no good, practical purpose. But now isn't the time or place to launch into a discussion of who did what when. So, for the children, I substitute "man" for "darky" and continue, hoping no AARP members might be laying low, planning to jump me for saying "old man."
Creative Loafing, November 7, 1998
