@wendshee wrote:
You can't say anything these days without being labelled a racist. I got accused of being racist at work last year and hauled into the bosses office because I asked an Indian colleague to not come through that door when we are doing XYZ, please enter through the other door. He went running crying to the boss and I got reprimanded for being racist!!!
Then you get the mugs who get offended on behalf of someone else. I said the word black in front of a black colleague and got called a filthy racist by a white colleague. The word black was in reference to a pair of shoes. Apparently it's OK for my black colleague to say white shoes, but if I say black shoes I am a filthy racist. No, my black colleague was not offended one bit and she couldn't see what all the fuss was about.
Political correctness has gone mad. It's completely out of control. You can't even buy Golliwog biscuits these days. Arnott's had to change the name to Scallywags because some idiot took offence to it (probably someone white getting offended on someone's behalf).
There is a difference between the so-termed 'political correctness', and outright stupidity, the problem is that sometimes one gets called the other when it doesn't really qualify as such.
If you replace the phrase "political correctness" with "being respectful to others", the difference is generally a lot clearer.
With that out of the way, I'm just going to go ahead and be the odd one out here, because I fully understand how/why golliwogs can be offensive, and it has nothing to do with the suffix "wog".
My brother had one growing up as a child, and to us, it was just a toy to play with, along with Tonka trucks, Barbies, et al, but we were children, and we had no understanding of what the doll's history and significance was, nor the role it can play in cultural stereotypes.
Now that I am an adult, I have taken the opportunity to research some of these issues on my own. The simple truth is that a Gollywog, much like 'mammy', Jim Crow, black face and other similar "icons", are caricutares of people, designed to make fun of them, to belittle them, to overblow characteristics and dehumanise them. They are symbols of intolerance, and even if you don't have a shred of racism or intolerance yourself, I think it's important to be able to recognise and acknowledge when something else is.
If people want to have a really good understanding of why others get offended by that, and the long-term damage it can do beyond personal offence, they really need to examine the full scope of the issue.
I recommend starting with the Jim Crow museum - a lot of good, and interesting, articles there.
