Political Correctness Gone Mad?

[Tiberius]

Of course what you buy for your children, and how you explain to them, is your business.
So how about golliwogs? Would you buy one ( if you could find an outlet )? If you would, on what basis would you buy? A harmless, cuddly toy? Or something to educate your children about the nature of racism?

Sure, I'd buy one if my child wanted it, or if I thought they might like the doll. I don't even think I'd need to explain the history behind them. I'm going to bring my children up to respect people of all skin colours, and a doll of black skin isn't going to affect them in any way. They will accept it as a normal thing, which is exactly how it should be accepted. They will understand it is a doll, not a real person, just like "Bratz" dolls have overly large heads, and Barbies have disproportionate body measurements.

There is a relatively new movement that supports equality more than anti-racism. The anti-racist movement has a long history of being intolerant. Case in point, Janet Street Porter called her black neighbour a "bitch" a few years back and the press went into a rage about it, calling her a "racist". I was on YouTube at the time and challenged people to tell me what exactly was racist about calling a black woman a "bitch". The same applies recently with the stupid cartoon that compared Obama to a crazy monkey. Regardless of the historical significance of such things, the fact that we don't compare black people to monkeys today should stand for something. The cartoon compared a man to a crazy monkey, nothing more. The fact that people jumped on it and claimed it was racist shows only that people do not support equality, and still think there should be some difference between people of different skin colours.

Christopher Hitchens shares my view. He criticized the cartoon for not being "funny", but nothing more. I'm not going to teach my children to be "anti-racist", I'm going to teach them equality. Anti-racism invariably leads to more racism, whilst equality leads to equality. My children will know that everyone is equal, and they will know that "golliwog" dolls refer to black people as much as "Bratz" refer to white people (i.e. none at all).