I do understand how analogies work, I just don’t see that they’re really useful here. If golliwogs are harmful, then we can talk about the harm they’ve done (or might do), rather than the harm that something else that may or may not be slightly similar, has done, for reasons that may or may not be related to the congruent features between the two things.
Analogies nearly always lead to nitpickery over their aptness, which ultimately distracts from the topic at hand - I just don’t think we need that here.
You may have heard of the famous Clark doll experiments back in the '30s and '40s, where African-American children were shown two dolls that were identical except for their coloring (one had pale skin and blonde hair, the other brown skin and black hair) and asked which doll they’d rather play with, which doll was prettier, etc. Many of the children preferred the white doll, and described it as pretty/good while the black doll was ugly/bad. This internalized racism was more pronounced among children who attended segregated schools, and the studies were used as evidence in Brown v. Board of Education. More recent versions of these experiments have found that many African-American children today will still describe the white doll as pretty and good while the black doll is ugly and bad.
Of course golliwog dolls and the like aren’t solely responsible for the idea that black=ugly. I don’t know about the UK, but most American children today have probably never seen a golliwog doll. (Heck, I’m in my 30s and had never even heard of them until I was an adult.) But I doubt it did the self-image of black children in past decades much good to know there was a popular toy that was an ugly caricature of a black man, especially since at the time when golliwog dolls were most common then cute black baby dolls, pretty black fashion dolls, and handsome black action figures were not widely available.
Some in this thread have said they didn’t even associate golliwog dolls with actual black people, and I can easily believe that for a white child a golliwog might have seemed like a fantasy creature, like a Smurf or something, and not a racist caricature. But I suspect a lot of black children saw these dolls and wondered on some level why the pretty dolls were all white while the golliwog was black, and if others looked at them (the children) and saw ridiculous, ugly creatures who resembled golliwog dolls. I think this would have happened even if the term “golliwog” hadn’t been used to describe black/dark-complexioned people in real life.
In the eighties when I was a young child I didn’t own a golliwog (though I think we may’ve sent away to Robertson’s for the Golly badges), but for example my cousins did and it really was just a toy and there was no real conception that he was meant to represent a black man. Myself I was born in South London which has a large black population and I’ve considered skin colour to be anything other than skin colour.
This is interesting. I did have a knitted golliwog as a child, and as you say, I had no idea what it was (I also didn’t associate my teddy bear with real bears), but I don’t really see them as an ugly character (by contrast, I think Ronald McDonald is terrifying). And I think this was the general feeling in the UK - Golly was a beloved figure - if this were not so, he wouldn’t have been a mascot for the marmalade on everyone’s breakfast table.
This shot is from an Australian shop - taken less than a year ago. I’d never heard of golliwogs before I moved to Australia; my (Australian born) wife tells me she hadn’t seen them since she was a child.
That white people liked golliwogs isn’t really the issue, though. At one point white people liked minstrel shows too, and golliwogs look to me to be pretty obviously modeled after minstrel show performers. These kinds of depictions of black people aren’t harmless just because white people found them entertaining.
And indeed if you look up the Black and White Minstrel Show on IMDB you’ll find similar arguments trying to defend that show as here.
Several posters there also “can’t see anything racist about it” and blame the fact it was pulled on the “liberal thinking elite” and “politically correct brigade”.
:smack:
How can thinking adults not recognize how it’s racist? It’s a cartoon like portrayal of another entire race of people, complete with demeaning name.
I can get that maybe you owned one and aren’t a racist, perhaps. But what kind of denial do you have to be in to honestly believe they weren’t intended to be racist or offensive. Seriously?
I think it’s well that they quietly went out of fashion, but I don’t think they’re a horrific, outrageous racist object. Can someone tell me about the tangible harm they did? That might change my view.
I would say not at all, since golliwog dolls are not ugly, at least not to a child, and in fact were designed to appeal to children, and to be loved, and cuddled for comfort. If a child was aware that their golliwog was intended to represent a black person, one would surely expect that it would predispose them to have more positive, warmer feeling about black people than they might otherwise. The effects, if anything, would be anti-racist. (Heck, perhaps they were! The generation who grew up with golliwogs for toys, my g-generation, in fact repudiated racism to an extent that no generation before it ever had. OK, I don’t really think that is because of golliwogs, but it is certainly true.)
In fact, however, I doubt whether many children who had golliwog toys, or read stories about golliwogs, ever made the association with actual black people. I know I didn’t. The fact is that golliwogs do not look very much like actual black people, or, indeed, much like human beings. They are no more like real humans, of any color, than teddy bears or other anthropomorphised animal toys.
