Golliwog, Totem and Taboo

Pat

You may feel guilty about something that you didn't do but that's your privelidge. I'm far from clear what white people are supposed to feel guilty about- other than failing to be saints and only being about fifty years ahead of everyone else instead of two hundred.
A golliwog is a cute cuddly toy (alright used as villain by one author) and if anyone is more than midly upset by the analogy they ought to grow up. Else I'll have to call them teddy bears.
If there is any offence it is in implying that just because of the colour of his/her skin a person is incapable of dealing with such a trifle - just like us honkeys do.

Nick Kaplan

I don’t understand the view that white people today must pay for the mistakes of their ancestors. Isn’t this idea of guilt inherited by an entire race itself racist? At the very least it is a load of nonsense.

I come from a Jewish family, I also happen to have a lot of German friends, do I expect them to be ultra cautious because of the mistakes of their parents and grandparents... No, because I have better things to worry about than taking offence at things where no harm was intended. People really must grow up and get out of this whole PC mindset.

egh

Suppose we just ban the word racism and try to be decent to other human beings?

BTW - I resent the judgement wrought upon us by all the commie bastards: that all white people are inherently guilty of racism. The decons and postcolonialist theorists have been having a free for all: and hardly a one of 'em ever experienced being colonized. In fact, if they want to - they'd better try being a non-commie Brit right now.

Let God be the Judge.

I've read the Speccie all my life. I have a feeling that's about to change - Talk about black and white and red all over!!!

Verity

"This response is an evasion of a complex reality."

No. No evasion. The lefties don't expect to be challenged, and when they are, they pin "complex reality" on the subject. Every Labourite town hall in Britain knows to do this.

The Gollywogs Liberation Army

Tea Hobson

''I am expressing white liberal guilt, I think that British whites do inherit a burden of guilt.''

I dont, the slave trade was 200 years ago, the sins of the father shouldnt be put on to the children, the British navy stopped the slave trade. The Arabs were the original slave traders , I dont see them guilt ridden. This is all about the black victimhood industry helped by guilt ridden liberals.

How far are we going to back, are we going to sue Italy for the crimes of the Roman Empire, feeding Christian to lions ?

Lenny

"For whites in post-colonial cultures, racism is a post-religious form of original sin, something we know to be in our DNA and ought to repent of."

Personally, I'd rather be called 'golliwog' than be subjected to this kind of creepy moral conceit.

Mark

It was not serious racism. Serious racism is very nasty and not just a matter of using taboo words.

But it was wrong; very wrong.

Those who seek to play down what Miss Thatcher did have only one good point: the reaction of the BBC to her error was out of all proportion to its reaction to the offences of the likes of Jonathan Ross. However, even that point is undermined by Miss Thatcher's refusal to make a full, unequivocal apolgy.

You stuff about whites in post-colonial cultures and original sin is just nonsense though.

strapworld

Racism is not just Black and White. The West Indies is riddled with racism of Island against Island. The cast system in India is racist, Indians and Pakistanis is a racist problem -linked to religion.

Slavery, for which Blair apologised!! was stopped by White Englishmen, but we did not start it. Africans enslaved Africans and it is still going on!

In the Middle ages this country, especially West Country Coastal Towns and villages, were constantly raided by African Boats and men women and children taken back to Africa as slaves! - Strange that our schools do not teach that fact!
It is about time that we woke up from our slumbers and stood up for ourselves. I suppose I will be labelled racist for this! But I am not.

I collected golliwogs from Roberstons Jam and got the badges! I bought a gollywog key fob yesterday. I have Black family members who I love.I have black/brown friends who I care for, AM I RACIST?

I am Lancastrian, but poke fun at Tikes. We English poke fun, sarcastic fun,hurtful fun, at the Welsh, Irish, Scots etc. and most of the Counties in our beloved Country. They, in turn, give as good as is given.

