◆The Barbaric Yawp Project

The Tar Baby I want to tell you a story. Not the story you know. Not the one the white man wrote down in the voice of a smiling old slave sitting on a porch making the children laugh. The story underneath that story. The one we carried across the water. The one we told in the quarters when the children needed to understand something the people who owned us did not want them to know. A man makes a doll out of tar. He sets it in the road. He waits. Along comes Brer Rabbit. Good morning, says Brer Rabbit. The doll says nothing. I said good morning. The doll says nothing. You are rude, says Brer Rabbit. You had better speak to me or I will make you speak. The doll says nothing. Brer Rabbit hits the doll. His fist sticks in the tar. He hits again. That hand sticks. He kicks. His foot sticks. He is caught. This story is not about a rabbit. This story is about power. We made it to teach our children the specific mechanics of a trap that had been set for us before we were born and would be waiting for our children after we were gone. The trap works like this: Something is placed in your path that ignores you. Disrespects you. Refuses to acknowledge that you exist, that you matter, that you deserve to be treated as a human being. Your anger is right. The disrespect is real. The provocation is real. But the moment you let the provocation determine your response — the moment the thing that wants to trap you decides how you move — you belong to whoever set the trap. That is what the tar is. Not the doll. The tar is the reaction. The tar is the swing. The tar is the righteous fury that drives you deeper in with every blow. I am not telling you your anger is wrong. The anger is right. It has always been right. What is being done is wrong. The disrespect is real. The dehumanization is real. The provocation is designed and deliberate. The genius of the trap is that it requires a legitimate grievance to work. If there were nothing real at stake the fury would not be real. And unfelt fury does not stick. Only the fury that is true drives you into the tar. The man who made the doll understands this. He set the doll in the road because he knew what you would do when you found it. He knew your dignity would not allow you to be ignored. He counted on it. The provocations you are watching now — the cruelties performed for the cameras, the words chosen to produce the response that produces the image that produces the story he wants told — that is the doll in the road. The outrage that follows, the news cycle that traps, the fury that consumes the week — that is the tar. Brer Rabbit got free. Not by hitting harder. Not by being less angry. Not by accepting the disrespect or pretending the tar was not real. He got free by changing the game. He remembered where his power actually lived. The briar patch. The place the man who made the doll could not follow. He stopped trying to win on the ground the trap was set on. He moved to his ground. That is the rest of the story the white man left out. The lesson is not: endure the provocation. The lesson is: do not fight on ground that was chosen to defeat you. Choose your ground. Know where your power lives. Do not let the man who made the doll decide where the fight happens. We made this story in Africa. We carried it across the water in the only luggage they could not take from us. We told it so our children would know: The trap is not stronger than you. The trap only works if you swing. You can feel the anger. You can carry the anger. You can use the anger. But you decide where it goes. Not the man who made the doll. You.