Why I Threw My Golliwog In The Bin

 

As a white Australian and an old fart I can’t help but feel frustrated. I understand what some white Australians are thinking and why they resist changing their opinions about golliwogs or blackface – really I do.

But thinking about what seems* such an insignificant thing – dolls and facepaint – helped me work out something bigger; it helped me work out why it is that, as a nation, we don’t own our racism at all. If our heads are stuck up our arses when it comes to our history and if we are in denial when it comes to the present, we are not all bad – there is a perfectly simple explanation. Well, it’s a bit long winded, but it’s simple just the same.

Most white Australians do not own their racism because so many of us really did grow up in a white Australia. You can’t be a racist if there is no one to be racist against.#

Yep – the maps all show it – just lots of white folks huddled around the coastline of this big country [and some islands], with the Indigenous population mostly concentrated anywhere but where the white folks are.
In states like Qld where there were high numbers of Indigenous people near white centres, Joh kept Indigenous people on reserves. In states like Victoria, there were whole shires where Indigenous people had “disappeared” (coincidentally around the time my people arrived).
I grew up in the Western suburbs of Melbourne in an era when Greeks and Southern Italians were considered “dark” people. I saw some Aboriginal kids at the local pool when I was 7 years old because they had come for a holiday with the Harold Blair project (it must have been terrifying for them, being prodded and poked by swarms of curious white kids). I did not see another non-European until I was 19 years old^. But that was THEN.

The people selling Elka and similar modern Golliwogs today, and peddling imported stories explaining the meaning and history of golliwogs, are mostly talking shit. Golliwogs have bugger all to do with the origins of the word wog, and everything to do with Blackface and Jim Crow laws.

Yes, we once lived in a white world and we were exposed to imported images and stories of golliwogs and blackface, and these were largely imported into a cultural and racial vacuum – in our cosy white world, we once had no way to give these ideas the sinister meanings they had in the UK and the US. But that was THEN.

Let me expand, by starting with a brief history of Blackface in the US. This was the source of and the inspiration for the forms taken by Golliwogs and minstrelsy – later exported to the UK, and only reaching Australia indirectly.

We don’t have to be Marxists to understand that Race had a lot to do with economic class in the early years of settlement of the American colonies. Some US states legalised slavery, and some did not. Some allowed free black men to live freely within their borders, and some did not "encourage" it. And whether or not slavery was permitted, all American states benefitted from the availability of a pool of cheap white labour.

As in Europe, American leaders found that keeping a pool of cheap white labour on hand proved dangerous. If they all have jobs, white labourers start expecting decent pay and conditions. If they don’t all have jobs, they can become hungry, and hungry men can be restless. America solved its economic and social problems quite early by turning cheap workers against each other – by pitting poor white trash against blacks. Sure, white workers were entitled to a slightly higher rate of pay than emancipated black workers, but they were also entitled to cost free perks like being seen as more human than black workers; allowed to look someone in the eye, given separate park benches to sit on, separate taps to drink from and so on.
The Jim Crow laws and the Blackface routines of travelling carnivals and minstrel shows were an essential part of the early American economy, and of reconstruction after the Civil War. In their earliest and most extreme forms, these laws and Blackface itself were brutal, violent and dehumanising. It was vital that poor white people feel no sympathy for their black neighbours, and the easiest way to do this was to sell the idea that blacks were different; that they were sub-human, stupid, un-helpable, and to blame for their own problems. (A bit like what Australia’s politicians say to the unemployed or the aged in Australia today.)

 

These are the very same images adopted and sanitised into golliwogs and music hall routines; rendered friendly and harmless by Enid Blyton books, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland musicals, or Al Jolson.

Some people have tried to make the point by suggesting an Adolf Hitler doll would be just as loveable – unfortunately the point is a little too subtle. We know Hitler is responsible for the murder of millions, and that his followers were creative about the way their victims were murdered.

When we look at a picture of a minstrel, we don’t associate it with a system as vile as Nazism; with a system that once encouraged people to throw large rocks at the head of a live black man at a carnival sideshow and not give a shit how long it took for him to die in agony.
(Well, perhaps in the 1890s, not so much in the 1930s when people were making "nice" movies that only joked about it.)

 

Let me digress for a minute, in support of my point. I was disappointed by Leunig’s cartoon about his tiny little dick. It’s just a piece of skin, why are women so offended by a little piece of skin, he wondered? What part of rape does he simply refuse to understand?
At some point, women are entitled to ask men who don't rape to acknowledge that some bad men do. No women are saying that all men are rapists. Some women have good reason to always be nervous around men, just like some men have good reason to always be nervous around priests.

Little bit of skin looks harmless, Leunig, but sometimes isn’t.

At some point, people of colour are entitled to ask decent people who aren't racists to acknowledge that racism exists. No black people are saying that all white people are arseholes. But some black people have good reason to always be nervous around white people. We are all a product of our experiences, and none of us ever knows everyone else's story.

