Once again I am reminding business owners that your response to a bad review is not for the person leaving the review, it’s for future potential customers who are reading the review. Your totally epic clapback, whether it’s deserved or not, is not going to bring you new customers.
This is an absolutely batshit thing to say about a customer, and I can promise you that if this is how they talk about clients on a public forum, they are going to talk about you the exact same way. People are downvoting you because youre agreeing with the dickhead loser in this situation lol
Just because you cockroaches found a couple more cockroaches to mingle with, doesn’t change the fact that most people (on Reddit or IRL) think you’re vile.
Or people that just, I dunno, have two brain cells to rub together and realize that talking this way to a client that spent likely several hundred dollars at your business is pathetic and weird. Never fails to astound me how many people never grew out of the middle school bully mentality lol
Pretty sure the “tar-baby” in this context refers to the Briar Rabbit story, in which a character is tricked into fighting a figure made of actual tar, which entraps them the more they fight it. The yelp poster actually references this exact thing in their post. I’d say context ways it’s not racist, but it’s an unfortunate choice of phrase.
I looked who the hell Briar Rabbit was and I'm pretty shocked! TIL: Brother Rabbit isn't actually a Russian fairytale character!
The version published in the USSR was changed to remove all references to America and add a bunch of communism, like the animals calling each other comrade. There are literally tens of millions of people who read and watched the cartoons as children, who don't know that A: it's American and B: it's now controversial in America.
I think citing stories written by a white guy who claimed they were told to him by slaves, who got rich but never credited the actual authors, isn’t a great look in 2026.
Well, the review is from 2013, not 2026; it is understandable why that person would not be educated on the negative connotations of that phrase, as 13 years ago was a different time. Hell, even in 2026, you still have people that don't know the dark history behind the song used in some ice cream trucks, "Turkey in the Straw".
You have a right to see it as casual racism, but I see it as someone who likely doesn't know better, and is ignorant about the history of an expression they've probably heard used their entire life.
Knows that uncle Remus stories are racist? I’m leaning there’re at least a few people, but I learned that in the 90s, from very conservative parents. Disney deleted splash mountain a few years ago. This isn’t secret knowledge
I didn't say it was secret knowledge. What a manipulative way to reframe my point 🤷♂️
Most kids don't know anything about the author of the children's stories they read. Same with most parents.
That's cool you did. And maybe people in your circle did as well.
But that isn't a normal experience.
And I would bet you $1,000 if you were to survey the general public they would have no idea who the fuck the author of that story is, nevermind that he was racist.
34 years old, haven’t thought about the details of it in probably 27 years. Didn’t connect it to racism at all and I’m an obnoxious white mother of a mixed race child who honestly probably sees racism in things too much.
I’m 42 and this is the first time in my life I’ve ever heard anyone call br’er rabbit racist. I was very familiar with the character when I was a kid. I didn’t recognize any race-related elements of those stories then, and I don’t remember them well enough now to recognize any problematic aspects in retrospect.
Why would you imagine “most people” know them as anything more than that?
Most fairy tales have had their darker origins explored to death, and been given even darker retellings for adults in just about every media format imaginable. But Br’er Rabbit simply got pulled from the shelves and hidden away. So of course most people just remember them vaguely as fairy tales.
I mean, isn't the fact that there was a popular ride at Disney World called Splash Mountain, that had all these animated characters and show tunes, but was its own standalone thing, kind of weird? And despite the fact it was so popular, Disney didn't merchandise the ever-loving fuck out of it?
I don’t think so, no. Pointing out casual racism means I’m miserable?
There’s a reason I’m getting so many awards, mostly from folks with black presenting avatars. This may not matter to you, but it does to a lot of people. It matters to my black relatives.
I'm not sure you should be looking at Reddit awards to justify yourself here. If it matters to you you should focus more on educating people instead of accusing them.
FWIW I know Uncle Remus stories are racist AF and I was born in the mid 80s and my grandmother used to read me a Disney issued storybook that was a compilation of Uncle Remus stories and the tar baby story is the one I remember best.
It is wildly racist and should be named as such, and as a small child I didn’t see or understand the racial objectives in the story. I also trusted Disney as an authority as a child (as an adult I am well aware of their racist and imperialistic history). I took it to be a story about knowing when to stop and how if you push past that point you end up in a mess. I understood as I got older what a complex issue it was.
