"..But is Carol Thatcher's little slip an instance of serious racism? On one level obviously not, but in race as in religion, symbolism is powerful. The way that we keep racism in check is to police these totem-words carefully. Why? Because racism is a subtle monster that is generally invisible; it consists of endless little negative assumptions about black people...That is why we need to invest certain speech-rules with such force. We need to demonstrate our awareness that we are somewhat infected still by the sins of our grandfathers, and that we repent of it..." -
Theo Hobson for Spectator’s religion blogAs one, wiser than Golliwogg, already noted:
"The logic of the BBC's argument (and here Golli would say we should add Mr T. Hobson) is that the very mention of the word 'golliwog' is considered racist. Utterly preposterous."
Golliwogg does worry about the way thought manipulators - paid up preachers of the perversion of Political Correctness (PC) - twist and subvert the language at so many levels and applauds some recent remarks on the subject:
"Political correctness is an evasion of proper political argument"
or :
"Political Correctness, that vile, hideous, nasty canker in our society is in every sense to the BBC what MRSA is to Hospitals. "
So what does the
dictionary say about the "contentious" Golli word?
"With all the furore caused by the use of the word golliwog, I decided to check my Concise Oxford Dictionary (1984 reprint) for its definition of the word. It says:
golliwog n. black-faced, brightly dressed doll soft doll with fuzzy hair [19th c, perhaps from golly + polliwog)
On polliwog it says:
polliwog n (dialect and US), tadpole [earlier polwigge, polwygle, from poll + wiggle].
On poll it says:
poll n. human head, part of this on which hair grows ~ poll tax."