Little bit of blackface paint looks harmless, but sometimes isn’t.

 

So there we were, back in the 1950s and 60s reading our Noddy books and singing along to the Black and White Minstrel Show on the telly. That was THEN. It was a world where everything was hand made unless we were upper class rich bastards, so along with knitting patterns for vests and cardies, came patterns for knitting things like these;

 

I desperately wanted one, because it looked so bright and colourful. My brother had one, but before it was my turn to take custody my mother threw it away – Tom had thrown it in the toilet one time too many and she was over it. I could be in therapy til I’m 90 and might never recover. Sigh.

I remember getting this book from the library when I was much younger and thicker than I am now and thinking the story was clever, but I was confused by two things: there were no dark people in the story at all, and I could not for the life of me understand why anyone would hang a golliwog.

 

It wasn’t til 2009 when Harry Connick Jr was a guest judge on New Faces that I finally understood the cover on the Agatha Christie book all those years ago. But first I had to try and work out the blackface thing. You see, I had grown up in a white world, and all those imported images and ideas about golliwogs and blackface had meant nothing to me. They did not teach me to be racist because they could not be processed in a vacuum. I had no context for them.

 

It's hard to feel guilty of anything without any mens rea – without any criminal intent. And I think that is why Australians of the "White Australia" variety, for the most part, struggle to own their racism. We never have felt guilty about the past, and there is no reason we should feel guilty about the past. Whether we should feel guilty or not should be just about what we do or fail to do today.
We certainly don’t see any leadership about taking responsibility for systemic racism from any major parties. Our government’s line (and Close the Gap) is still total BS - our official history is total fantasy and fabrication and denial. We don't believe we are racist because our parliament is still full of people who don't get it.

Time for another little digression - not all of us whitefullas who are still in denial are products of the 1950s or 1960s, but it can take a generation or two for these things to change. Whitlam's government didn't finally change our immigration laws until 1973.

The biggest, simplest and most straightforward lie is that we never had slavery here.

We did have slavery on stations, in the sugar cane industry, and in the exploitation of stolen children and other ripoffs of Indigenous Australians. Even if we did not use Blackface to turn white trash against Indigenous Australians, it’s time we stopped looking at Blackface as a reason to say “America Bad Australia Good”, because that is just crap. Our hands are not clean at all.

Bad stuff did happen and it does still happen, and we have to own it before we can seriously expect people to get over anything. Of course, owning it is not just about being politically correct – stopping un-necessary deaths in custody and fixing a whole heap of other problems are the reasons we should start thinking more correctly.

If we didn't have Blackface here in its American or UK forms, it's only because we had so many other ways of creating and maintaining white privilege - White Policies and laws, different economic systems, different demographics and so on. We whitefullas simply weren't threatened enough to need a sophisticated social system dedicated to making non-whites feel like shit - more traditional methods of discrimination were enough to take up the slack in White Australia.

If a golliwog didn’t offend anyone in 1950 that was because non-whites were locked up, or not allowed to say they were offended. The 1950s were like that. People were also expected to give away illegitimate children, or hide handicapped children as if they should be ashamed of them. Poofter bashing was a sport, and murders of gays were encouraged rather than investigated. Abortions were illegal and expensive and women died from them. The threat of rape was a constant for women, especially if they had a black face. The 1950s were like that. Small wonder golliwogs weren't offensive in a world as phuct as that.
But that was THEN.

This is 2017, heading for 2018. There are people here now from all over the world, and I have no idea what they have lived through or experienced. On the balance of probability, a golliwog in a shop window is more likely to hurt or offend someone than give pleasure, and there is no actor or role in any show that requires coloured face make-up. It’s time for us white people to just get over it.

A few years ago I told someone the story of how I never got a chance to own the colourful, hand knitted golliwog my brother used to shove down the toilet. Okay, I'm stuck in the anal stage of development and my focus was on the toilet aspect of the story, with a bit of sibling rivalry thrown in. It was the golliwog's pants that were colourful, not its face. My friend completely missed all these great points and, with the best of intentions, gave me one of those Elka golliwogs for a present.
At first I didn't see anything wrong with it, but when I thought it through decided I had to put it in the bin - Seriously, the last thing the world needs is another golliwog.

*Yes, I know it is not insignificant, but to some people who don’t know any better, it seems that way. Until they know better.

#Okay, a lot of white people think they never got a chance to be racist. And a lot of not-white people who read this line are probably thinking “Fuck me gently, every white &+$% I met treated me like shit!!!” but I’m talking about the larger numbers of white people who never had contact with non whites. I am not denying the reality of non-white readers. And I’m not talking about systemic racism or other equally important stuff… Roma wasn’t built in a day.

^Well, not that I was aware of. Who knows?