Conguito Conundrum

[steepholm]

When I was young, I owned a golliwog. I don't believe I realized it was a stylized representation of a black minstrel, for that wasn't a cultural reference point I possessed. I did of course recognize him from the jars of Robertson's jam, though, and sent off for the little enamel badges, of golliwogs engaged in various activities. We collected them on the kitchen sill.

I had barely seen any black people at that time. I remember looking at what I now realise were some small black children in an American picture book, and because they had short tight braids that reminded me of nothing so much as the antennae sported by cartoon aliens, vaguely associated them with other planets. Oh yes, and like everyone I knew, I picked who was going to be "it" in games by using a rhyme mostly composed of nonsense words such as "eeny", "meeny, "miny", "mo", "nigger" and "hollers". I'd heard none of these used in any other connection. (I wonder how that rhyme made it across the Atlantic, and when?)

That was all in about 1970. Some eighteen years later, things had changed. I was shocked when I stayed in a shared postgraduate student house in Cambridge, and found in the bathroom a tube of "Darkie" toothpaste. It turned out one of the students in the house was Malaysian, where this is - or was, before they renamed it "Darlie" - a popular brand. Perhaps in Malaysia they lacked the cultural reference point too?

That was all in about 1988. More than twenty years later - last week, in fact - my PhD student (who's working on Captain Underpants, and don't you wish you were too?) told me about the Spanish equivalent of M&Ms. They're called Conguitos (i.e. Congolese people), and they advertise them like this:

What I didn't know in a small market town in 1970, and the Malaysians weren't much aware of in 1988, it's very hard to believe that the Spanish - just a Herculean pillar's caber toss from Africa - are ignorant of today. Conguitos aren't particularly controversial, though, it seems.

I'm not sure what to make of it. Easy to call the advert racist (well, duh), but I'd feel a lot more outraged if it appeared on, say, UK TV, because I'm more certain of the context here. But then, how far does something's being racist depend on a "context"? But then, do I really think my younger self was racist for using the word "nigger" without having any idea what it meant? But then, wouldn't it be a different kind of racism to "make allowances" for the Spanish lagging a few years behind us Anglophones?

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Fwiw, I think the Spanish racist stuff goes very deep- back to the reconquista and the colonial empire there was (and for all I know still is) a deep distrust and objectification of 'Morescos' (ie anyone who isn't white).

I know what you mean about childhood racism due to a lack of referents. It took me until 21 to really get a clue- my first serious BF was from what was then Rhodesia and that, shall we say, created interesting issues for us both (or rather for some of the people we ran across in our daily lives, even in a liberal middle class university town like Canterbury) even as little a time ago as the late seventies early eighties.

[diceytillerman.livejournal.com]

But then, do I really think my younger self was racist for using the word "nigger" without having any idea what it meant?

I don't think the important part of that is whether the child can be called racist personally; I think the important part is how the racism seeps into our pores from our culture, and how the racism uses (though that sounds a bit too agent-y) kids to reinscribe and recycle the racism back out into society.

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

All of that. Right down to the collection of Robertson's gollies. I think we had some ceramic Robertson's gollies playing instruments too. I'm certain I had no idea, at the time, that a golliwog was anything other than a stuffed toy (that I felt had been appropriated by Robertson's). I can - I believe - remember how I felt about them as a child and I find the mismatch between that and my feelings as an informed adult rather unsettling.

Which reminds me that I saw this last week.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Interesting link! The top pictures seem rather Womble-esque, rather than human - perhaps deliberately?

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

I remember reading a golliwog story at an infants' school in 1975, and feeling disturbed by the racial portrayal, but not being able to define my discomfort easily. I was a seven year old from the US, spending the summer in Bristol and attending a school there.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

It's very difficult, isn't it? I'm older than you and though I can recall my mother being uneasy with some of the stories we were told in Sunday School about bringing Christianity and "civilisation" to the uneducated heathen natives in far-flung parts of the world, she no problem about collecting Golliwog badges and didn't even seem bothered when all us kids were blacked up to perform "nigger minstrel songs" at a church concert. This would have been about 1960 in inner-city Manchester where, at that time, there were no black people at all in our area.

Context is a difficult and slippery thing, but there was absolutely no question of mocking anyone and the songs were performed perfectly seriously to the best of our ability. The occasional non-white person was still a novelty then, not a threat, so I wouldn't say that we were even aware of the possibility of being racist when the issues we were concerned with at the time were about class, religion (there was a certain amount of anti-Catholic feeling from some quarters) and whether you supported Manchester United or City (which could also possibly be classified under religion!).

[ewein2412]

That's really quite an amazing commercial. (How many Spanish kids look like Disney's Christopher Robin?)

