Long, long ago I posted a political cartoon from an Icelandic newspaper. And lo, the comments did come. The number of them was…unexpected. One commenter, Icelander, pointed us in the direction of this site (thanks to Breck for reminding me about it), with images of pages from the book Tíu Litlir Negrastrákar (10 Little Negro Boys), a republication of the original, which came out in 1922. The rhyme was taken from English, but the drawings were by an Icelandic artist (info from Icelandic Review Online). It became a best-selling children’s book of 2007 in Iceland, apparently mostly due to adults purchasing it for themselves, not kids. (Note: I am sure Iceland is a lovely place with fantastic people and I do not go around trying to collect things from Iceland that use colonial-era depictions of Africans. I swear! If people sent me other sociologically-interesting stuff from/about/regarding Iceland, I’d post that too.)
In the rhyme, the boys die one by one from various accidents or stupid behaviors (gluttony, etc.).
I have no idea what that page of text says; if we have any Icelandic speakers reading and the page says anything interesting/useful to add to this post, a translation would be greatly appreciated.
The republication of the book got me thinking about these two “mammy” figurines I found at an antique/craft shop in Cedar City, Utah, a couple of years ago:
I was at the store, which sold both antiques and new stuff, just looking around, and I came upon the figurine on the left sitting on a shelf. I was looking at it and thinking how bright the paint was and how well it had been preserved, and that it was odd that an old mammy figurine wouldn’t have any scratches or anything on it. And I picked it up and looked at the bottom…and noticed that it said “made in China.” I turned around, which is when I saw a big barrel full of these two figurines. Tons of them. And I realized it wasn’t an antique at all; they are currently being mass-produced in China because there is apparently a market for new versions of old racist stuff. I cursed myself for not having a camera phone so I could just take a picture of them, and after considering for a little while, decided to go ahead and buy $5 worth of racist reproductions to use as examples in my classes (no, it did not occur to me to take a picture of them and return them; that just occurred to me right now).
Anyway, the book and the figurines puzzle me. They’re not valuable (the figurines were both $3.99) and they aren’t artifacts of our past, since they weren’t around during the heyday of these types of images any more than iPods were. I can at least conceive of why someone who likes antiques in general, or is fascinated by colonial-era images, might buy actual antique books or figurines with these types of images. But what is the motivation for buying modern reproductions of them? And clearly someone guessed there would be enough of a market for these two items to arrange to have them produced (and at least in the case of the book, they were correct; I have no idea how well the figurines have sold, obviously).
What does it mean that these types of reproductions exist? That they sell so well? What are the implications of that? I suspect many people would say they’re just cute or funny and that people no longer connect them to specific racist sentiments. Regarding the book, its popularity was attributed to “nostalgia.” That brings up the whole issue of whether/how racist images can be detached from the racist ideologies that originally led to their production. And if people say that they buy a new mammy figurine but that the figurines aren’t racist or offensive and no longer bring with them any larger historical implications…does that mean it’s true? Who gets to decide that? And what are people being nostalgic for, if that’s why they buy them?
Also see this post about patterns for making black mammy-type dolls.
