Dear reader, this one comes to us via our sage of the the near north, (Dame Ira) as a reaction, doubtlessly triggered by our sage from the distant north-west who goes by the name of ‘Frank’. This letter talks about the systemic ingrained racism of them olden days, (about yesterday after 3.00 pm) . Good thing we’ve moved on. Cos now we only institutionally kill first Australians through the “due process” of the criminal justice system, a true sign of progress and enlightenemt .
The letter makes a simple observation about the efficacy of boot polish.
Dame Ira writes;
Oh, God help us! The blasphemy, the blasphemy!
We used to have ‘nigger brown’ (oh my god, who said that?) boot polish and people wore ‘nigger brown’ items of clothing Makes you wonder how the word ‘Niger’ was originally pronounced. Makes you wonder if the word Niger’ was not a gentrification of the original ‘Nigger’, when ‘Nigger’ became a term of insult, a way of referring to a slave rather than a place of origin.
Some companies employed underage workers to keep stoves in good order.
My mother referred to extremist anti-Catholic Northern Ireland people as ‘Black Protestants’. Even the Divil himself came in for a bit of the black stuff, If we kids arrived back home covered in mud and dirt from some huge adventure we’d be immediately ordered into the bathroom ‘because you are all filthy! You are as black as the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat!’.
Even when my sisters had outgrown them, their ‘gollywog’ dolls, they still turned up in wardrobes and drawers, so well regarded that my sisters were loath to discard them.
In London, in the sixties and seventies, to add pomp and ceremony to your entrance hall, you could buy a 19th cent antique figure, made from either papier mache or plaster, perhaps a bit more than a metre high. The figure was of a negro boy dressed in 18th century footman’s costume, holding a tray. Upon this tray you would place your visiting card where eventually, the butler would take your card up to the master’s rooms and the master would then decide if you were worthy of his company, or not. This was precisely the world of Mr Darcy, of Pride and Prejudice and the not unjustified suspicion that the bold Mr Darcy may have made his fortune by buying and selling ‘ Nigers’.
One other bit of speculation which I may have touched on in the past. I have often wondered about the word ‘maroon’ or ‘marooned’.
In eradicating the taint of stain, colour or germs in government policy it’s important to read the fine print.
The OED suggests that in French the word ‘marron’ refers to the sweet chestnut of Southern Europe.
The OED also suggests that the Spanish word ‘cimarron’ refers to wild forested (chestnut?) country, but was also used to describe slaves who had escaped into the wild country of the West Indies.
It seems impossible to believe that slave ships, packed to the gunnels with slaves, would not have had outbreaks of the common shipboard diseases. Dumping the dead in the sea and the dying on sparsely inhabited islands was probably the only way to stop the entire cargo from being infected. A lot of money had been spent purchasing ‘Nigers’ so all necessary precautions must be used.
Dumping recalcitrant, troublesome and plain dying ‘marrons’ must have been so common that even the threat of being ‘marroned’ (or marooned) at sea must have been enough to shut the noisiest of protesters. This seems to me a fair argument in favour of the origin of the modern word ‘maroon’.
(Just in case I’ve failed to make my point properly, the marron is a French chestnut. The chestnut’s colour is close enough to the colour of African skin for the ‘marron’ nickname to stick.)
Well now, the last little gem is a tin of floor polish I treasure and which presently sits on my shelf.
Made by Houghton and Byrne Pty. Ltd.
225 George St., Sydney
Phone 27-1452 (10 lines)
Net contents 3 and a quarter ozs
Front of tin, a picture of a smiling male Aboriginal face.
Underneath the title of the polish:
PICCANINNY
Dear God…