"It?s like touching a tar baby ..."
Well, tar baby didn't have anything to do with dark skinned people until it became a race thing. There are so many things you can't say without the race-baiters going all on you.
The race baiters are racist. They can't help it. They see blacks or Jews or Mexicans or whatever as an inferior "race" of people (such beliefs are a natural extension of the belief that we are only differently evolved animals, not God's special creation). Then when someone says something that makes them think of the inferior race, they have to come along and make an issue out of it.