Golliwogs and morons

sp1814 | 19:16 Wed 07th Sep 2011 | News

98 Answers

Quick question based on a previous post.

I understand that there are MANY people who have childhood toys in the shape of golliwogs - and tees people don't have a racist bone in their body. They're simply a toy right?

Now some people have said that golliwogs have become the subject of a PC-ban.

But to those people, I would like to ask this - if you were invited to a child's birthday party, and the kid was black. Would you buy them a golliwog as a present, or would you think, "Hang on...this could be seriously misconstrued".

So - would you buy a golly for a black child?

Political correctness gone mad?

Same old mistake.

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steg

and would it care what colour it was?

craft1948

Probably not steg........but the parents might.

steg

so it doesn't matter what the bairn thinks then?

craft1948

The bairn would just be happy with 'a doll'............

DrFilth

give it a book token , white with black letters

steg

that's what i would of thought as well, but if i knew a black bairn and wanted to buy it a doll i would probably try and get a black one be it a golly or any other, but i'm Scottish and probably one of those moron things in the heider

craft1948

I'm just old..............I'd buy it the nicest doll regardless of colour.

steg

you're not just old, you're braw as well

-- answer removed --

douglas9401

Is "it" the child or the doll?

Ann

I agree maggiebee - my local independent garden centre sells them - they are out on show in a basket looking very sweet and I saw someone buying not one but two the other day - its just how you feel individually about them. I raised the question with my West Indian friends and they just laughed and said they cause them no offence whatsoever and even gave their daughters one when they were little!

Ann

Well I still have my lovely LP records (vinyls) of the Black and White Minstrel Shows and play the Christmas one faithfully every year and sing along with it - it wouldn't be Christmas without it..............am I soon to be arrested I wonder?

sp1814

Question Author

Anne86

Think about it - they're LPs.

Who would know whether the artists performing were in blackface???

Ann

They are in glorious techicolour on the sleeve - thats how they would know!!!!

sp1814

Question Author

EDDIE51

Good grief...thank you for the link.

I am REALLY shocked at the book cover. Wond if anyone could possible defend THAT?

You see - this is what I mean. There are many people who simply don't get what the gollywog represents, nor it's history.

It is not the black equivalent of a cabbage patch doll. Not in any way. In fact, it's hard to think of an equivalent white alternative.

By the way, if I were to buy a doll for a child, ut would probably be a Teletubbie...the gay one.

Ann

sp1814 that would probably offend some people - same sort of thing!

jno

it's not true that nobody objected to the B&W Minstrels at the time; many did, and they stopped blacking up for a while, as I recall... and everybody stopped watching; so they started again. I liked the music myself, but it seems the British audience only liked the blacking up, which is bizarre. But they gradually just went out of fashion.

pastafreak

sp - I posted this in AOG's 'golli' thread....only one person admitted to reading-and being shocked by it.

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pastafreak
This may be of interest to anyone who think Golliwogs are not seen as racist-or that it is a modern, 'PC' thing-
Taken from the site http://www.golliwogg.co.uk/racism.htm

The claim that Golliwogs are racist is supported by literary depictions by writers such as Enid Blyton. Unlike Florence Upton's, Blyton's Golliwogs were often rude, mischievous, elfin villains. In Blyton's book, "Here Comes Noddy Again", a Golliwog asks the hero for help, then steals his car. Blyton, one of the most prolific European writers, included the Golliwogs in many stories, but she only wrote three books primarily about Golliwogs: The Three Golliwogs (1944), The Proud Golliwog (1951), and The Golliwog Grumbled (1953). Her depictions of Golliwogs are, by contemporary standards, racially insensitive. An excerpt from The Three Golliwogs is illustrative:

Once the three bold Golliwogs, Golly, Woggie, and ***, decided to go for a walk to Bumble-Bee Common. Golly wasn't quite ready so Woggie and *** said they would start off without him, and Golly would catch them up as soon as he could. So off went Woggie and ***, arm-in-arm, singing merrily their favourite song - which, as you may guess, was Ten Little *** Boys.

Ten Little *** is the name of a children's poem, sometimes set to music, which celebrates the deaths of ten Black children, one-by-one. The Three Golliwogs was reprinted as recently as 1968, and it still contained the above passage. Ten Little *** was also the name of a 1939 Agatha Christie novel, whose cover showed a Golliwog lynched, hanging from a noose.

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I sometimes think too many people don't even bother to read links or back ground information. Good luck getting your point across.