Presumably the dolls used in the experiment you mention did look like actual humans, at least enough to recognized by the children as such. The experiment may say something interesting (and depressing) about racism, but I don’t think it says anything about golliwogs. My guess would be that if you showed a child (certainly a child from my generation, familiar with golliwogs) a black and a white golliwog, they would prefer the black one. The pictures of white golliwogs that somebody posted upthread do look quite creepy to me, but proper, black golliwogs look friendly and comforting.
I think you are right (and Cleese got it right). In British racist parlance, “wog” is, or was, an insulting name for brown skinned people from Asia, not black skinned people from Africa. This, of course, backs up the claim that others in the thread have been making, that the words “wog” and “golliwog” are not really connected, any more than, say cat and catastrophe.
The bolded bit is the crucial point at which your analogy fails. Golliwogs were not for decades used to make fun of black people. Maybe they were so used occasionally, by a few people, but not by “many”, not by most of those who owned, purchased or made them. I can certainly see how a black person would be offended by a golliwog quite regardless of what it might mean to its owner, but the vast majority of people who owned, bought, or made golliwogs were not trying to make any sort of racist joke or propaganda, and for most of the time golliwogs were actually popular in Britain, very few black people ever saw them, because there were very few black people in the country. Soon after the black population of Britain began to grow to a significant size, golliwogs went out of fashion. Their potential to offend was realized, and as most people did not wish to cause such offense, they stopped buying or making them.
On your last point, as noted above, the word “golliwog” and the racial insult “wog”, generally directed at brown-skinned people from south Asia, are probably related only via the phonetic coincidence.
I’m sorry, but their very existence is making fun of black people. You don’t see the exaggerated blackness? The huge lips? The name?
Which part is supposed to be innocently non offensive?
I can appreciate that with the passage of time, it became just a children’s toy. But damn, once you’re an adult how can you not plainly see where it began?
(This discussion reminds me of all the talk after that country singer released that Accidental Racist song, just recently. About a guy catching flack over the confederate flag on his tee shirt. Like I didn’t mean to offend, I’m proud of my ancestors. The ones who fought to maintain the right to own other human beings as slaves? Those ancestors?) It’s fucking offensive no matter how you slice it and dice it.
You might not have known as a kid. You do know now.
It’s considered offensive now, and that’s why they are no longer around (except as collector items), but it was not conceived to offend, neither does it appear to have been significantly used to offend.
Something that isn’t meant to offend, and doesn’t offend, isn’t offensive.
The analogy only fails if I agree with you on that observation, and I don’t. I am mixed race and several members of the black side of my family have mentioned hating the toys and being called golliwogs (as an insult as part of abuse).
Similar anecdotes have been shared by others in this thread.
I haven’t had it personally but then it was before my time.
Quite a coincidence in my opinion. The original story is about a fearsome-looking black person who turns out to be nice. And the name sounds a lot like “Jolly wog”.
Note that “brown-skinned people from South Asia” can be very dark indeed. A white person who hasn’t seen many of either may well lump them together.
Note also that there is evidence that the word wog was sometimes used more broadly, such as to mean all immigrants (but again, in the context of an insult).
Are caricatures automatically offensive? I don’t think they are - they’re offensive when they are used in an offensive way.
For example, Barbie is a caricature of an American blonde young woman. No human female has the same carefully exaggerated proportions and features as Barbie.
Is Barbie offensive? No. (not that I personally like the thing)
Is it offensive to call a blonde woman ‘Barbie’, quite possibly yes.
Do you not understand the difference between “taken as offensive” and “used as offensive”? I quite agree that golliwogs are (very understandably) taken as offensive by black people. What is more, most of the white people involved, since they have come into contact with actual black people, have come to recognize and sympathize with that, which is why the things are virtually extinct these days.
The fact that some unrepentant racists have used it as an insult word has little to do with the issue. If it was not that word they would have found some other way to make themselves offensive. It has no bearing on the issue of how the vast majority of people who actually owned or bought golliwogs “used” them, or what, if anything, they thought they symbolized.
Yes, a coincidence. The original story was an American story, with the character presumably representing an African American. Has “wog” ever been a term used in America as an offensive epithet for African Americans? If so, I have never heard of it. By contrast “wog” once was in widespread use in Britain as an offensive term for south Asians, and it seems to date back to well before the origin of golliwogs. (I think “wog” is pretty much obsolete even in Britain now, the term our racists now prefer, last I heard, is “paki”.) It is highly unlikely that the American author who invented the word “golliwogg”, and who seems to have been intending (albeit clumsily) to send a message of racial tolerance, should have drawn upon this obscure (to Americans) bit of British racist slang, that does not even refer to the same race.
I don’t doubt that “wog” was sometimes used more broadly. Racists tend not to be very good at things like making careful linguistic distinctions or intellectual consistency, but that is no evidence at all that “wog” is derived from “golliwog”.