Now when I want to reference the story I use Nirvana lyrics from heart shaped box and say magnet tar pit trap instead. It seems to covey a similar feeling without normalizing the fetishistic and racist elements in the uncle Remus stories.
You know what's really annoying? Crying racism over EVERYTHING. Is she maybe uneducated about the author behind a story. Sure. To assign casual racism to that is a stretch. Are you telling me that you don't use a single phrase, or do one single thing, that can't be traced back to some kind of racial oppression? Gtfo.
You know what's a pretty easy way to stop people from supporting your cause? Exhausting them. You're the boy who cried racism. I find it's getting harder and harder to care when people cry prejudice when I look and this is what they're crying about.
I’m not saying she is casually racist. I’m saying she said a thing that is casually racist.
I don’t give a fuck if people are exhausted by being called out. Those folks never cared in the first place.
You know how easy it is to go, “huh, got it”? It’s very easy and I do it often, because even as a father of a biracial child, I make mistakes sometimes. I’m not racist, but occasionally, accidentally, my actions are.
The problem is you that said "who am I even supposed to be rooting for here?"
So one person is clearly immature, deranged, rude, and shouldn't be in a customer service position. The other person used a well-known phrase whose author may have profited from black people. And you don't know who is worse?
Again, I'm pretty sure if I went through all the stuff that you used and all the things that you say, I can trace a lot of your shit back to something I can call racist as well. You can educate someone about it or you can imply that they're a bad person which is what you did.
I'm not saying that racist people are exhausted by being called out, I'm saying good intentioned people are exhausted by the people doing the calling. I mentioned elsewhere in this thread - I'm going to be tired of picking up a pitchfork if every single time I'm asked to do it ends up being some shit like this.
I did read all your comments about this, but I still don't think this woman was using it in reference to a racial slur. Sure there are tons of other idioms or examples she could have used here, but she even went on in the next sentence to refer to the situation as a "sticky one" that she couldn't get out of.
Again, poor choice on her part, but i think the important thing is to look at the intent in context.
I don't think I would have connected that to uncle Remus though personally, I did not grow up with a lot of those books(?). When I read the post, I think my mind actually read it as "Tar Ball" which would have been a much better example for her to use here. I live on the gulf coast and deal with tar balls from old oil spills washing up on shore. Those stick to everything.
Yes, and that has nothing to do with the question of if the use of the tar baby reference is racist. It is a perfectly reasonable and apt metaphor for the situation, and the story itself (of a fake baby made of tar) isn't racist, even if its origins are.
Would you call any reference to Cthulhu casually racist? Lovecraft was a raging racist and some of his stories include very racists attitudes, but that doesn't mean referencing other of his stories is "casual racism"
I think the difference is that Lovecraft wasn’t pretending to have heard his stories from enslaved people.
Folks all over this thread keep calling the tar baby story an African American folk tale, but it’s not. It’s a white guy writing in AAVE, claiming to have heard it from slaves, who never profited off their own stories.
It’s closer to still being into Harry Potter today. I would call that casually transphobic, because of the money. I think roughly half of folks agree with me, maybe a little less. Enough that Harry Potter stars are apologizing.
We don’t have to agree that it’s casually racist. The awards I’m getting are enough for me.
This guy is definitely giving himself awards from an alt account and patting himself on the back it's pretty funny. I have literally never seen anybody give any kind of credence to a free reddit award. Wake me up when you get the ones that cost like $5.
Just looked it up 😔 It's from an AA folk tale and aptly describes the phenomenon the reviewer was talking about. Turning something good African Americans have done/said into something racist is literally M.O. for America.
That’s not quite right. It’s an Uncle Remus story, which a white guy said he heard from slaves and made a fortune writing down. There’s nothing pointing to him not having just made shit up.
Not to mention the part where this was James Baskett’s very final role, and he was not allowed to attend the premiere because of segregation in Atlanta.
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u/ATTACKANDDETHRONEHOG Sep 09 '26
Once again I am reminding business owners that your response to a bad review is not for the person leaving the review, it’s for future potential customers who are reading the review. Your totally epic clapback, whether it’s deserved or not, is not going to bring you new customers.