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Whether or not golliwogs were ever intended to be racist, they have been understood to be so for some time because they were used to insult black immigrants when they started coming to the UK & so they stopped being popular toys when I was little.
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Someone could put one in a window as a racist provocation or they could just have had the toy for a long time and kept it there. Either way, they shouldn't be arrested for it.
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That's pretty rough. Some real Song of the South tar-baby stuff, there.
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I don't know what that is.
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It was a Disney cartoon from the 40s. It's where the characters Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit are from, and what the Splash Mountain rides are based on. There is a trick played on Brer Rabbit by making a "tar baby", which is considered rather racist now.pic.twitter.com/cHbz4jYhVb
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That's not a golliwog. Golly was a gnome in 19th century kids books and remained a popular toy. Best known from Enid Blyton books and being on Robertson Jam.
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Oh, sorry! You were telling me what a tar baby is.
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No worries. I think in general some aspects of white-black race relations don't translate well from the US to UK/Europe. See also the offense many in the US take to Zwarte Piet. Both this and that look very similar to racist depictions of blacks from minstrel shows.
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They were on display in a shop window on a certain island off England's south coast, when i visited a few years back, I was a little taken aback
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I think most older people still see golliwogs as an old-fashioned toy - mischievous but goodhearted gnomes - and don't see them as intended to represent black people insultingly. But this connection has been made now.
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I got the very distinct impression from my friends who lived there that this wasn't an generational issue, but more of an anti-PC stance
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What is? Older people genuinely often aren't up on the PC changes and haven't started seeing golliwogs as problematic.
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I mean I was told that it was an older person who had put it in the window unaware of the symbolism, although that is an anecdote
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A shop in Rye sells them every summer, usually generating a story in the guardian or some such. I'm pretty sure she does it just for the publicity.
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Has Enid Blyton been banned in the UK now?
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I would call this an example of something that is "retroactively racist": Something that isn't originally intended to be racist, but gets a racist connotation because of the way it's used.
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