We are being beaten down by people with no humour, beaten down by people with huge chips on their shoulders.We are to blame for every ill in the world.

Do I have to beg forgiveness for being a white man

For goodness sake let us rediscover our sanity before we lose our identity - to what?

Bernard O'Reilley

1. Most people hadn't the faintest idea that random words such as "golliwog" were outlawed.
2. I've never come across "white guilt" and believe it to be a myth. I dare say whites feel as guilty about slavery as blacks feel about mugging or Jews feel about MaxwellMadoff etc.

Hawkeye

Good grief - what a load of twaddle. I certainly don't suffer any "white liberal guilt". If you're looking for quasi-religious guilt then I suugest you read Ezekial 18:20 "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son". Children are not responsible for the crimes of their parents.

I notice that you skipped merrily over another issue - the European slavers bought their slaves from an *established* slave trade in Africa. Wikipedia even has a map showing the interanl african slave trade of the 13th century http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_slave_trade

A bit more balance please.

Bob

Who's going to feel guilty about my great grandmother working from the age of eight and my grandmother working from the age of fourteen in t' mill?

Most 'ordinary' British people don't have to go too far back to find slaves in their own family and we're supposed to feel guilty about the money rich, evil bastards made two hundred years ago with the connivance of the then Government?

Most 'ordinary' people are still effectively slaves of some sort or another and there are still plenty of rich, evil bastards and frankly the Government doesn't seem to have changed much either, the troughing swine.

Faceless Bureaucrat

"Theo Hobson will be writing regularly on religion for Spectator.co.uk at Faith Based, The Spectator’s new religion blog."

Thank goodness - at least that will guarantee that few, if any, will read his sanctimonious twaddle again.

1. We're White

2. We are not ashamed of something that happened 200 years ago when none of us were alive.

3. Deal with it...

Here endeth the Sermon.

TrevorsDen

Indeed a typical load of "quasi religious" "twaddle".

As others have said - England abolished the slave trade and the Arab slave trade was the equivalent to a holocaust.

Why should we feel guilt?

What we have in reality is a silly remark which was leapt upon by a true bigot. A correct response should been 'oh come on Carol - you can't say things like that - don't be stupid' -at best!

Instead an ignorant political bigot gets on her high horse to constrain us all to only be happy with her own 'brand' of foul mouthed invective.

Thanks but no thanks.

Wilhelm

Liberal Hypocrisy in the Media Part 947

Channel 4 put out the odious Big Brother programme where Jade and 3 other trollops made abusive and racist remarks at Indian actress Shipla Shetty.

Then Channel 4 made some weasel words to get out of it like '' This shines a light on racism.''

Codswallop. Channel 4 loves it cos it gets ratings.

wonderfulforhisage

"some race terms are genuinely taboo, in the anthropological sense – they have a sort of magic power. They conjure up a whole mental attitude, a way of seeing the world."

What piffle. It's the listener who does the conjuring up. And what's more, as Carol's mother might have said "There is no such thing as 'British whites' just a collection of white individuals all with there own unique set of beliefs and values."

If you, Mr Hobson, want to believe that you somehow have a responsibility for the actions of others, in particular your ancestors, that's fine, but include me out.

Ian C

Golliwog, raghead, jungle bunny, are all as pejorative a term as Pommie bastard or Ros-bif. It is only that the latter are not used about dark or black skinned people.

Eyetie, Kraut, Frog, Yank and the derivations thereof that that are regularly used as a term of abuse about both individuals and/or the whole people but there is no ‘green room’ objection. It is only for the black or dark skinned that sensitivities abound – especially in the liberal white guilt complex. The world, especially the PC world of white state quangos,needs to grow up and get on with life as it is - not as their ageing consciences think it might be better if they did it differently.

Many blacks call each other "nigger" and they don't complain.

Ray

So is it racist to employ the word 'Frog' when referring to Frenchmen? Or is the word just a term of endearment, reflecting the centuries-old love-hate relationship that our two nations have enjoyed with each other?

