Golly
Let us say I was considering going into doll manufacture. Would anyone be interested in buying my Chinky doll, bright yellow with a perfectly round face and little slits for eyes? Or my Pakky doll, where you pull a string and it talks in that Peter Sellers sing-song Asian accent? Or my Yiddy doll, with lots of curly hair and a big nose? No? Why not?
Because they’d be disgustingly offensive, that’s why. I expect some people might even buy them, but as a matter of fact I think the public has more sense than it’s often credited with, and I don’t think many people would.
Okay, anyone want to buy one of these then?
For sale in Hawkshead, Cumbria, that lovely cuddly old-fashioned racist caricature of black people. Is Hawkshead the last outpost of the golliwog?
Those things we took for granted in the 1960s – cloth toy golliwogs such as the ones in my photograph; collecting paper golliwogs from Robertson’s marmalade to send off for badges; the Black and White Minstrel Show on television, with white men “blacked up” to play what were known as “nigger minstrels” (yes, really) all seem from a bygone, more ignorant age.
But if people want to buy golliwogs, then why shouldn’t they? Market forces, and all that.
Hmm – if we follow that argument, then we’d be selling weapons to any old dictatorship who wants to buy them - - oh, we do. Sorry, I must have forgotten that. But I bet any toyshop owner would say that there isn’t a huge mass of people clamouring for golliwogs, and if that’s true then the market forces argument – which I don’t agree with anyway – doesn’t hold up.
Ah – but it’s TRADITIONAL. Yes, like toffee apples, or Beefeaters, or putting people in the stocks, or boy chimney-sweeps. Sometimes, just because something is traditional, doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. I don’t think anyone should be making golliwogs, or selling them, or buying them.
Yes, but – and here’s the last argument of the losing – it doesn’t matter if there are golliwogs for sale in Hawkshead, because no black people will see them. Because, in spite of the smiling photos of mixed-race children sailing on the lakes, which I saw in Coniston Tourist Information Centre, there really are very few black people to be found in the Lake District.
Not bloody surprising, is it?
Because they’d be disgustingly offensive, that’s why. I expect some people might even buy them, but as a matter of fact I think the public has more sense than it’s often credited with, and I don’t think many people would.
Okay, anyone want to buy one of these then?
For sale in Hawkshead, Cumbria, that lovely cuddly old-fashioned racist caricature of black people. Is Hawkshead the last outpost of the golliwog?
Those things we took for granted in the 1960s – cloth toy golliwogs such as the ones in my photograph; collecting paper golliwogs from Robertson’s marmalade to send off for badges; the Black and White Minstrel Show on television, with white men “blacked up” to play what were known as “nigger minstrels” (yes, really) all seem from a bygone, more ignorant age.
But if people want to buy golliwogs, then why shouldn’t they? Market forces, and all that.
Hmm – if we follow that argument, then we’d be selling weapons to any old dictatorship who wants to buy them - - oh, we do. Sorry, I must have forgotten that. But I bet any toyshop owner would say that there isn’t a huge mass of people clamouring for golliwogs, and if that’s true then the market forces argument – which I don’t agree with anyway – doesn’t hold up.
Ah – but it’s TRADITIONAL. Yes, like toffee apples, or Beefeaters, or putting people in the stocks, or boy chimney-sweeps. Sometimes, just because something is traditional, doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. I don’t think anyone should be making golliwogs, or selling them, or buying them.
Yes, but – and here’s the last argument of the losing – it doesn’t matter if there are golliwogs for sale in Hawkshead, because no black people will see them. Because, in spite of the smiling photos of mixed-race children sailing on the lakes, which I saw in Coniston Tourist Information Centre, there really are very few black people to be found in the Lake District.
Not bloody surprising, is it?
posted by Daphne at 10:31 am
4 Comments:
Oh lets really go PC and ban pantomine season in case it upsets cross dressers.
Yes... but my mother was over 50 before she realised that golliwogs were a representation of black people. They just don't look like people, any more than our suit-wearing bunnyrabbit or the weird figure-of-eight-with-arms-and-legs stuffed toy did.
However, now that we *know* what they are, we obviously can't quite talk ourselves into believing that they're ok...
I shall identify myself, since I'm not ashamed to think that knowingly mocking other races based on race alone is pants behaviour.
Exactly... if I'd been introduced to those dolls at a young age, I would never have made a connection between them and everyone I know who's black. It might not be that golliwogs are insulting because they exist: it's just that they are an easily recognisable symbol of an age in Britain where racism was taken for granted, and is (hopefully) bygone.
It's impossible to separate the object from those connotations, and I doubt that there is anyone in the UK sitting there desperate to own a golliwog, so... why make them at all?
Being purposefully non-PC just to rebel, which is what many people do, is rather throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Over-zealous PC behaviour is easy to identify, as it's always very silly... but wouldn't the world be nicer if we insulted each other less?
Iam equally offended at the sight of white dolls maybe they could all be a uniform beige 1
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