Y'all know about these things, right? They were extremely racist dolls given to white children, particularly in Britain. The dolls were coal black with giant white eyes and thick red lips. I made a post about the problematic depiction of a black man, Mr. Popo, in Dragon Ball and how he looks exactly like a gollywog except he's wearing a turban. Which somehow makes it worse. Hence why I'm now making this thread.

Well, a while back TERF island had a struggle session over gollywogs because some people just can't admit that they were a mistake. "I let my children play with my gollywog dolls, I wasn't perpetuating racism" and all sorts of slop in that vein. This was in the late aughts, I wasn't on twitter back then so I have no idea if there were twitter fights but there were editorials in papers and discussion about it on message boards.

The point is: Some fucking wretch who used to have tea parties with her gollywogs is the same one posting on twitter about Trans people accessing the correct bathroom. I guaran-fucking-tee you. Remember that fact always when they try to bully our comrades over pronouns or whatever new thing they can't start doing because they can't incriminate their own past because it hurts their fucking feelings. They don't want to learn how to be right, they want to just be right, and you could pour an ocean into the chasm between those two things.

And for the record I grew up with Raggedy Anne and Raggedy Andy, but its cool because the Irish don't have souls so those dolls were extremely accurate.

  • TheDeed [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I’m black And I didn’t even learn about those racist ass dolls until I saw Tales From the Hood 2 (I DO NOT recommend this movie, extremely shitty and a waste of time but I was really high)

    Did know about Lil Sambos though, you’re right. Times change but reactionaries dont, it’s always some new excuse to be a piece of shit and halt social progress.

    • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      They actually made a sequel to Tales From the Hood? What a time to be alive lmao

      Thanks for the warning, I am sure my dumb nostalgia poisoned brain would have given it a watch if I saw it on TV or something (I'm looking at you, Starship Troopers 2, I'll never get those hours back)

    • maverick [they/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      In July 2018, a YouGov poll asked 1,660 Britons whether it was "racist to sell or display a golliwog doll", to which a 63% responded "No", 20% "Yes", and 17% "I'm Not Sure".

      :UK-cool:

  • OPisalib [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    They're called gollies in Australia and they're a central part of the culture in rural and regional areas - partially because everyone there is over 50 years old. Arts and crafts festivals regularly hand the gold, silver and bronze to gollies in different mediums. Dolls obviously, but also paintings, tapestries, poetry, foods, songs, you name it. It is by far the unifying cultural touchstone among boomer wasps.

    • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      I had no idea they were so big in Australia too, thanks for that info. They really are an Anglo touchstone, aren't they?

  • crime [she/her, any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    never heard of them before now, just looked 'em up and hooooooly fuck

    how the shit do people not look at those and think "hmm, better not?"

  • bananon [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    “Golliwogg’s Cakewalk”by Debussy is an academic standard in music.

    https://youtu.be/tnkBhv5WsRw