Furthermore, is it made acceptable by the fact that the 'Frogs' give as good as they get (calling us 'Rosbifs', for example)?

If, however, some politically-correct 'Frog' started objecting to its use (given the implicit racist with which we English tend to condescendingly regard the French propensity to literally eat anything that moves, plus the fact that frogs are horrible, slimy green things) would that mean we could not longer employ it any more to describe our Gallic neighbours?

Would generations of English literature therefore have to be pulped in order to expunge this racist stain upon our national character?

Fergus Pickering

I replied to this in te middle of the night nd said I thought it was pretentious hogwash, or words to that effect. It's the middle of the morning and I still think so. In our DNA, indeed! Perhaps you will allow my comment this time.

oldtimer

This is twaddle, as others have already said.

You say "This is not a matter of 'political correctness', but of quasi-religious piety." After watching The Lives of Others over the weekend, I think what we really should be concerned about is the quasi-Stasi masquerading under the name of BBC.

mac

This is overblown hand-wringing, Theo. Save it for a Synod fringe meeting whose attendees aren't heartily sick of the threadbare victimhood meme.

chris

Theo should be more considerate of black people: how does he think they feel being made responsible for that monkey on his back?

Steve.W

Dear Mr Hobson,
You say - “Commentary on the Carol Thatcher business has been predictably superficial and self-righteous”. Having read your article, along with many others on this subject, I agree. I fail to see how religion or faith has any role here. Class warrior and Nulabour supporter Jo Brand got Carol Thatcher sacked from the BBC. And the price of golliwog enamelled badges sold on ebay is set to rise dramatically. I say again, absolutely nothing to do
with religion or faith. So not an auspicious start as a commentator on these subjects.

Fergus Pickering

Ah, but you're a GUARDIAN columnist. All is clear now. Mate of somebody are you? Ah well. Maybe you'll see the error of your ways after a short sojourn here. And, since you ask, I have never felt the slightest guilt for slavery. You see, I save my guilt for the things I have done and left undone. That's a quotation from the Preyer Book. You may have hard of it.

biggestaspidistra

This is horrible writing for all the reasons in the comments above and because of its use of 'one' ('one should refrain' who is this abstract 'pne') but mostly it is very scary for its belief in 'speech-rules' and its discouragement of 'dissent'.

Theo Hobson has to be a racist to have so many checks installed in his thinking process, there is no other explanation. Have we heard from a black person who has been offended, or is it just self flagellating white people telling us of their offence?

THX1138

Oh Ian C you really don't understand why black people use the "N" word with each other do you. Can you really be so racially blind?

This thread is very very sad, you should all be ashamed.

egh

THX - Ashamed of what? Having the gall to stand up to the Commie lies and distortions? Of being proud to be British [yes, indeed; I very proud of all the good things our better half brought to the world. In our day it was a whole lot nicer than it is now....]?

And - btw - how about remembering what the 'n' word means? "negro" is the SPANISH word for...?
As for wolligogs - well I loved them and my mother wouldn't let me have one. I don't know why I never got a chance to report her for racism, but I'm glad I didn't! She was a nice lady.

So you go ahead - you have fun beating yourself to shreds for things you never did! But don't presume to beat me - or the good people I knew who refused to reduce the world to black and white - and always tried to do the best they could for everyone!!!

Oh - and how about beating up on the Romans for colonizing us in the first place? Or the Vikings? Or the flaming frogs? Or the Egyptians for their tradition; or the Africans for their very own; or the far easterners; or the Arabs ...? And as for the franco-german claptrap artists and what they're up to right here, right now, (wrong)today....!!!

Hawkeye

THX1138 @ 12:55 said "Oh Ian C you really don't understand why black people use the "N" word with each other do you. Can you really be so racially blind?"

Yes - we CAN be racially blind. I for one do not CARE about "race". I do not believe that there are "races". There is only one race - the human race - and variances of skin tone are of no consequence.

