Dear snowflakes - golliwogs are not racist

Certainly interesting read,I always believed with this
The Origins and History of Golliwogs began during the British occupation of Egypt in the late 1800’s, Egyptian workers wore the letters W.O.G.S signifying that they were Working On Government Service. These labourers were nicknamed Ghuls (the Arabic word for Desert Ghost) by the British Troops.
Children in Egypt played with black stuffed material dolls, nicknamed Ghuliwogs, which were often purchased by the soldiers returning to England. This name would eventually become the Golliwogs we know today.

 

duplicate plse ignore

 

What a stupid thing to say... I have and still occasionally use the phrase and a racist connotation has never entered into my head. I have (as I suspect 99% of people do) always thought of a spade as being a garden implement.

It says a lot more about you than me if you instantly think of a racial slur when you hear the word.

The spade being referred to here is not the suit of cards (I.e. black references) and there was originally no racist element. The intention was to invoke the digging implement. Interestingly, it does not originate from a complaint about spades being called shovels or ‘garden implements’ but in an ancient mistranslation. The ancient Greeks had a similar expression in “call a trough a trough.” Trough is sometimes given as kneading-tray. The expression still survives in modern Greece.

Trough became spade in modern English. We owe this to Erasmus, who in his Apophtegms (1531) mistranslated the ancient Greek word for kneading-trough into ligonem, the Latin word for ‘hoe.’ When Nicholas Udall translated Erasmus into English, in 1542, he translated ligonem into spade. The phrase is found in Demostenes’ oration “Olythus,” quoting Philip of Macedon....

 

That is apparently a fallacy made up by an unknown editor on Wikipedia about 10-15 years ago. Basically a "backronym" that is currently being spread by the leader of Britain First to defend their views.

The words Ghuliwogs, ghulliwogg or other similar spellings were barely used at all - if they were, there would be evidence of use in contemporary books and other periodicals.

 

Don’t drag me into it…

 

If it helps, "Spade" belongs to the same racial-motivated Americanisms used for slaves. It might not have had the same meaning over here until the 60s/70s, but was used as a racial term in many Hollywood films of the period so was certainly part of British English language as a racist term in the 70s and 80s.

 

I was being tongue-in-cheek man. Chill haha

 

I can see a whole different set of people getting upset if we suddenly start calling a ho, a ho...

 

I used the phrase at work a couple of years ago and a director told me the phrase has racial connotations. I had no idea, but since being told that I don't use it, and when I hear it I now automatically think of the racial slur having looked into it on being informed. What does that say about me?

Edit: I don't judge anyone using it because chances are, like me, they don't know the association.

 

Seriously hope you aren’t calling me racist in a backhanded way there mate?

 

that’s fine then thanks, it was the bit about racists finding a back story, given that I had totally innocently given a childhood memory and a bit of history that I remembered.

 

I'm in my sixties now. In the whole of my memory calling a spade a spade has been used to indicate plain speaking and never as a racial slur. I'd have said spade as a reference to a black person is American in its origin as a racial slur and is much predated by the English illustration of plain speaking and reference to a gardening implement.
As for golliwogs, I had an enamel golliwog badge as a kid in the sixties. That was then, this is now. Golliwogs have been rightly accepted as unacceptable. Sounds like the pub landlord is a w***er if I may call a spade a spade in the english sense.

 

Reminds me of a Wikipedia entry years ago for a Barnsley player - think it was El Haimour.

The entry said that he had a great interest in dinosaurs and once paid a South American nun 3,000 dollars for a tapestry of a stegosaurus.

 

Hi ho

 

What the actual eff? Tory Councillor and magistrate:

 

Britain First leader Paul Goulding said they aren't which obviously means they definitely are ...

 

Is this for real?

 

Unfortunately, yes.