Oct. 15 2009 - 11:50 am | 871 views | 0 recommendations | 0 comments

The blackface backlash continues: Golliwogs removed from store shelves

Racist? Waddya mean, mate?

Lord knows I’m not the most racially sensitive man in the world. If the joke doesn’t come at someone’s offense, I’m unlikely to laugh. Still. Even I’m made uncomfortable by golliwogs, those Sambo-stylee dolls whose big fat lips, wide white eyes and eager smiles have made generations of white people feel better about the savage dark races. In Australia, the Hey Hey It’s Saturday blackface dust-up is causing some to question the doll’s place on toy store shelves. From the Herald Sun:

GOLLIWOGS have become a touchy subject since the Hey Hey It’s Saturday blackface controversy.

One specialist store in Melbourne has banished them to the back shelves…

Dafel – which has sold dolls and soft toys in the Block Arcade for more than 70 years – has moved its golliwog display to the back of its store.Staff declined to comment when asked about the move and refused to sell a $95 golliwog to the Herald Sun.

Security then swooped to order a reporter and photographer from the premises.

But Diarne Revelle, who runs Golliwog’s Toy Store in Brighton, stood up for the little “scallywags”.

“Kids aren’t racist and they don’t relate to their dolls as being black or white,” she said. “We are imposing adult sensibilities on childish desire and fancy. Kids aren’t racists. Golliwogs to them are bright, friendly toys, dolls.” – scallywags.”

No one is saying children shouldn’t play with dolls of different colors. By all means, encourage little Prudence to push a dark-skinned baby around in her carriage. (Just cross your fingers it’s not a foreshadow of her teenage years, eh?) But golliwogs are a different thing altogether. First off, not unlike nigger, the word golliwog is an outright slur; its abbreviated form, wog, propelled the Chk Chk Boom Girl to an ironic fame earlier this year.

As dolls, they’re reflections of the 19th century sensibility that created them. Described in Florence Kate Upton’s originating book, The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwogg, the golliwog is “a horrid sight, the blackest gnome.” That he turns out to be friendly is exactly why the dolls are racist. Black people aren’t friendly. At least not when they’re behind a desk, staffing a security line or working at the post office. To betray their god-given right to be angry and full of hate toward whitey is doing their race a disservice.

Oh har har har. But really, it’s time to relegate golliwogs to the status of cultural artifact.

Golliwogs banished after Hey Hey It’s Saturday blackface row | News.com.au.