Not in the Hobbit. Try Ulysses by James Joyce. 
I’m ashamed to say that there’s a thread from a few years back - not going to link to it but it’s not hard to find - where I argued that the golliwog character was harmless. I was going to say I can’t quite believe my past self was such a bonehead about it, but I can totally believe it.
In today’s NYT Spelling Bee I tried to use the word “octoroon” and it didn’t take it. I didn’t remember the definition but I was pretty sure it was a word - and Spelling Bee is notorious for not allowing some obscure words - so I looked it up on dictionary dot com as a sanity check.
“A person having one-eighth Black ancestry, with one Black great-grandparent. The offspring of a quadroon and a white person.”
So yeah, it makes sense why Spelling Bee didn’t accept it! Also, not sure I have ever heard of a “quadroon”, but I will know to avoid both words in the future.
And “mulatto” was originally 1/2 white 1/2 black. So it went mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, and the (this I just learned today double checking my definitions), quintroon. And there apparently are other words for other mixes that seem to vary (like one source calls a “sambo” a mix of mulatto and black, so 3/4 black 1/4 white. This seems so bizarre to me from a modern viewpoint, and then, on the other hand, it somehow does not.)
Yeah I’m aware of this. I’ve even seen interviews with British people asking them if the gollywog is racist. They mostly say “no” How, after all, can something so familiar be bad and racist? It’s only when you look at it as an outsider, without that comforting blanket of insulating nostalgia, that yo can see it for what it is.
As I say, even Alan Moore, hard-hitting writer of very adult graphic novels, has a soft spot for the character. He introduced t into the third installment of his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as a character, hoping, as he said, to rehabilitate it, taking it back to its roots. But its roots are pretty clearly racist.
My sister has a collection of old-time advertising on display that makes use of racial stereotypes. It’s cringe-worthy. She would argue that she isn’t racist, and that the stuff she has is “cute Americana”.
Last year, a pub in England made the news because they had a collection of the dolls confiscated, after the owner made racist FB posts and the police were called to investigate a possible hate crime. Then Suella Braverman, then Home Secretary, a woman who’s both a person of colour and shockingly racist (sadly, she’s not at all a unique figure in the current Tory party) got involved as well, as the incident fit in nicely with the British right wing’s own war on woke. It’s almost as if people want to cling to something so obviously offensive, just for the joy of pissing off everyone to the left of themselves.
Yeah, it’s like asking a fish if it feels wet.
I mean, I suppose a collection of them need not be racist (Museums have collection of nazi regalia after all)- but after you make openly racist comments- yep- racist.
“Uppity”
Started a whole big brouhaha here on the SDMB 18 months ago.
Those articles are paywalled, but here are some that aren’t (for me, at least).
One of the owners explaining how she isn’t offended by “wog” or the dolls, so they are okay:
The story does have a happy ending, though:
Your sister needs to watch Ghost World.
Whoopi Goldberg is said to own an extensive collection, which she calls “Negrobilia.”
I’d mention that to her, but I’m currently no contact because I don’t love jesus.
Send her a Jimmy Buffett tape with my regards.
My head hurts, my feet stink, and I don’t love Jesus
It’s that kind of mornin’
Really was that kind of night
Tryin’ to tell myself that my condition is improvin’
And if I don’t die by Thursday I’ll be roarin’ Friday night
There is also a museum. You can take a virtual tour.
‘The young people these days don’t understand, from years ago where the Gollys originated from…’
Yeah, it can be pretty pernicious. I saw a Dennis the Menace (the American one) strip once, where Dennis is playing with a black boy, and commenting on how “he’s just like me”. A progressive sentiment, to be sure… except the black boy is drawn in gollywog style.
I think that the artist ended up doing the same strip again, years later, except with the black boy drawn in the same style as everyone else in the strip.
Spike Lee reportedly did as well. In David Edelstein’s great review of Bamboozled (I mean, it’s a well-written review, the movie didn’t work for him), he has this terrific observation: “Lee was apparently inspired to return to this scenario by reports of how few African-American writers there are in network TV—an injustice that sent him back to his apparently immense collection of stereotypical Negro memorabilia. It’s tempting to compare him to Batman—a man who becomes a superheroic avenger by keeping his sense of injury alive.”
The TV show Timewasters is about a group of Black Londoners going back in time to the 1920s and becoming a hit as a jazz band, playing jazz versions of songs like “Hey Ya!” and “Return of the Mack”.
At one point, one of them (the dumb guy) says “Hey look, they even made action figures out of us!” and he holds up a handful of golliwog dolls. I just about lost it!