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COMMENTS:
GoodGolly! That's a good question.
Not as racist as the Lawn Nigger in front of my house
If they are anything like Gollywogs then no, they are just a tradition. No racism is intended.
Contrary to common belief, the context is actually fairly important when considering racism. Its not a black and white subject (arf arf!)
What if racism was intended at the time they were developed?
Does that mean the image of the craven, hook-nosed Jew isn't racist, just because it has become traditional?
Voted : Yes, only in America, where the Racists and the Bigots roam...
Very well stated Cranky and Flagrantviolator Karmer, was it really necessary for you to include the "N" word? Some people just don't know when to quit...
Cranky
They werent intended to be racist at the time though, thats the point. They were meant to be jolly black women and men with big, red lipped smiles. This was the image people had of black people back then.
cakey, I didn't direct it at anyone, so it's my prerogative whether or not I say the word. Deal widdit, yo.
What Doctordraw said.
I've been in many an elderly black person's home and have seen lots of antique "mammy doll" cookie jars, toothpick holders, and salt shakers in them. Whether their original creaters intended for them to be racist, I don't know. But they're not all looked at that way by everyone.
There's even some people who live near my former residence who have a little ceramic black boy sitting on a log on the each side of their driveway. He's barefoot, wearing a straw hat, has a fishing pole, and a black face that would make Al Jolson envious. The people who own the house are also black.
What are they gonna do, stick little white kids out there by their driveway? I mean, seriously. At least let an old black woman have a cookie jar that doesnt look like some little snotty nosed white kid.
It depends on the intention, IMO.
Voted : Shucks, no, they's jest good fun!
I gotta have one. Can you order them on line? It would be cool if they had a wind up one that sang some old plantation song.
Voted : Quite charming,really: I'll have 2
LMAO. The next thing that will be called "racist" will be the Aunt Jemima syrup bottles that are shaped like Aunt Jemima. *rolls eyes*
The phrase "Aunt Jemima" is sometimes used as a female version of Uncle Tom to refer to a black woman who is perceived as obsequiously servile or acting in, or protective of, the interests of whites.
Aunt Jemima is depicted as a plump, smiling, bright-eyed black woman, originally wearing a kerchief over her hair. She was represented as a slave and was the most commonplace representation of the stereotypical "mammy" character.
Objections to the depiction of Aunt Jemima and other black advertising date back to the 1920s. According to Slave in a Box by M.M. Manring, one black professional polled in 1928 responded, "I positively hate this illustration."
One important characteristic of the Aunt Jemima trademark is its stereotypical depiction of black women as servants. Aunt Jemima was characteristic of most advertising with black women as a reminder that their place was in the kitchen, and the majority of advertising was associated with food. Many blacks found Aunt Jemima in particular to be an obvious and insensitive reminder of slavery.
An early advertisement, for example, contained the following copy:
On the old plantation, Aunt Jemima refused to reveal to a soul the secret of those light fragrant pancakes which she baked for her master and his guests. Only once, long after her master's death did Aunt Jemima reveal her recipe. It's still a secret.
The Aunt Jemima trademark has been modified several times over the years. Aunt Jemima is no longer a slave, but either a housewife or some other benevolent mother figure. She has been made younger and more physically attractive, and her kerchief has been eliminated for a more modern hairstyle and pearls. This new look remains with the products to this day. (Wikipedia)
Voted : Yes, they are an artifact of racism in the U.S.
"This was the image people had of black people back then."
Yes. They saw them as servants/slaves. They saw them as sub-human and segregated them from 'white' society.
Still think it's ok?
^Yes, actually. Because thats not the intention of the producers today. Who gives a shit about the origins, if people want to buy them for asthetic reasons?
People arent looking at them thinking "they look like servants, so its ok for black people to be treated as servants", so who cares about the origins?
In fact, I would go so far as to say the only thing racist about these dolls nowadays is in the minds of middle class white men, busybodies who feel they need to revise history and actively destroy peoples memories of the past, when in fact no one but them cares.
This sort of doggmatic, uwanted "protection" of the feelings of minorities is the reason why hot cross buns are now banned in a lot of English primary schools, in case they offend "minority" religious students. Do you think little kids actually cares if a bun has a little cross on it?
Voted : Shucks, no, they's jest good fun!
I's gots one in mah pantry settin' 'tween da Sambo doll and da pancake mix.
Before we white males presume to assume that all black people think the "mammy doll" culture is just swell, let's hear from some actual black people.
- - - - - - - -
Images to Remember
Memorabilia fosters discussions about race
By David Olson
Herald Writer
Shirley Walthall proudly collects objects that dehumanized her and other black Americans.
There's the wooden watermelon topped by two smiling, pig-tailed black girls. There's a sign for "Black Nancy Coal" that features a white man in blackface and a rag wrapped over his head. And there are several representations of mammies, the once-ubiquitous symbols of black female servitude.
Walthall, 63, of Everett knows all too well how those objects degraded blacks and reinforced white people's stereotypes. But it's impossible to understand black American history without understanding how pervasive such humiliating items were, she said.
"I don't think we should ever forget it," Walthall said. "It's a part of our past, and if we forget where we came from, we'll lose a part of our history that's extremely important for us to remember."
Walthall is one of thousands of black Americans who collect racist memorabilia. Her two dozen pieces hang from her kitchen wall and sit on a dining-room display case next to dolls, ceramic figurines and other objects that present a far more positive image of blacks.
