Years ago, I saw some figurines in a store that I found offensive (actually, it was one figurine; I’ll get to that in a minute). I didn’t engage the staff, though; I wrote to the manufacturers. The way I saw it, I didn’t know who owned the store or who was really responsible for what they stocked, and in any event, they didn’t make the figurines. I checked the boxes for the manufacturer’s name, then asked the staff for a mailing address. (Never got an answer. Perhaps the address was for the factory and no one was there who could have answered. This was long before I had internet.)
As for what offended me, the figurines were portraying various professions: doctor, lawyer, farmer, and so forth. It wasn’t just that they were all men except one. It was what the one woman was. No, not a teacher. Or a nurse. Or even a housewife. (Those wouldn’t have offended me.) Leaning against a lampost, wearing a red dress and spike heels. “The Oldest Profession.” :rolleyes::mad: I still think that’s pretty wrong. Although I can’t remember exactly what I said in the letter.
Anyway, if they’re not antiques, I’d address the complaint to the manufacturer. If they are antiques, well, the manufacturers probably kicked off decades ago, so why get bothered now.
Har… Be glad you don’t live around several southern flea markets, statsman. Those thingies pop out at you just when you least expect it, on a regular basis…
As people above have said it so eloquently, it’s history. And some people like it for whatever reason. Kind of like yellowfin tuna. Let it be.
The golliwog shows up as a pretty important character at the end of Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier.Moore’s made his position on discrimination pretty clear in his other work, so I find this pretty damned astonishing. I can’t accuse him of being unaware of the implications, so I have to conclude that he’s of that group who fondly recall the image from his childhood and considers it to be outside racist imagery. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/hub/A50831787
My ex-husband had a lawn jockey which he displayed in our living room because it was a gift from a friend. The friend had gotten it at a flea market (as Waxwinged mentions).
One day when my husband was away the thing got broken.
Up here, there is very little of this Black Americana. In my experience, the farther south you go in the US, the more you see of it. The only exception up here in Canada has been the Lawn Jockey and the Fisherboy, which was usually seen in one’s garden/flowerbed as an accent piece. Note I say “were”, because it’s been at least 30 years since I saw either on display anywhere.
The one thing I’ve seen to any degree that are on the same level are figurines of Chinese men and women, which I refer to as “Coolie Figurines”, for want of a better term. These seem to have been popular in Canada from the Art Deco period up to the late 50s. I don’t think they were meant to be a negative thing necessarily; the Orient was once seen as an exotic and mysterious place and I think what the manufacturers were doing is paying homage to China as an idea. Unlike the Black Americana previously mentioned, these figures aren’t stereotypical in nature to the point of obvious exaggeration, though, nor are there any violent implications.
Looks to me like the guy just added an Obama figurine to an alligator head hat. He looks old enough to remember a time when these figurines were in style.
My mother had one of these on her front porch forever. I think it finally crumbled away. I faithfully repainted it every summer growing up with black face, bright red overall, etc…until I got big enough to know better, then it became a Caucasian. She never said anything, but she is an old school Southerner born in 1912, so I’ve given up trying to educate her much.
Until I was an adult, i didn’t see any “black” lawn jockeys. I saw lots of lawn jockeys, but they were invariably white – and I don’t mean they were simply painted to be caucasian – they had caucasian features, too. I had no idea that racist lawn jockeys even existed for the longest time.
I had always thought that the reason lawn jockeys were presumed to be negroid was because of the Al Jolson-like blackface nature of the paint job. It never occurred to me to look for non-caucasian features exclusive of the paint job.
This is something I’ve always wondered about that scene:
Does he really yell, ‘Not a finger!’? Or is it the gibberish the filmmakers used to express expletives in a family-friendly way, and he says ‘Nodda finga!’ as a substitute for something more harsh?
It’s isolated, in that there are no products that use the icon anymore. Some individuals may use it but they’re not part of the mainstream (unless everyone down there still likes the idea but is too chickenshit to say so).