As such I spend no time being "racially aware". I just treat people like people. So perhaps you would explain your comment rather than leaving it dangling......

"This thread is very very sad, you should all be ashamed."

Why? You are judging the past by the standards of today. They saw no wrong in what they did whereas to us it seems very, very wrong. Those alive in the past made many decisions which, from the viewpoint of today seem farcical, strange, cruel and just plain wrong but they were alive then and did as it seemed best to them. They were not all "evil" any more than those alive today are "evil". Whatever they did, that by today's standards was wrong, only they can be responsible for.

We can agree that what happened in the past caused awful suffering and pain, but all we can do is to say that we will not allow such things to occur in our land during our time or on our behalf. Our responsibility is to do "right" NOW and not to mope about in sackcloth and ashes, rending our hair and going "Oh woe is me for the wrongs of my fathers...."

Verity

My God, you won't let it go, will you?

James Forsythe, stunned by the evidence that most people might disagree not only with his post on Ms Thatcher, but with his whole lefty take on the episode, came striding back in with a second post on the same subject a few hours later. I suppose because he thought we hadn't really understood the offence the first time he posted.

Now, having failed to understand the enormity of the offence the first two times, we've got Theo Hobson in to explain to us again.

"That is why we need to invest certain speech-rules with such force." Strikes a chilll in the bones, doesn't it? Speech rules!

You can express white liberal guilt until you are blue in the face, Theo, but I refuse to be drawn in to your cozy, self-righteous little club.

And there's a bit of the sahib about you, too, if you don't mind my saying so. You seem to be saying that black people are too thick to take offence and write their own letters to newspapers and magazine. They need a white person (Jo Brand! Dear God!) to identify the assault and plead their case.

The only people to whom speech police laws apply are white people, who fashioned the world we live in today. Blacks get a free pass for racial epithets - as though it's only fair ...

The left is so vicious that Carol Thatcher has now received death threats. Death threats for dreadlocks!

The British Royal Navy policed the N Atlantic and stopped the slave trade. As someone said in an earlier post on the subject, the British self-righteous left conflate the American experience with the British experience. Many lefty Brits have taken on the mantle of repentance that rightly belongs on to Americans - and then, only to Americans of he time.

And let us not forget that we, unpressured, opened our borders to W Indian immigrants. Yes, it was to our advantage. Countries (and people) tend to do things that are to their advantage. The immigrants came of their own free will and they had the same rights of English people. Yes, it was hard for them but, to their credit, they stuck it out. Many of us right wingers admire people who can stick things out.

White indigenous people who built our country and, to a great extent, today's world, are vilified for our temerity, bravery and endurance.

BTW, are Aunt Jemimah Pancakes and Uncle Ben's rice still going in the US? I suspect, yes.

THX1138

egh -prat

hilda

Unlike THX I'm very appreciative of the other comments on here! Well done, I say, for tackling the trite, shallow, ignorant, template that commies slap on us - and on our children. Talk about racist! Talk about Stereotyping! Talk about propaganda!

Anyway - Ray - I like your post a lot. To your list, I might add our expression about a 'frog in the throat' - which I take as a reference to the sound of their language, probably post-William the Bastard. Some Prof. of the subject told me that lot despised the sound of English - thought we sounded like dogs barking [or maybe growling?]. Better than frogs, I say!!!

So they should already have their own back - and, as I understand, now swan around in the belief that the English freely admit their inferiority to the french.
Still - your "Would generations of English Literature therefore have to be pulped in order to expunge this racist stain upon our national character?" brings up my final concern. I firmly believe the euSSR (and its academic extension in the US) intends to destroy not only English Lit (which is arguably superior to just about anybody's)- but English language. I suspect this is part of the plan already in place: deconstruction via academic claptrap. So yes - watch out for the burning of the books! I'm going to find a good place to hide my best ones, before I go!!!

biggestaspidistra

Just a quick question for the Spectator, or the BBC for that matter, ever thought of employing a black journalist? Even once? I bet neither institution for all its hand-wringing employs a black employee who isn't cleaning up for a white person. We've had a parade of nincompoops (not a racist word) writing here so quality can't be an issue.

