Category Archives: history

the result

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I think that the reality and the dichotomy that this photo depict are the result of the racist advertising we’ve been discussing.

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This photo also leads me to question whether or not I think that all advertising is racist.  I understand that whites are still the “majority” (for now), but I think it’s undeniable that it’s presented to the masses as an exclusive club.  The club has privileges.  In my opinion, that billboard could be deemed racist even without the people standing in line before it.  The truth of the matter is that if you look like the people in that car the sky’s the limit, you can achieve the highest standard of living, it’ll be grand.  If you look like the people in the line, you will serve those in the car.  At best you will strive to be like them, struggle for what they take for granted.  That’s just the way things are.  The people in the car deserve the best, the people in the line deserve the rest.  Just because.  That’s what this country has been advertising for years.  Under the guise of all men are created equal, liberty and justice for all, &  land of the free they’ve been pushing the opposite.  They’ve sold and we’ve bought.  Another truth is that we are all slaves to the notions, images, dogmas passed down and regurgitated through the years.  It’s everywhere. Books, film, television, magazines, packaging, newspapers.  It kind of seems normal.  This country could be so great.  It was founded on wonderful ideals and beautiful words, but without the actions to create the reality dreamt of.  It’s still a dream.  I think we can achieve it.  But first there has to be widespread acknowledgement of the dogma and it’s major flaws and then we have to fix our thinking.  Free our minds.

ten little what!?

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Not done with Golly yet.  When I first looked into what the heck that was, I was led to a website for collectors of Golly memorabilia.  I saw Golly as a doctor, an astrounaut, all sorts of things, so I thought “Maybe he isn’t really racist because he doesn’t seem to be held back by his color or regulated to a station of servitude.  He’s achieving things.”  Short-lived thought, for next i was led to this site http://www.golliwogg.co.uk/racism.htm

For the past four decades Europeans have debated whether the Golliwog is a lovable icon or a racist symbol. In the 1960s relations between Blacks and Whites in England were often characterised by conflict. This racial antagonism resulted from many factors, including: the arrival of increasing numbers of coloured immigrants; minorities’ unwillingness to accommodate themselves to old patterns of racial and ethnic subordination; and, the fear among many Whites that England was losing its national character. British culture was also influenced by images – often brutal – of racial conflict occurring in the United States.

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

Ten Little Niggers 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 Niggers was also the name of a 1939 Agatha Christie novel, whose cover showed a Golliwog lynched, hanging from a noose.

 

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By-Frickin’-Golly

golly

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At first I was just going to post this photo as something I don’t like.  Why on earth are these white people wearing sambo on their sweaters?  Homemade sweaters at that!  Then I figured I should look into this.  Oh boy!  This is Golly.  You could buy this pattern today on ebay.  Golly began as golliwogg in Florence Kate Upton’s 1895 book “The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwogg.” Upton, a native New Yorker, first describes him as “a horrid sight, the blackest gnome.”  He was a caricature of American black faced minstrels – in effect, the caricature of a caricature. The book became very popular in England and thirteen books featuring Golliwogg were published.  Then they began making rag dolls. During the first half of the twentieth century, the Golliwog doll was a favourite children’s soft toy in Europe. Only the Teddy Bear exceeded the Golliwog in popularity.

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Small children slept with their black dolls. Many White Europeans still speak with nostalgic sentiment about their childhood gollies. Now onto Robertson’s. The Golliwog is inextricably linked with the famous English preserves company, James Robertson & Sons. Robertson’s Jams has been using the smiling Golliwog as its logo since the 1920s until it was discontinued in 2001. Despite much criticism during the 1960s and ’70s, they simply changed their logo’s name to ‘Golly’, and continued to stand by their trusty mascot. Consequently, the collecting of Robertson’s Golly memorabilia is a hobby in itself, with a vast array of promotional material and items to be collected.


http://www.golliwogg.co.uk/history.htm

a little more racist advertising…

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And here I was thinking that Bull Durham was just a baseball movie with Susan Sarandon (love, love, love) and Kevin Costner.

 
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I guess that’s the best they could come up with.  I’ve always thought of dentyne gum as sucking, so perhaps there were no other selling points.

little hans

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I love this story! I did a google search hoping to find big Hans, but came up empty handed.  I wonder how the rest of his school years went….

Little Hans

Monday, Sep. 22, 1952

In Munich one morning last week, a little boy named Hans Koegel appeared at the doorway of the Schule in der Blu-menstrasse and nervously entered. Like other children arriving for the first day of school, he clung tightly to his mother, and it was not for several awkward moments that he finally relaxed enough to smile tentatively at his classmates. But even after he did so, his mother and teacher continued to watch him closely.

For several months, parents and teachers all over West Germany have been worried about children like Hans. He is a mulatto, one of some 3,000 who are starting to school for the first time. Almost all are the children of Negro G.I.s, and most are illegitimate. In a nation that still remembers the preachments of Hitler’s Master Race, they were expected to present something of a problem.

Last week, school principals waited worriedly for reports of discrimination or childish cruelty. But as the first days passed, there was only silence. Not one child was singled out for teasing because of his color; not one teacher refused to work in mixed classes; not one Nordic mother took her own child out of school in protest.

As for little Hans, he had become something of a tease himself. His victim: a young towhead by the name of Tűrauf, which Hans thinks is howlingly funny. Tűrauf means “Open the door.”

 

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speaking of…

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…the “white man’s burden”….

Remember that movie of the same name with John Travolta and Harry Belafonte? If I recall correctly, I liked it. I think the film was intended to be thought-provoking, leading us to ponder what it would be like if the tables were turned and maybe even to point to the absurdity of the race game in America. But  I also remember being kinda horrified thinking, “If this was the reality of the race chain, with blacks on top and whites on the bottom, I’d still be royally screwed!”

I did a google image search for  “white man’s burden” and here’s what I found…

 

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Outrageous! Like, I’m literally in an outrage. How about we paint the real story and depict the black men and women carrying the pious white people on their backs while they till the fields and pick the cotton in the hot sun with little nourishment all the while making the white man richer, fatter, heavier!  I think Kara Walker got it right…

 

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