Tolerating golliwog toys

[mtbc]

Via andrewducker I found a recent YouGov poll revealing that a majority of the British public does not consider it unacceptable or racist to sell or display a golliwog doll. Liberal Democrats tend to be among the minority but they are used to that. Regarding golliwogs I am in the majority so I felt obliged to reflect on this. For me it is not just about if things are in fun because I would have a problem with, for example, somebody using a Ku Klux Klan costume for fancy dress at Hallowe'en. So, why the difference in my instincts?

I suppose that I regard golliwogs as being of a more ambiguous character and I do not wish racist people success in defining things according to their favored interpretation. The significance of a KKK costume is unambiguous but many have used golliwog toys without ill meaning. My feeling is usually that it is worth the risk of reminding people of bad things if it allows other interpretations to prevail through still being used, or at least not to die into obsolescence without a fight.

This is why I have been irritated by the acceptance of words like oriental as being offensive. That a once fine word has been used offensively does not require that as a community we should accept that it now entails intent to demean. Offensive meanings gain power and they occupy increasingly many symbols if innocent uses are denied currency.

Naturally I am open to being persuaded that I am wrong to want to preserve an innocent view of golliwogs but I suspect that whatever insulting baggage they bring is rather more a symptom than a cause of the societal issues that need fixing.

Comments

[aldabra]

I thought the problem with "oriental" was that it defined people as being from east-of-us, in a way which entrenches us being the normal referent culture and them being the marginalised outsiders. People don't self-identify as peripheral; cultures typically define their own landbase as central and surrounded by barbarians.

Although I notice we now define ourselves as Western, without a very good idea of what we're west of. Greenwich? [checks: nope, out by 0.1218 degrees...]