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

[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.