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#1560398
Being serious for a moment, there is a lovely old Latin phrase that I first heard on Yes, Minister. "Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis". Roughly means, times change and we change with them. As Mercian Marcus and Aerbabe have noted, golliwogs weren't really associated with racism back in my youth, where the society we lived in back then wasn't really that much of a multiracial society. I also used to like collecting the golliwog badges from jam jar labels.

However, times have moved on, and the society has moved on as well. It is definitely easy now to see how golliwogs can give offence, and, as Mercian Marcus points out, we need to be sensitive to that fact.

I don't think Britain is an especially racist country. Of course, there are racists in Britain, but far and away the vast majority are not, and find it quite unacceptable. As I have mentioned, my wife is of a different race, and I have observed carefully her treatment here. Frankly, I can't point to even one example where she has received any real racial discrimination in the time she has been here. Quite the contrary. She has been welcomed and treated with respect by pretty much everyone.

Evidencing a study that concludes that people of certain very broad demographic categories are less sensitive to the golliwog issue is, in my opinion, unwise, even if there is some statistical evidence to support it. It is unwise because it infers that people in those categories are more likely to be racist, but, as there are so very few truly racist people in this country, it is much more likely to offend more people who are in those demographic groups who find racism unacceptable than it is to hit real targets. Utilising such studies to make a point that golliwogs are offensive is to apply somewhat of a double standard if you wantonly choose to ignore the inherent offensiveness of such a scattergun approach.

That people who didn't live in the age of golliwogs find them an offensive symbol is right and proper. However, not being willing to see them in the context of the day is being somewhat narrow minded and unfair.
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By skydriller
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1560403
Chris Martyr wrote:Having recently just returned from the Middle East , I can tell you that we are probably one of the most tolerant and least racist countries in the world .


Not half!!! As someone currently in a Very Sandy Place I know exactly what you are talking about... :shock:

Regards, SD..
By johnm
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#1560414
I have not researched the history of Golliwogs (or Gollywogs). We did have one in the family but since it didn't look like a human, we didn't consider it to have any human connotations, it was just a Golliwog and was played with rather like any other soft toy.

We also collected the badges associated with Robertson's jams and marmalade.

I'd not have one around now as it carries baggage since the advent of political correctness, but I must get round to researching their origins.

I too suffered the black and white minstrel show and didn't consider that racist either, just a form of entertainment and dressing up like many others.
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By mick w
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1560435
AerBabe wrote:
Gas Guzzler wrote:My wife has a Black doll, she's had it from childhood. She also has a White doll also for more years than I care to remember. Which one indicates if she has racist tendencies?


Similarly, my cousin specifically asked for a black doll when he was a toddler. A male black doll. My aunt really struggled to find one! I very much doubt that meant that he was/is racist.

Golliwogs to me are just a reminder of marmalade and jam at my grandad's house when we were kids. They're just a character.

Next thing, it will be racist to have a black or chocolate lab rather than a yellow one...


There's often a black one in the Bar at the Dambusters in Scampton , I always say hello Nigger to him , maybe others whisper it ?. :wink:
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By PeteSpencer
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#1560450
My wife has an enormous collection of golliwogs dating back to her childhood .She still receives the occasional one, usually made by relatives.

Our grand daughter absolutely loves them..........

Peter :wink:
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By OCB
#1560452
I had a Golly. I loved him to bits.

His fantastic smile, his crimson red jacket. He had great thick cloth "hair" until my sociopath of an older brother chopped it all off.

Even then I loved that doll.

Coming from a North Lanarkshire small town that, in the early 70s, had *no* ethnically coloured people - but plenty of mine and steel workers (end of shift..you get the picture) - I have and will continue to stick my neck out and defend my love of that wee cloth filled doll.

I have incredibly good friends who are afro-carribean, and have shown that 3 generations back they were slaves... to families that continue today to do well in the British financial and political world. They have no problem with the dolls, if they're loved and respected. I can't think of one single instance in my childhood where skin colour was a "problem". We were far too busy knocking the living sheet out of each other as our elders told us that being Proddy or Fenian was the source of all evil... :roll:

I have gotten myself into trouble with a friend who is a reasonably well regarded international journalist of Indian origin. Even though I can demonstrate without doubt that there was "anti-coloured" racism within certain quarters of British population- there seems to be no demarkation line that says the rest of the UK *wasnt* like that.

The irony is, she grew up in India. Not exactly the most egalitarian of societies.
Her husband is Northern Irish - and we've both plenty of stories of being of the receiving end of blatant, and sometimes violent (even fatal) tribalism.

I know this will never be resolved on this forum, and the whole "emotional offence" concept revolves around it.

Respect.
Is it something earned -

or something demanded.
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By Rob L
#1560468
Spooky wrote:My nan's neighbour made a golliwog for me when I was born. I found the grin a bit creepy to be honest!


The golliwog's or the neighbour's? :shock:

..and just how long after you were born did you decide the grin was a bit creepy? One day? Ten years? Adulthood? :?:

(Should we call you Creepy instead of Spooky from now on? :D )
By Spooky
#1560479
Rob L wrote:
Spooky wrote:My nan's neighbour made a golliwog for me when I was born. I found the grin a bit creepy to be honest!


The golliwog's or the neighbour's? :shock:

..and just how long after you were born did you decide the grin was a bit creepy? One day? Ten years? Adulthood? :?:

(Should we call you Creepy instead of Spooky from now on? :D )


Both if I'm honest, the neighbour had very few teeth :lol:

The girls at school called me creepy :cry:
By Paultheparaglider
#1560500
chevvron wrote:Shortly after I started at Farnborough, Robertson's bought a Navajo which did a daily run from Bristol to Gatwick. Registered G-OLLY, we all referred to it as 'Golly', including the pilot.


There was also G-OLLI:

http://www.bbml.org.uk/envelopes/g-olli/

This was a popular sight in the Bristol / Bath area at one time.

And G-OLLE which is still owned by a member of the Robertson family:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ballo ... IIPQK28hgM:

http://www.gollycorner.co.uk/gollyballpix.htm
By Bill Haddow
#1560526
Chris Martyr wrote:Our country has been greatly enriched by the people who have shared their culture , their customs and their culinary skills with us,,,,[and walloped us at cricket].


"Our" ?? "walloped us" ??

Reminds me of the punchline to that Lone Ranger joke "What's with the 'we' , paleface?"

Bill H
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By Bill Haddow
#1560530
Cessna57 wrote:a number of people of colour (if that's today's term)


In Treasure Island (written mid 1880s), RLS makes 2 references to Long John Silver's wife. In the first reference he calls her a "Negress" while in the second he calls her a "woman of colour", so the term has been around for quite a while.

Bill H
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By Rob P
#1560534
Just in passing Leia, are you also offended by this?



It is, after all a caricature of a racial group. Openly for sale on the internet

Rob P
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By Bert Presley
#1560537
mick w wrote:There's often a black one in the Bar at the Dambusters in Scampton , I always say hello Nigger to him , maybe others whisper it ?.


I recall watching, for probably the hundredth time, 'The Dambusters' film on TV during the 1990s-ish.

In one scene, Guy Gibson (Richard Todd) calls his dog:

'Come here...' - hiss of badly-done voice overdub - '...Prince'.
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By AerBabe
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1560555
Rob - that doll is hideous! What's going on with its eyes? Looks like something out of Dr Who.