Mock the Past: Vintage Racism 3
Um, yeah. Wow. I'm... I'm just going to stop with the vintage racism now.
Let's instead lighten the mood by pointing out that this image (the first panel of a comic strip entitled "Sambo, Sue and Jolly Golly", by the way) and the two before it all came from the following 1940 children's annual:
Uncle Jack's Joy-Book? Enough of the unsavoury old-time prejudice -- let's get back to some good, clean paedophile references!
8 comments:
What does it mean? 'I'm too far away?' Is there a context to this? My mind is boggling (the word 'Nabozz' has just come up) and its needs a corrective salve.
I think it's "It am too far away", on the assumption that having a darker skin tone makes you talk like Bizarro from Superman.
but which one of them is bubbles? and more importantly, does he want to be blown?
"...does he want to be blown?"
Is the Pope a Catholic?
I've recently re-read "Heart of Darkness" and the character of Marlowe describes one particular "nigger" as learning like a child the workings of a steam engine. It struck me that Conrad/Marlowe was the child and couldn't be blamed for his attitude as that was the norm.
Then I remembered Josiah Wedgewood many years before and his famous medalion with the motto "Am I not a man and a brother?" and thought yes they should and did fucking know better and all concerned should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
Wouldn't the correct phrasing be, "It am to be blown?" I'm not proclaiming to be an expert on these matters but I used to tan quite well as a child.
Little did Aunt Clo know that the little boy dancing would grow up to be as white as Casper and too would like to blow Bubbles or any other small children. Yes Sir...Michael Jackson changed on that day he couldnt go to the fair!
The past is another country. it helps to know the language and some of its customs. Our art-deco friend the Golliwog was a beloved nursery friend of the twenties and thirties. He was not grumpy-looking like the bear, or stuck-up like the china dolls, and didn't give you nightmares like that monkey with the cymbals, brrrrh! His floppy body and his guileless grin won hearts and minds. He did not suffer from lynchings or cruel gang-bosses, or apartheid, but lived in Eden countryside in pre-lapsarian bliss, with nothing worse to fear then to be left hanging by his braces when a branch breaks.
Then the fifties and sixties, with Robinson's Gollyberry jam. You collected the golly labels to send off for the enamel badges or the clay figurines of Golly playing all the instruments in the band, Golly being a cyclist, a footballer, a cowboy, a policeman, a doctor - there was even a spaceman (very rare). Golly could do anything: he was so far ahead no discrimination could touch him.
Then, suddenly he was gone. Not the National Front, not the dockers quoting Enoch, no Thames foaming with much blood - no, he was done for by angsty well-meaning people, full of collective guilt, who felt uncomfortable. They could not look him in the eye, so they moved him on. Don't worry, Golly - it's not about you - some people just have issues, that's all.
The cakewalk? Why, my art-deco friend - I'd love to...
Geordi LaForge realized that once again 'someone' had pranked his holodeck preference settings.
"Break! Disengage! Control Escape!". Nothing.
When he next met Wesley Crusher, there would be MUCH hell to pay...
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