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Golliwog in the window - should this really be in court?

Wilf said:
I don't agree with Riklet, but equally don't think it's useful to read off the 39% as active racists, plain and simple. Don't get me wrong, 'gollywogs' are unambiguously racist and when it comes to defending them, we are getting into something that walks like a duck, talks like a duck etc. But there will be no doubt be a small % who have barely twigged the connotation, along with a bigger proportion of the 39% who see this as a battle about something else ('woke', an attack on 'our' culture and the rest). Not surprising that the biggest overlap is with Brexit voting. All of that is deeply troubling and yes, racist. For another thread, but the failure of the left is in there, with the abandonment of equality and failure to combat neoliberalism. 39% racists, well, yes, kind of, but lots of other stuff in play.

Probably doesn't need to be said, but the vile racists in the pub, along with their routinised sexual assaults are very different.
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yep this. But mostly that survey result made me wonder about how far some people are seemingly ready to go motivated only by this desire to push back against whatever they mean by 'wokeness", its a kind of radicalisation that's happening.
 
The Don Bar in Stockton was bad enough with its obsession with veterans and a ceiling filled with poppies. Naturally a fash magnet but even they weren’t daft enough to stoop to golliwogs.
 
beesonthewhatnow said:
Christ almighty.

Anyone, literally fucking anyone, defending or trying to give context to a golly doll in this day and age is one of three things, nothing more, nothing less.

1 - Stupid
2 - Racist
3 - Stupid and racist.

Fucks sake.
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so that's 3/4 of people who voted leave then. I don't know, think its kind of more complicated & probably in a way worse than that tbh, i think people are saying they don't think its racist, when they know perfectly well that it is, for reasons.
 
I can imagine why there might be < 1% of survey respondents who don't think it's racist - they are the very elderly people who were given a toy like this as a toddler and loved it and are horrified by what it turned out to be when they realised what it represented. They didn't see it as a racist thing when they were 3 and didn't know anything about these issues, it was just a soft thing to cuddle. So they might respond it's not racist on the basis that they feel embarrassed about having one as a kid and feel they would be branding themselves as racist by saying it is racist. And they desperately try to not be racist (which is not a bad thing, if it means people are thinking about the issues and care about it).

That doesn't account for the other larger % of fuckwits.
 
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There's a big difference by age. Only 10% of 18-24 year olds think it's acceptable, and only 13% think it's not racist. Half don't know. They probably don't know what a golliwog is.

If I'm really searching for positives from this poll, very few people combine the opinion that it is racist with the opinion that it is acceptable. The Woke have won that small battle, perhaps. Most people don't think being racist is acceptable, even when they're a bit racist themselves. :D

Screenshot 2023-04-13 at 19.37.21.png
 
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littlebabyjesus said:
There's a big difference by age. Only 10% of 18-24 year olds think it's acceptable, and only 13% think it's not racist. Half don't know. They probably don't know what a golliwog is.

If I'm really searching for positives from this poll, very few people combine the opinion that it is racist with the opinion that it is acceptable. The Woke have won that small battle, perhaps. Most people don't think being racist is acceptable, even when they're a bit racist themselves. :D

View attachment 370522
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That is fucking shocking from any age bracket tbf.

I do get that some people might not know what the fuck is being asked. But not everyone in all those age brackets.
That is fucking shocking, are some of the older people who were asked still holding a torch for Robertson's jam?
I hate being a person sometimes, people can be fucking shit.
 
LDC said:
No, that wasn't what I said or thought, and yes the question is open to some interpretation (although 'sell' is less ambiguous and is part of the same question) but given it being in the news so much I'd suspect that is the context most would have been thinking of.

FWIW I rarely think it's useful to categorise someone as racist (or sexist etc.), even when they're expressing racist thoughts or ideas.
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Yes fair enough and it was probably a stupid thing for me to write really. I guess it's just so many people I am disinclined to believe there are so many racists like this horrible pub lot...
 
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Riklet said:
Yes fair enough and it was probably a stupid thing for me to write really. I guess it's just so many people I am disinclined to believe there are so many racists like this horrible pub lot...
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I think people are complicated, and it's possible for them to have some racist views and not think they're racists themselves. I also think it's possible to have some bits of racist ideology, and sometimes even behaviour, in ones life and not be just a terrible person more generally.

Like I said I do prefer to stay away from calling people racists and naming the attitudes and behaviours as racist, I think it's politically more useful and opens up people to changing their ideas more ime. But accept not everyone thinks that, and totally agree there are also times when it's fine to call someone a racist more clearly.
 
Yes people are complicated, but fucks sake I tell my mother off for being racist and anti-immigration at the dinner table when she spouts that racist shit in front of my mixed race nephews. I want to show them those views are wrong and should be challenged no matter who says them.
 
