{"id":2143,"date":"2005-04-26T18:58:00","date_gmt":"2005-04-26T22:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles-wp\/?p=2143"},"modified":"2005-04-26T18:58:00","modified_gmt":"2005-04-26T22:58:00","slug":"golly-bars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/2005\/04\/26\/18\/58\/golly-bars\/","title":{"rendered":"Golly Bars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Slate has a story about an apparently racist “Nogger Black” bar<\/a> (black on the outside!) being sold in Sweden by a Unliver subsidiary. Which reminded me of “Golly Bars<\/a>“, AKA Golliwog Bars<\/a>. These were a staple of growing up in Dublin<\/a> that Unilever<\/a> (through its subsidiary HB<\/a> in Ireland) sold as a vaguely ice-cream-textured treat with an ugly blackface wrapper. What the fuck is up with Unliver anyway<\/a>? In later years, HB\/Unilever changed the “Golly Bar” and abstracted the blackface into a rather impressionist design to try to obfuscate the Golliwog’s nasty origins<\/a>, finally changing completely to some lame polar bear or something. I think possibly my first awareness of racism, and of institutionalised racism<\/a>, came when I was all of 5 or 6. I was sitting there wondering why some of my ice pops had pictures of dracula, or bunnies, or cows but for the life of me I couldn’t understand why this one had a picture of a person with dark skin who didn’t look very happy at all. I remember asking my parents and getting a vague answer that didn’t satisfy me. I decided to stick to the Dracula Pops, because there was a serious<\/b> ice pop I could get my teeth into! Besides, HB’s version of “ice cream”<\/a> bore more of a resemblance to flavoured cardboard than anything else. Just don’t get me started on Minstrels chocolates<\/a>! And oh yeah, Unlever also does a brisk trade in “skin whitening” creams<\/a> in many Asian countries where the paler you are, the posher you are, apparently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slate has a story about an apparently racist “Nogger Black” bar (black on the outside!) being sold in Sweden by a Unliver subsidiary. Which reminded me of “Golly Bars“, AKA Golliwog Bars. These were...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t