I was in a shop with my 11-year-old and they were selling handmade golliwogs... Mark and I were discussing them (his reaction was "that thing is so scary looking"). The shopkeeper overheard us and told us we weren't allowed to use the word golliwog - it was correctly termed a "golly" and they were handmade for him by some woman in Australia. (WTF)

After some probing it emerged that the derogatory racial slur we weren't allowed to make reference to was the word "wog" (which really threw me off since my understanding is that "wog" and "nigger" are pejorative terms for completely different races, and the so-called "golly" was clearly, to me, making racial reference to the latter). It seems weird to me to make a stink about associations that no one realises are there. But maybe the "wog" part of the word is there on purpose, historically or etymologically or something; therefore saying "golliwog" is like saying "nigger" when you don't know what it means.

What is my kid supposed to learn from this experience? That it's okay for people to make grotesque blackface dolls and sell them commercially as collectibles, not not ok for us to refer to those dolls by their traditional name? By extension does that make blackface ok as long as you don't actually talk about it?

blah.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

Indeed a "wog" was originally used for people from the Indian subcontinent and is supposed to refer to a "Westernised Oriental Gentleman" but that could be apocryphal.

Nobody does the Black and White minstrels any more. Perhaps British women should protest at Little Britain doing the "but I am a LADEEEE" sketches. Or perhaps transgender people should object, I'm not quite sure who David Walliams is sending up.

[ewein2412]

if anything is silly enough, it's hard to object to it.

I actually find Timmy the Sheep to be quite objectionable on the same grounds as the golliwogs, but I seem to be alone in that.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

'if anything is silly enough, it's hard to object to it'

And I'm afraid that's how the likes of the BBC continue to feel that trans people are fair game- especially as the so called 'human rights' act actually removed protections we had previously been afforded by the gender recognition act. 'We didn't mean anything nasty by it' cuts no ice with me and believe me, I know- I've been there.

If you don't think it's right to abuse people of colour, Jews Muslims, Roma people (and with both Jewish and Roma ancestry, do I ever have a full set!) or gay and lesbian folk, it can't be right to abuse and mock trans folk.

Sadly, an awful lot of people seem incapable of getting this........

[ewein2412]

it's not really right to mock anybody, but plenty of people still do, just because (and I speak with some experience!). The more visible the departure from "the norm", the more at risk you are, I guess.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

And that's where it's all so wrong. I'm invisible as trans in daily social interaction as I transitioned very young (15- I'm now 54) and to use a horrible term, I 'pass' and practice the noble art known equally horribly as 'stealth' (and what a semantic load that word has!)

The people who get the hardest time are those who can't do the first (like there are no other homely women in the world) and are therefore denied the choice of the second (although I'm fully supportive of those who choose to be 'out'- while all I ever wanted to be 'out' as was myself :o) by a hate filled media and sections of society.

[ewein2412]

the media has a lot to answer for, if you ask me.

people are generally afraid of things they don't understand, I think, and the fear gets manifested as hatred.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Nobody does the Black and White minstrels any more.

Not sure whether they're still current, but they were around about ten years ago, because they performed in my mother's town. She was on the council at the time, and reported that they asked in advance whether the locals would prefer them not to black up. The first councillor to speak said "We're not bothered by that sort of thing, are we?"; she was quite surprised when my mother said that she was. So they didn't black up in Grange, but evidently they did in some venues.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I think that sketch is deeply misogynistic in general. But it's trans women in particular who tend to get that catchphrase shouted at them in the street.

[ewein2412]

gah.

We've been watching "Vous les Femmes" as our late-night comedy and it's so refreshing to watch a show that makes you laugh without making you wince and cringe (or have to look away because of the projectile vomiting, another Little Britain act that I find bewilderingly AWFUL)

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

Did you hear Richard Herring on Radio 4 the other night - he is looking at cultural objects that can or can't be "reclaimed" and his last programme was about the golliwog. Gollies were much used by Enid Blyton and they were always naughty, stealing Noddy's car etc. The three golliwogs in her books were called "Gollie" "Woggie" and "Nigger". I had a colour in my paint box when I was about five that was called "nigger brown".

I believe our society has come a long long way in the last 50 years with regard to race, LGBT equality, and women's rights. If I ever doubt that society is progressing, I think of the last time I saw a golliwog, which was some time ago. Also, Stephen Lawrence's alleged murderers are back in court this week. A lot of people have never given up trying to stamp out the incipient racism in the British police. That makes me happy.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

The video clip is headed "anuncios antiguos" which I think means "old adverts". So it isn't current.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

You're right. In their latest incarnations, the conguitos have lost their big red lips.

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

I learned the 'eeny meeny' rhyme with the word 'tiger', which frankly makes just as much sense. But I think I'm enough younger than you that, well, those were eventful years.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

It's definitely "tiger" now, yes. I'm not sure when (or how) the transition took place.