THX1138

hilda -another prat

Death or Tory

@ THX1138

What has got into you lately?

Until recently, your various comments were incisive, thoughtful and at times witty.

Why have you suddenly gone off the boil? - just shouting 'prat' at anyone that that disagrees with you is beneath you - if we want that kind of inane response we can get it in spades over at Guido Fawkes's Blog.

Bring back the REAL THX1138!!!

Wilhelm

biggestaspidistra squeeeks

Just a quick question for the Spectator,, ever thought of employing a black journalist? Even once?

Thats a racist remark, one should employ people because they are good at their job not because of their pigment skin colour, kid.

Verity

Biggest Aspidistera - You refer to "nincompoops" and state that it is not a racist word. But how do you know? Have you looked up its etymology? Do you know the history of the word? No? Neither do I, but I'll bet someone could make something of it!

"Nin" - could this be short for picaninny? If so, it can be formally classed as a racist word and Jo Brand can express shock with you for having written it!

mac

biggestaspidistra:

As long as it's not carping, one-trick ponies like Gary Younge or Joseph Harker from the Grauniad . . .

Ian C

Well said Hawkeye.

We live in a world of faux humanitarianism, today, that has convinced itslef that it is a pillar of moral rectitude that is above all else.

Roger Thornhill

The doll could be thought to signify a subordinate, enslaved chattel forced to dance to the tune at the beck and call of it's master

Considering the treatment we now get from this New Labour Administration, I suspect they want us to all be their Gollywogs - black, white, brown and yellow alike.

THX1138

Death or Tory. Thanks for the compliment, you're right but I'm angry . It seemed an appropriate response to the Neandertal responses from this bunch backwoods provincials on this site. What else can you call a man who can't see the difference between a black guy calling another black guy the "N" and a white guy using it but a prat.

I'm just so gob smacked by the lack of understanding of what it mean's to live in modern Britain, you simply cannot call black people a racially charged word like golliwog in 2009 and expect to get away with it and rightly so . Anyone pretending that it's just a some kind of cuddly doll is either being at best a desperately naïve prat or at worst deliberately obtuse & or possibly racist .

I'm not talking about what happened in the past and whether we should feel any guilt or responsibility for slavery or the way some people in my city treated those disembarking from the Windrush. I'm talking about the streets of LDN today. If you want to find out if young black males in my part of North LDN find the term golliwog offensive ( I promise none of them read the Guardian) I suggest that you join me for my boxing class on a Friday night and you can ask them yourselves. Any takers ?

Max Kaye

by Golly - speak for yourself, Theo!

I don't accept the despicable notion of 'original sin' and I don't believe that children should pay for their parents' sins.

Simon Denis

Precisely - I do and we should signal "scepticism about the necessity of white repentance for historical racism". Belief in such a "necessity" is itself racist - racist against whites. This is why the politics of race is now so seriously unbalanced. Other cultures, societies and indeed races are permitted and encouraged to delve into a sense of their particular worth - "Black power", for example. Nobody on the modern European left wanders the earth preaching "multiculturalism" to Asian or Arab or African societies. And yet we in Europe are obliged by our own elites to witness the gradual resettlement of our ancient homelands and the hollowing out of our identities. We are only allowed - in fact, obliged - to feel a mass consciousness in order to feel this guilt which you so happily purvey.

Turning to the wider issues - no, we in Europe are not the authors of racism and nor are we particularly culpable in that regard.

First, we were the victims of slavery ourselves. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, corsairs or barbary pirates in the pay of the Sultan took an estimated million ethnic Europeans into slavery in the Arab world.

