[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"“Lucille” claims that Sambo is a common word for African Americans in Alaska."

All I know about "Sambo" was what I read on the menus of Sambo's restaurants when I was a kid.

(Really good pancakes, by the way.)

The story, at least as I recall it through the mists of time, involved a little dark-skinned Indian boy who ran a tiger around a tree until the tiger turned to butter or something.

There was nothing derogatory about it--the little Indian kid emerged a hero, after all--and it wasn't about Africa or Africans or people of African descent. The cartoon that accompanied the little story showed a little kid in a turban and Indian-style loose cotton pants. Besides, there are no tigers in Africa, AFAIK. They're an Indian-subcontinent sort of cat, right?

How'd this morph into a perceived slur against African-Americans, anyway? Is there another Sambo story out there that I'm unaware of? If so, how come Sarah Palin heard about that and I never did? ...The politics of race has become quite impenetrable, IMHO. Probably because true racism has been pretty effectively stamped out... except among the likes of Jeremiah Wright and Michelle Obama, apparently.

[Burkean]

The story was indeed written about an Indian boy—written by a British woman who lived for some time in British colonial India. But some years after the story was originally published it was republished with artwork depicting Sambo (and his parents Mumbo and Jumbo) as African Americans in what would today be considered a fairly derogatory depiction. Thus the term became somewhat equivalent to Uncle Tom.

I don’t believe for a moment that Sarah Palin used the term. I continue to be astouded at the depths of inanity that the Democrats are sinking to in an attempt to slur this woman.