Golliwog For Sale at a Thai Festival
First published November 2010
It is November and a spiritual festival for the Thai Buddhist community is taking place and the human consciousness is evolving. People are floating fresh flowers and candles in the lake of the Buddhapadipa temple in Wimbledon. Prayers are being made at the foot of the Buddha statue. There are stalls selling cultural products which range from Thai food to stuffed toys. Visitors and locals have come to experience the event. It is a picture of national pride and spiritual unity and to my surprise in the far corner of this idyllic backdrop hangs a stuffed toy… it’s a golliwog!!!
Golliwog Shock!
My first reaction upon seeing the golliwogs being sold was to grab up all of the dolls, throwing them at the vendor selling them — including anybody who found the golliwog amusing. I chose instead to maintain my dignity and decided it would be best to just leave. Sensitive to the needs of my family I ushered them away from the festival before they caught sight of it. I took a snapshot of the toy and I was out of there like a shot.
Golliwog: A Beloved Cultural Artefact
The controversial doll has been the subject of much public debate regarding its symbolism with many people arguing that the golliwog was and still is a harmless piece of childhood memorabilia. Thousands of pages can be found on the web defending the Golliwog with many of them dedicated to promoting and selling the doll. The Golliwog was a childhood favourite and was second only to the teddy bear and attempts to ban the toy has served only as a fuel to preserve its existence. Golly dolls as they have become known today have become something of a legacy with collectors willing to pay hundreds of pounds for the rare doll.
Golliwog: A Sadistic History
The Golliwog has its roots in the dark era of the transatlantic slave trade and the Golliwog became popular after bestselling author Enid Blyton published the book “the three golliwogs”. The book was a story about three Golliwogs called Golly, Woggie and Nigger, who decided to go off on an adventure arm in arm singing the childhood poem 10 little nigger boys. Ten little nigger boys was a popular poem, which celebrated the deaths of ten black children.
“Three little nigger boys walking in the Zoo; a big bear hugged one and then there were two. Two little nigger boys sitting in the sun; one got frizzled up and then there was one. One little nigger boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were none.”
The Golliwog doll came under a lot of scrutiny as people argued that the toys were an offensive depiction of Black people. The Golliwog present at the festival was newly manufactured and had all the hallmarks of the original doll; the red cloth diaper, exaggerated large red lips and an African necklace. However the depiction went one step further with the placement of shackles around its hand and feet. It was deeply disturbing and as I watched people laughing at the toy I couldn’t help wondering whether the seller had just seriously overlooked the connotations of this toy or whether this was a deliberate attempt to make a mockery of a painful past.
Conclusion
Although slavery is long over, the legacy of it lives on and runs through the veins of the human consciousness. It is the root cause of a lot of humanities inability to get together and work side by side in harmony with one another. The doll serves as reminder of a terrible past and further more it undermines the confidence of the Black race acting as a tool of degradation. The image of the Golliwog serves to psychologically damage the image that Black people hold of themselves. Although this collective lack of esteem is not exclusive to the Black race other cultures that uphold theses negative stereotypes of Black people only serve to further undermine the confidence of a race.
How can society genuinely attempt to heal itself when negative images of people of colour still filter into the average Black person’s experiences? People that celebrate the Golliwog do so out of ignorance and perhaps naivety but whatever the defence for the doll may be, the only remaining conclusion that can be drawn is that the Golliwog is intrinsically and undeniably a reminder of a very dark era in human history.