Secondly, that same Arab world inflicted slavery upon the Africans long before and long after the establishment of the Atlantic slave trade.

Third, the Africans themselves were complicit in the enslavement of their people.

Where do we hear calls for these ethno-cultural groupings to repent? Nowhere, because the elites of Europe in the grip of a morbid self-hatred are keen to lay the ills of mankind at Europe's feet.

This involves systematically airbrushing the likes of Wilberforce out of the story, or calling him patronising or self-interested.

In fact, white Europe was the first major ethno-cultural grouping to evolve philosophies and capacities which did away with slavery and racism far more effectively than any other society.

And now we are called the authors of racism. Truly, no good deed goes unpunished in this world.

I am shocked and saddened that one who writes for the Spectator should make these assinine hard left assumptions.

As for "golliwog", far from inciting hatred it provokes affection. "Patronising" or not, affection should not be regarded as either a vice or a crime.

The Gollywogs Liberation Army

THX1138

Its just a cute cuddly doll. Time to get that chip off your shoulder.

solmeyer

Of course Carol Thatcher shouldn't have used that word, and of course she should have been reprimanded at least. But to state that being white makes you guilty of racism is a despicable notion.

I was directed to this piece from Clive Davis who called it 'reasonable.' I've always had a highish regard for Mr Davis's sense of judgement but it's just taken a massive tumble.

Fergus Pickering

Verity, you may be onto something. John Ciardi (that learned man) derives nincompoop from Dutch nicht om poep meaning 'the female relative of a fool'. So it is sexist. The original Dutch word poep means a shit or a fart (can't the Dutch tell the difference). So it's crude and lavatorial. In modern Dutch nicht often means an effeminate homosexual. So it's ant--gay. And using a Dutch word in the 17th century (when the word was first coined) is obviously racist. So we have a full house.

Verity

Number Plate - I don't know what Death or Tory is on, but he is hallucinating if he thinks you have ever posted a single interesting sentence or glimmer of thought.

"...you simply cannot call black people a racially charged word like golliwog in 2009 and expect to get away with it and rightly so." Who the hell are you to be legislating what people can say in 2009? We have freedom of speech in this country. And we have freedom to be offended. Why should those who take offence take precedence over those expressing an opinion, no matter how abhorrent? Freedom of speech is freedom to speak, and take the consequences of one's words.

Why would anyone want to accompany you to your boring boxing lesson? Are you typecasting by saying the only place to find black men to ask for an opinion is in the boxing arena? Not very politically correct, is it? Why not suggest asking a black surgeon or a black attorney?

Ken

err no Verity.
nincompoop (plural nincompoops)
1. A silly or foolish person.
* 1905: Baroness Emmuska Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel [1]

No wonder that Chauvelin's spies had failed to detect, in the apparently brainless nincompoop, the man whose reckless daring and resourceful ingenuity had baffled the keenest French spies...

[edit] Synonyms

* (foolish person): dunderhead, fop, fool, imbecile

and as for golliwoggs ... well long may they live, black, white or indifferent.

Paul B

Verity, what makes you think the black boxers THX refers to are not solictors, doctors etc ?

THX1138

I trust all you free speech absolutists on this blog will be defending Rowan Laxton's the FCO diplomats outburst with the same zeal as you're defending Carole Thatcher's

Just to remind you he allegedly said ‘"F**king Israelis, f**king Jews and for good measure " Israeli soldiers should be ‘wiped off the face of the earth’."

Personally I think what he said is outrageous and if it's true he should be fired pronto.

I wonder if we can find a little harmless "kike" doll with a big nose, black hat & ringlets, how could anyone possibly take offence after all it's only doll and then we could join the "kike" club on The Telegraph Site. Any Takers.

Verity

Ken - Have you ever been accused of having a clunking lack of humour?

As you're so busy looking things up, why not look up 'irony'? Dear God! How did you find your way to The Speccie?