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my parents learned it the same way you did (back in the 50s, though), but didn't ever explain this to me till I was old enough to know what was going on.

[ewein2412]

I learned it with "tiger" in Jamaica and in Pennsylvania in the early 1970s. I don't believe I knew the "nigger" version until I became a folklorist and started reading Knapp and Opie (indeed, I didn't know the word "nigger" until I started going to an almost entirely black inner city school at the age of 9. At which point I started using it - not having a clue what it meant - until my mother heard me and had a flip-out).

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Did the tiger holler, or do something more plausible?

[ewein2412]

yeah, he hollered.

[ewein2412]

the other version we used was "catch a monkey", which also hollered.

[joyeuce]

The version I learned was "catch a monkey" who screamed (or possibly squealed). We knew the "nigger" version at school as something we weren't supposed to use, but didn't know why; to us it was just another "naughty word" that made us giggle, like when someone said "bottom" or "toilet".

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

With your folkloric hat on, do you know anything about the rhyme's date or place of origin? "Hollers" suggests the USA to me, as does "nigger" to a lesser extent, but I can't think how it would have been transmitted.

Interesting it was already "tiger" that early, at least in places with a large black population. I suppose that word was picked on because it sounds vaguely similar, but I also wonder whether there's a Little Black Sambo echo there.

[ewein2412]

According to Herbert & Mary Knapp in One Potato, Two Potato, Henry Carrington Bolton (collecting in the 1880s) 'noted that words approximating "eeny meeny" appeared in the first lines of rhymes in French, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, German, Dutch, Platt-Deutsch, English, and Bulgarian. He also remarked that "Eeny, Meeny" was apparently the favorite verse of American children...'

The Knapps attribute the origin to the "Anglo-Cymric" counting system, which the Wikipedia entry on "eeny meeny miny mo" touches on a bit (though not referencing the same sources as Knapp - however it is easier for me to point you to Wikipedia than to spam your blog with another page of text)! Wikipedia also says that 'Common variations, particularly in United Kingdom, substitute "tinker", "tigger" or "chicken" for tiger and use "squeals" rather than hollers.'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eeny,_meeny,_miny,_moe

The Wikipedia link is actually very extensive and seems reasonably well researched, and includes a brief discussion of the 'controversial version':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eeny,_meeny,_miny,_moe#Controversial_version

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thank you. So it may be Kipling who brought the "nigger" version to the UK, it seems? Although it's not clear whether his version also had "hollers", which complicates things a little. Interesting article, as you say.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

It hadn't occurred to me that it might be a counting rhyme as in 'yan tan tethera' and similar.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

"Tiger" also goes better with "toe." My mother mentioned the rhyme in one of her books (1969, I think) and said that nowadays people said "catch a little boy." I pointed out that (a) that didn't scan and (b) I'd never heard anyone say anything but "tiger." She was quite pleased to hear of the tiger version.

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

It was "tiger" in New York City in the early sixties, I can attest. The condition of letting the tiger go was his hollering.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Hollering tigers in 1970s California as well.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Thanks for mentioning 'tiger' because I wasn't aware of that version and as I now have grandchildren, this is useful to know. Or I could always resort to, 'Dip, my blue ship' or 'One potato, two potato'. :)

It is somewhat ironic that the 'rude' version we chanted as children is now much less offensive than the 'correct' version of the time. (Though we said 'screams' not 'hollers' because that word wasn't in our vocabulary.)

[joyeuce]

My brother and I had golliwogs too. I don't think I connected them with the black people we knew but can't be sure at this late date. I also remember that one Christmas the playgroup were handing out dolls as presents, some of which were black, and I was jealous because I got a white one which was just ordinary instead of "exotic". Again, I don't know how much connection I made with real life.

And I remember that my mother had enough black and Asian colleagues that for a long time I assumed anyone who wasn't white must be a doctor. I don't know whether this was racist or just clueless.

[ewein2412]

I had THIS doll:

http://ohmydolls.com/dolls%20for%20library/talkingtamu.html

I *loved* this doll.

[joyeuce]

This was the one I wanted - the left-hand one in the yellow dress.

[aryky.livejournal.com]

FWIW, in Singapore, although Darlie toothpaste is indeed Darlie toothpaste rather than Darkie toothpaste, it certainly is still a popular brand and, more to the point, still has the minstrel as its brand icon. At least the minstrel isn't quite as large and prominent as he apparently used to be. But I was certainly surprised to discover him on the toothpaste at all. . . .

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the field report!

Christie, Congo, Golly.

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

Agatha Christie's "Ten Little N***ers"? As for Conguitos I saw these when I was in Zaragoza in 1990. I have a Golly and am not racist. Oh Wog is from "Western Oriental Gent".