Nigger Babies, Tar Babies, and Boys

Nigger Babies, Tar Babies, and Boys

I’m almost ashamed to admit it but when we were kids we’d go to the local movie emporium and plop down a quarter–16 cents in sleazier South Bronx theatrical emporia–head for the candy counter, and buy some goodies which today would be considered racist.

I’m almost ashamed not because of my impoverished background which I overcame, thank you very much, but because some of us urchins purchased, along with dry popcorn and a flat soda if we were really flush with nickels, and without the slightest reflection, “nigger babies,” bought and sold under that name at the counter.

They were small, chocolatey, licorice candies the Urban Dictionary describes as “made from a humanoid-shaped mold that gave the treats their baby-like appearance” and goes on to misrepresent the treats.

The Urban Dictionary explains, “Typically sold in bulk for a penny-a-piece, they were renamed ‘Chocolate Babies’ in the 1960s and were eventually sold in a box,” a misleading description because they were being sold in boxes as early as the early fifties.

“Nigger babies” weren’t a big favorite except among licorice aficionados and most fifties kids would never have laid out a precious penny for “nigger babies” in bulk or otherwise even in the sleaziest of movie houses and under the best of circumstances.

In retrospect, they were very inappropriately-named confections even if we only bought them occasionally, the equivalent of vanilla “honky babies” which were never produced as far as I know.

In any event, the N-word has been banished from the English language–except in rap lyrics. The white epithets “honky” and “cracker” are still in wide, contemporary usage, testimony to selective, racial sensitivities which even extend to the innocuous word “niggardly,” an adverb judged abhorrent since it sounds bad.

All this candy reminiscence relates to new, hyperactive sensitivities involving two equally-benign terms in the news lately: “tar babies” and “boy.” Their usage doesn’t quite carry the social stigma of “nigger babies” but they do cause some people to overreact and infer slurs and racial stereotypes where none exist.

“Tar babies” and “boy” may both some day enter the politically incorrect, verboten pantheon along with such literary classics as Huckleberry Finn and Uncle Remus after the PC police succeed in banning them, although banishing the word “boy” and every writing in which it appears would be a monumental challenge.

It comes down to how influential black agitators become. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5176)