tar baby, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

tar baby n.

[the Tar Baby, created by Joel Chandler Harris in 1881, when in one of his ‘Uncle Remus’ tales the scheming Br’er Fox, determined to catch Harris’s lapine hero Brer Rabbit, ‘got im some tar, en mix it wid some turkentime, en fix up a contrapshun what he call a Tar-Baby’]

1. (US) a ‘sticky’ problem; also attrib.

1906		‘Mark Twain’ Autobiog. II 18: For two years the ‘Courant’ had been making a ‘tar baby’ of Mr. Blaine [DA].
1976		J.W. Dean III Blind Ambition 184: It was just one more example of the Watergate tar baby: the only thing worse than nominating Gray would have been not nominating him.
1997		Simon & Burns Corner (1998) 172: It seemed like she just singled out DeAndre and DeRodd as tar babies, offering them a peculiar coldness.
1998		D. Hecht Skull Session 343: Talk about Hercules and the Augean stables, there’s no end to it. Tar-baby city.

2. (US) a black person.

1894		New Peterson Mag. 507/2: [of a black preacher] ‘’Pears like you sets a heap o’ sto’ by dat tar-baby,’ said Dandy Jim, with decided scorn.
1904		‘O. Henry’ Cabbages & Kings 201: ‘’You ought to see the buncoed gentleman’s daughter he brought along. Looks! She makes the brick-dust señoritas here look like tar-babies’.
1909		Sun. Times (Perth) Supp. 19 Dec. 25/6: The nigger showed his teeth in a grin. Then - bing! - right hand uppercut from the ‘tar baby’ brought up against Reggie’s jaw.
1911		Grey River Argus (NZ) 28 Dec. 7/3: The ‘Tar baby’ knocked him out in sixteen rounds [...] while he got two newspaper decisions against the coloured freak.
1925		Morn. Bulletin 10 Jan. 6/4: The special comedy ‘The Tarbaby’.
1935		Barrier Miner (Broken Hill, Aus.) 7 Nov. 5/2: Sam Langford, the Boston ‘Tar Baby’, [...] easily the most amazing negro that ever stepped into the ring.
1946		Drake & Cayton Black Metropolis 502: I was the darkest child in the family [...] My brothers and sisters used to call me ‘tar baby.’.
1952		S. Selvon Brighter Sun 61: A white-skinned girl, dressed neatly with a blue ribbon in her hair, was called ‘Whitey cockroach!’ She retorted, ‘Black tar-baby!’.
1968		H. Sackler Great White Hope III v: Run, tar-baby, run back to your barrel.
1979		‘Iceberg Slim’ Airtight Willie and Me 188: Tar baby, don’t force me to harm you. Get out of my face!
1983		I.L. Allen Lang. of Ethnic Conflict 47: Color Allusions, Other than ‘Black’ and ‘Negro’: […] tar-baby [often nigger-tar-baby. Also tar-pot. All mean a child].
1996		P. Beatty White Boy Shuffle 8: Word quickly got back to his owner [...] about the little tar baby’s ingenuity.
2002		‘Touré’ Portable Promised Land (ms.) 157: We Words (My Favorite Things) [...] Tar baby. Trick daddy. Mack daddy.
2015		P. Beatty Sellout (2016) 84: The first five ‘coons,’ ‘jigaboos,’ ‘tar babies,’ and ‘Sambos’ were free. After that, it was three dollars an epithet.

3. (N.Z.) a derog. term for a Maori; also attrib.

1981

J. Henderson Exiles of Asbestos Cottage 55: The original black tar-baby maltoid roof, leaking badly, was replaced.