Simon Denis

Totally unjust to Carol T to relate her to that Foreign Office goon. "Golliwog" is highligted in all its innocence beside that odious man's outburst.

Verity

Paul B - touché!

I doubt that surgeons and attorneys would be attending an inner city gym to do boxing, for God's sake, but I can't prove it, so your point stands.

(Although I might be horrified by the thought that my surgeon had been boxing the night before my surgery .... or even that my attorney had suffered a punch in the head ... ).

Verity

Number Plate - see, here is your problem: you can't think straight. You have a sense of entitlement, but it has never come true for you.

You write, in all your self-righteous faux pain: "I trust all you free speech absolutists on this blog will be defending Rowan Laxton's the FCO diplomats outburst with the same zeal as you're defending Carole Thatcher's"

Never heard of him in my life. Don't give a toss.

The left is absolutionist - and how! - but the right tends to judge on case by case. Pragmatic. Whatever works. Far more sanity that way.

Verity

"wonder if we can find a little harmless "kike" doll with a big nose, black hat & ringlets, how could anyone possibly take offence after all it's only doll and then we could join the "kike" club on The Telegraph Site. Any Takers."

Why no question mark? And why do you capitalise takers? Too many boxing blows to the head? From your mates?

Is there a gollywog club on The Telegraph site? Could you post the link, as you are a rather weak and aspirational person and tend to mouth off. Let's have the link.

You're a typical thought nazi. Tony Blair's Labour Party partook in the type of politics you now decry when it depicted Conservative Leader Michael Howard as Svengali with a hypnotist's swinging watch. And later as Charles Dickens's Fagin. Disgraceful beyond belief.

I was astonished at the time that they were not hauled over very hot coals over this. But they weren't.

Tony was in charge. Of thought.

The Gollywogs Liberation Army

THX1138

Now you are being silly.

Ken

Hopefully helpful V.? - 'irony'- objectively sardonic style of speech or writing.

The Gollywogs Liberation Army

Verity socks it to THX1138

Simon Denis

A Cambridge college has lately incurred the wrath of our Maoist thought police for daring to stage an Empire Ball with a theme of 1899. To the paranoid pinko mind Empire = racism = Nazis. Let's hope Prince Harry makes an appearance.

I note that this Grauniad mole hasn't seen fit to publish an earlier comment of mine. Let's see if he has the intellectual honesty to allow this through:

a) European society is no more guilty than any other of "racism".

b) European slave trading did not invent "racism", the human tendency to "racism" allowed for the universal slave trade.

c) Other societies went in for slavery too and Europeans were among their victims.

d) European societies were the first to bring slavery to an end.

e) Islamic societies ran a far more bloody and significant traffic in African flesh.

f) If we are the only ones to apologise, we perpetuate the lie of our unique guilt.

g) We are not guilty of the crimes of our ancestors, nor is our society characterised exclusively by its transgressions.

i) There is no need for this vile notion of "white guilt".

Verity

Simon Dennis - Did you read the previous posts? In response to your: g) We are not guilty of the crimes of our ancestors, nor is our society characterised exclusively by its transgressions. I would note, as many other on this thread have noted, that the British were not involved in the slave trade.

We stopped it.

Hundreds of English people tramped miles to put their X on a document demanding an end to the trade.

The Royal Navy patrolled the N Atlantic and turned back slaver ships.

What does it take to get you people to learn a little history.

i) What happened to (h) by the way? The white guilt was the guilt of the American whites who bought and used slaves. People in other parts of the US were not guilty. It was one discrete set of people.

