So this shirt showed up on FB today (source). The OP was asking who the “character” was, but obviously everyone else was like, ‘WHAT THE FUCK?!’

It turns out this shirt was sold at Disneyland, and the second photo was submitted by the child seen in the picture, who dated the pic/shirt as 1957.

Among all of the back and forth that followed (only one reference to ‘Snowflakes’, so…civil?), was the following line:

“Its hard to say racist (which it is) when it’s a product of its era’s racial ignorance.”

I have to say, I like this sentence so much, I’m tempted to steal it. It says everything, while pointing the finger at noone.



While I don’t believe that this t-shirt design was consciously racist, I can’t imagine ANYONE in merchandising thought this caricature of Africans was flattering. They just thought it was ‘funny’.

Yeah, I know.

Or, to put it another way: ‘Product of its time…’ and all that. And I honestly do believe that to be the case here. That said, 1950s Disney (the man *and* the company) was genius at innovation and originality – especially where cartoons were concerned. They could’ve – and should’ve – come up with something a helluva lot better than this lazy sort of hack, cliched – and yes, racist – caricature.



A well-worded addendum by Joe Pinney, found in the same thread:

Racism need not be active, angry, racial hatred in order to qualify as racism. This particular caricature is a variant of the ‘golliwog’ caricature, which was a racist stereotype and a product of white supremacy. Ferris State University’s Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia has categorized the various racial stereotypes. They were products of their time, yes, but their time was a time when open racism was accepted in predominantly white America and non-white people did not have much political power or influence. The fact that they were considered socially acceptable doesn’t change the fact that they are still racist.