Magnus McGinty said:
Racists definitely know they’re racist. It’s a bit like putting bacon on mosques. No ordinary person would do that. In my almost 50 years on the planet I can honestly say I’ve never met anyone that owns a golliwog to my knowledge or them coming up in conversation in any other context than racism (at least after they were removed from jam jars).
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I had one as a young kid, but, well, given where I grew up that's not terribly surprising. If I still had it I doubt I'd throw it away because I loved that toy when I was a kid, but I also wouldn't have it out on display even in my own home. Continuing to own a childhood toy with bad connotations wouldn't show that someone was racist, IMO, though I could understand if people disagreed (and would be open to changing my mind). Displaying it almost certainly would. Displaying it in a pub 100% definitely would be racist and there's no changing my mind about that. Displaying it being hanged like in a lynching is really fucking vile racism.

(They were not there the one time I went to that pub).
 
Magnus McGinty said:
The Don Bar in Stockton was bad enough with its obsession with veterans and a ceiling filled with poppies. Naturally a fash magnet but even they weren’t daft enough to stoop to golliwogs.
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Poppy fetishism on display is a decent forewarning of what to expect.
So, as gross as it is, if someones displaying a golly, they may as well have a sign up that says, ‘caution, racist cunt!’ Decent of them to label themselves so we can avoid them.
 
scifisam said:
I had one as a young kid, but, well, given where I grew up that's not terribly surprising. If I still had it I doubt I'd throw it away because I loved that toy when I was a kid, but I also wouldn't have it out on display even in my own home. Continuing to own a childhood toy with bad connotations wouldn't show that someone was racist, IMO, though I could understand if people disagreed (and would be open to changing my mind). Displaying it almost certainly would. Displaying it in a pub 100% definitely would be racist and there's no changing my mind about that. Displaying it being hanged like in a lynching is really fucking vile racism.

(They were not there the one time I went to that pub).
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Mum hoards, as did my nan. Mum has been giving me stuff to ebay including boxes of very old childrens books from the 40’s, 50’s even older. I binned the books with gollies in without a thought. There was a doll, too, in the bin it went.
 
pinkmonkey said:
Mum hoards, as did my nan. Mum has been giving me stuff to ebay including boxes of very old childrens books from the 40’s, 50’s even older. I binned the books with gollies in without a thought. There was a doll, too, in the bin it went.
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Oh fuck yeah, you can't pass those things on to someone else.

Don't think your Mum was racist for owning one, assuming it was given to her as a kid rather than something she sought out.
 
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I don’t know if anyone recalls an object that I gather was quite common in some households in the 20s/30s, so would have been inherited by boomers/Gen X folk like most of us on here are - the Jolly Boy money box? I didn’t know it was called that when I saw it as a kid but my aunt and uncle had one which I was both horrified and fascinated by. My younger brother and sister are adopted and are black, so this is even weirder to recall - I’ve only just remembered it now tbh.
I don’t want to post a picture of it as it is so horrible but I’ve googled it and it of course is available on Etsy/eBay etc as a vintage curio.
It’s way worse than a golliwog. This stuff persists you know. And it shouldn’t.

(btw the last time I was in the Trinity Arms in Brixton, they had a set of porcelain dolls of a jazz band with caricatured grotesque faces of the black musicians depicted. This was only about a decade ago. This sort of shit is still relevant)
 
Orang Utan said:
I don’t know if anyone recalls an object that I gather was quite common in some households in the 20s/30s, so would have been inherited by boomers/Gen X folk like most of us on here are - the Jolly Boy money box? I didn’t know it was called that when I saw it as a kid but my aunt and uncle had one which I was both horrified and fascinated by. My younger brother and sister are adopted and are black, so this is even weirder to recall - I’ve only just remembered it now tbh.
I don’t want to post a picture of it as it is so horrible but I’ve googled it and it of course is available on Etsy/eBay etc as a vintage curio.
It’s way worse than a golliwog. This stuff persists you know. And it shouldn’t.
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Yeah, they were fucking horrible. I remember somebody in the family having one, or a neighbour perhaps, when I was very young. Maybe mid/late 60s.
 
scifisam said:
I had one as a young kid, but, well, given where I grew up that's not terribly surprising. If I still had it I doubt I'd throw it away because I loved that toy when I was a kid, but I also wouldn't have it out on display even in my own home. Continuing to own a childhood toy with bad connotations wouldn't show that someone was racist, IMO, though I could understand if people disagreed (and would be open to changing my mind). Displaying it almost certainly would. Displaying it in a pub 100% definitely would be racist and there's no changing my mind about that. Displaying it being hanged like in a lynching is really fucking vile racism.

(They were not there the one time I went to that pub).
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Full disclosure. Had one as a kid and there was a class or several where our teacher got us to make our own dolls. She wouldn't refer to them as g******s, though and told us that the word wasn't a nice one. Very strange. This was a long, long time ago in Ireland.

Fast forward to Brighton, 20 years ago, and there's a premises on the pier that sells them. Obviously by then, was well aware of what they stood for and was shocked to see them, after all this time.

Was the seller a racist? Or a collector? It just felt so wrong.
 
Orang Utan said:
Robertson’s Golliwog branding continued til 2002. Dunno why I should be surprised by that.
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I remember it being rebranding - I seem to recall lots of complaining about it, but Robertson's were adamant the branding was long overdue for a change.

It's been sold a few timrs, currently owned by Hain Celestial Group (US).
 
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