The British copy America in everything, and now they're copying them in feeling guilty for a crime against humanity that they, the British, not only had no part in, but stopped through the will of the British people and the might of our Navy.

hadrian

'endless litle negative assumptions' add up to virulent racism is what we're asked to believe here. Well, I for one fail to see why a black doll is inherently like to incite not just little but huge negative assumptions and responses.
As for 'historical racism' on the part of whites, you can believe this if you like but I do not accept that we're all Nazis at heart. We ARE all fallen, it is true, but that includes ALL- black and white- and the solution lies not in the risibly imbalanced reactions of the multi-cultural (ie value free) brigade, that's for sure.
The BBC reportedly have an episode of QI where Ms Brand et al viciously attack Mrs Thatcher in the most disgusting terms. This enlightened institution which thinks such infantile obscenity is somehow 'cutting edge' do not raise a whimper of complaint; in Australia another brodcaster, J. Clarkson, scoffingly but with irrefutable accuracy ( on the first two attributes) refers to our PM as a one eyed, scottish idiot and is forced to eat humble pie. This is outrageously discriminatory.
I say bring Carol Thatcher on board the Spectator Coffee House forthwith. She remains as much a national treasure as dear old gollywogs.

hadrian

As for our many alleged 'colonial sins' that need repenting of, I for one do not buy the idea we 'ruined' the impeccable cultures of natives of Africa, India and elsewhere. These were and many still are brutal cultures that many in these continents are only too glad to be rid of. Do I lament losing my Celtic druidic past? Thank God we were delivered from it, rather!
The Arabs were supreme slave traders and it was evangelical Christians who agitated long and hard to get this evil kidnapping trade stamped out.

Ken

For Verity or others seeking to reshape history: "The British trade in slaves began in 1562, during the reign of Elizabeth I, when John Hawkins led the first slaving expedition."

That said conflation of this with Golliwoggs and Madam Thatcher is off-piste and kowtows to the BBC-led speechrulers. It needs very firmly to be rooted out.

Bas

For all you who support the word, please read the below passage taken from a Golli book. Pure racism

Once the three bold Golliwogs, Golly, Woggie, and ******, decided to go for a walk to Bumble-Bee Common. Golly wasn't quite ready so Woggie and ****** said they would start off without him, and Golly would catch them up as soon as he could. So off went Woggie and ******, arm-in-arm, singing merrily their favourite song - which, as you may guess, was Ten Little ****** Boys.

Ten Little ******* is the name of a children's poem, sometimes set to music, which celebrates the deaths of ten Black children, one-by-one. The Three Golliwogs was reprinted as recently as 1968, and it still contained the above passage. Ten Little ******* was also the name of a 1939 Agatha Christie novel, whose cover showed a Golliwog lynched, hanging from a noose.

Come you know this is not right. It is absolutly shameful that anyone would still sell such a doll. Disgraceful.
Julie Scare shop should be shut down. Legally it can be if she has them in the shop window.
The Police should be acting on this. As it will only lead to civil distrubance. And it will be her own fault. What a nasty racist lady

I am sorry that many of you cannot comprehend that such a digusting toy, that was made to riduclue Black people, along with the books.

I am sorry that you feel you need to be the authority of what is or is not offensive to the Black community. Never mind that countless comments on this site have clearly stated the reason why it has caused so much offence

I mean you have take on board some simple facts.

The doll was a representation of a Black and White Mistrel character. Something that was hated in the Black community. I mean a White man with a Black painted face singing Black songs, because the Whites did not want to see a true Black person singing.

2 The features are gross, in the same way White people used to draw Blacks with big eyes and big lips.

3 The same toys and word was used in the 60,70,80,90 as a term to abuse the Black community usally along with violence.

And you have the cheek to say get over it, and get a life.

I will never give in to racists bigots.

Bas

You all seem to write your own version of History.

While The Arabs had cut off Trading with Europe. Eurpoe went to Africa and raped it off it's Women, Gold, Diamonds and killed 20 Million, a lot more than the Jews.Not including the USA. I mean Europe was in a famine state. But for the wonders of the new world. Great african libraries destroyed in the process.
How long have the Westindies had independence. The sins of my father never get talked about. Why because it is real British History. Not the Industrial revolution. This goes do so deep, I dont not have enough space or time. But the racist attitude of many of comments here are centuries in the making.