A cookie jar with a smiling mammy face looks galling on a shelf above commemorative plates of black jazz musicians. But to ignore or hide these images would be to gloss over the pain of the past, she said.
David Pilgrim agrees. He is curator of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Mich. "Jim Crow" was the name given to the system of discrimination against blacks from the 1870s to the 1960s.
The museum houses more than 5,000 racist objects in a cramped former classroom at the university.
Pilgrim views the memorabilia as a way to teach about racism, past and present. The museum is open by appointment only, and visitors must first watch a documentary that places the objects in a political, social and cultural context, "so they're not just looking at objects," Pilgrim said.
Most visitors view the material with what Pilgrim calls a "thoughtful sadness." Afterward, they sit down in a group to talk about what they've seen. Unlike in most interracial discussions about race, participants don't mince words, he said.
"These images are so powerful that they force us to talk about race and racism," Pilgrim said. "People resist having open, honest discussions about race: whites for fear of being called racist if they say the wrong thing, and blacks for fear of being called angry if they say the wrong thing.
"This is a place where they can deal with their feelings, where they can get it all out."
Several thousand people have visited the museum since it opened in 1995, and the museum's 3-year-old Web site has received 250,000 hits, he said.
Walthall sees the objects as more than just a reminder of the past.
"People still believe in the stereotypes: that blacks are lazy, that blacks don't keep up their property, that we're dumb," she said.
One of the pieces is a ceramic figure of a black boy with huge lips and feet.
"I think it's a put-down," Walthall said. "It looks ridiculous."
"And the more ridiculous you can make African Americans look, the more it perpetuates prejudice," said her husband, Bennie.
Bennie and Shirley Walthall lived through Jim Crow discrimination growing up in rural East Texas. But many younger blacks know of that era primarily through books. The objects, Shirley Walthall said, can be more powerful than words.
The mammy dolls reveal how whites not only saw themselves as superior to blacks, but how they perceived blacks as accepting and even reveling in their servitude, Shirley Walthall said.
A classic mammy that Walthall bought at the Everett Public Market antique mall 10 years ago for about $10 features a wooden face with a big grin and huge lips. A cloth red and white rag is attached to the top of her head, and "Everett Washington" is carved on the top. It's unclear when the piece was made.
Walthall said the object is a reminder of the pervasiveness of bigotry. After all, Everett was the site of huge Ku Klux Klan marches in the 1920s, and until the 1960s, racial covenants made many neighborhoods off-limits to blacks.
"It's important that people know there have been stereotypical attitudes in Everett as well, that it's not just the South," Walthall said.
Walthall bought most of the two dozen pieces of offensive memorabilia from antique shops in the Northwest and in Texas. Many are original, but at least one is a reproduction.
Several of them were gifts. A late white friend gave her two mammy dolls several years ago. The woman realized as an adult that the mammy image had racist overtones, Walthall said. But as a child, she loved them.
"She said her grandmother made them for her," Walthall recalled. "She said, 'I'd really like you to have them if they don't offend you.'"
At the time, even most blacks weren't bothered by many of the representations that are now viewed as racist, Bennie Walthall said. They were images so ingrained in American culture that they became just a part of everyday life.
"You'd go into the store and buy Aunt Jemima cornmeal and you wouldn't think twice about it being offensive," Bennie Walthall said. "As people became more aware of themselves and proud of themselves, these things started to take on notes of offensiveness."
Even today, though, the objects must be put in their historical context, Shirley Walthall warned.
When Walthall was a teacher and principal at Hawthorne, Lowell and Silver Firs schools in Everett, she would regularly take groups of first-graders into her home to view her collection of black dolls, African handicrafts, prints of Jacob Lawrence paintings and other objects of cultural pride.
But she didn't show them the racist memorabilia. They were too young to be able to put the objects into the proper context, and she feared that showing them could perpetuate negative stereotypes rather than undermine them.
For those who are old enough to understand, the objects reveal not only the hatred that blacks have historically confronted in the United States, but the dignity that Jim Crow-era blacks maintained even in the face of constant humiliation, said Barbara Drake, 64.
Drake is a friend of Shirley Walthall who displays her own collection of more than a dozen mammy and pickaninny dolls in her Everett home. When she looks at them, she remembers the sacrifices of her forebears. By doing so, Drake transmutes symbols of degradation into affirmations of progress.
"People suffered so much for us to get to where we are today," she said. "We've come so far from the rag on the head. These people were important, and we shouldn't forget what they did for us." (Herald)
I cannot believe people think this is NOT racist! It's not just 'good fun' if people are offended by it. How would you like your mother to be represented in such a way? And okay, they were first manufactured in the 19th century, when people didn't know that racism was bad yet. So why are they STILL being manufactured today?! In China and Japan no less! Why has race relations in this country not gone anywhere in the last 30 years? Shouldn't we be much farther along by now?
How is mammy a racist doll?
Did you know that the mammy's (or black maids) lived better as "slaves" then they ever did in their own countries and black slaves were honored to be maids? It kept them off the feilds and gave them a nice warm house to live in and they were grateful! The families that had black maids (slaves) were'nt beating them and stuff, they were usually just like maids and were treated kindly is what i've always heard. Not EVERY white person back in the days beat, raped and burned blacks to crosses!
Is THIS racist against indians??? I don't think Indians would be crying over some small artifact from their heritage
Everything's racist.
Notice there isn't any "daddy" doll around?
 Just sayin', folks.
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