What is with the blackface?
On New Year's day we went to a craft market in Australia's Port Stephens area. We bought home sewn aprons and Macadamia nut butter. It was lovely.
Until we saw all the black face dolls and lawn/garden accessories. I started to look at the toys on sale and spotted a little family of four dolls who were brown and made of wood. And I thought that maybe the Aussies don't know about black face. I tried to buy the little doll set for Booty but she wanted a white plastic doll. When I refused to buy it for her she had a melt down and I heard myself say,
"I will never, never, buy you a white doll! Especially when there are sweet brown dolls!"
That night I found a blackfaced doll in the trunk of toys at the farm. It freaked me out and gave me the jitters. I woke up in the night and heard a noise. It sounded like someone trying to open the door. I woke up H and we went out into the kitchen and it turned out to be a community of rat sized cockroaches trying to find some food or maybe it was the wind banging the door. But it wasn't some kkk dude trying to take my daughter or kill us for loving her.
My husband thought I was over-reacting and said surely these dolls meant something different to Australians. So I did some research.
Check it out:
Oprah in Australia
Golliwog dolls in Australia
Wiki on blackface
And you decide.
5 comments:
Oh, I feel your pain. Once per year here in Holland, I want to run screaming:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwarte_Piet
There are a couple of Waldorf schools that present Ruprecht with Saint Nicholas and sometimes they overdue the soot and it looks extremely offensive. I pray that our next Waldorf school does not include Ruprecht as he resembles Black Pete too much.
I guess for some folks black face is amusing.
And for us, it is a bit terrorizing.
This link says it all (Agatha Christie? Who knew??)
That said, what do you think of a character in an Indian (Hindi) comedy wearing blackface to sneak into a hospital?
Like camoflage?
Well, we both know what the establishment in India thinks of light and brown skin.
Skin lightening cream anyone?
In Bavaria, they still use the term Mohren, which translates to Moor or Negro, and I have been told by Germans that it is now considered politically incorrect. But, there doesn't seem to be any attempt to eradicate the term.
I've also seen displays of the confederate flag, but most Germans don't realize that it is often associated with racism.
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