Bongobongo land

I have just read all this and whenim has put it correctly. I had thought this term Bongo Bongo land had previously used in a very derogatory manner for African countries.
These images were printed in some comics complete with drawings of natives with bones through their noses depicted cooking missionaries in big cooking pots. It is not an acceptable remark.

Should we depict Jews in the manner in which they were depicted in Nazi propaganda and just about every where else in Europe over the last 100s of years. The Irish! Roman Catholics. etc etc.

The term Bongo Bongo land has these particularly bad historical connotations of prejudiced and ridicule.

I don't remember 'proving' anything, noodles. Only trying to explain that those offences were perpetrated by white groups of men, too, and that access to victims and local demography went some way to explain what was happenng.

Alos Noodles Don't let us forget the thousands of black African slaves shipped across the Atlantic with big financial gain by traders in places like Bristol and Liverpool. Then sold to the White slave owners to be raped and abused as they were the property of these slave owners.

No one race or nation anywhere has ever had a monopoly on evil deeds.

Also even.

Thanks, nellie. I had no idea about the historical significance of the term BongoBongoLand.

I tried to write post earlier about what I think is our over-sensitivity to harmless stereotypes but deleted it as I couldn't express it well. I still can't but here is some of it in any case. You need to remember what I said above about not having come across the BBland term before.

There is nothing actually wrong with wearing a grass skirt and having a bone through your nose. People of all skin colours (there is only one human 'race') wear things far crazier than grass skirts, and wear face and other body furniture that is, in effect, the equivalent of a bone through one's nose. So it must be the historical perspective that nellie highlights that makes the BBland reference a problem. Plus the fact that it was a Ukip member who used it.

I just read this which I feel is telling about modern attitudes. A son is reprimanding his dad for what he sees as racist remarks even though he knows his dad is not racist:
"It was what you said, not just what you felt, E tried to explain. Maybe it was a generational thing, but he had always thought it should be monitored, addressed, fixed.

'It's strange that none of my mates have ever corrected me', Dermot once said in a rare moment of frustration. 'And they come from Trinidad and Jamaica and Pakistan and Bangladesh. You're always telling me what I should call them, but I never see you with a friend that isn't white.'

And E had tried to brush that away, insisting it was an exaggeration and moreover an irrelevance. But it lingered between them, an inconvenient truth."

It is from Mr Lynch's Holiday by Catherine O'Flynn.

Nelliemoser and whenim64 Of course, you're right.

Yes, Bags many harmless stereotypes are humorous, and I liked the point about people who talk about the incorrectness of certain words that aren't challenged by those children's non-white peers, yet the children are the ones with the pals of all races and not the older person who doesn't like the word. Our children thankfully integrate with other races so much better than we generally do.

Politicians who don't carefully edit what they are going to say are either foolish or do intend what they have said. Bloom has given a clear message to the anti-immigration lobby that, despite UKIP saying it's not racist, it is. His ill-thought out response - it could apply to a mythcal Ruritania - is rubbish. He qualifed his Bongo Bongo Land comment with a remark about them spending aid on sunglasses. He meant Africa.

Africa's a continent, not a country, and an extremely varied continent at that.

Grass skirts come from Hawai.

Don't you think he could have meant any country where aid money is wasted?

I like your comment about politicians preparing what they say, but they often don't. They're always making gaffs.

Bags in the 50s and 60s comics depicted black people wearing grass skirts, carrying African spears and having bones through their noses. Nothing about being geographically or racially correct for the purpose of creating a comic strip.

The politicians who continually make gaffes are not only foolish, but still seem to get elected! Beats me!

Oh yes, it's definitely a 60's thing. And racist. Can't believe he actually came out with it. Can't have done his party a lot of good.

Or perhaps it has.

I suspect Captain Cook has a lot to answer for. I was reading extracts from his voyages in the south seas. Sometimes he thought the locals were good looking and sometimes ugly (frizzy hair Arrgh!). His description of Fijians is rather close to the stereotype above.
One lot thought he was a god and gave him their prized red feather cloak (in Wellington Te Papa museum to this day) and eventually one lot took against him and finished him off.
It has been commented, I think, that Farage is the only UKIP candidate/representative with even half a brain... And this is the lot that have the major parties worrying about seats in the next general election.

And the worrying thing is that they really do have the other parties worried. That's what's scary.

PS Re Capt Cook, there were cannibals in the Fiji islands, of course.

As well as other places.

I do not find the term bongo bongo land as used by that pratt at all amusing. It was used deliberately by him to appeal to racists. The term has history an d he knew that. I am happy to have a responsible discussion on foregin aid without the use of demeaning and derogatory terms.

Oh, you've got to laugh when a "politician" can be that stupid.

Trouble is I think it was deliberate and calculated to appeal to racists. That can be dangerous and not funny. There may be a context where it would be funny but not sure this is it!

I am sorry he has had so much air/media time.

Apparently he has now issued an apology. And the Ukip chairman doubts whether he will be a candidate again.

#wipedthesmile

A bit odd really, the term harks back decades and indeed as explained here, to those 50s & 60s stereotypes. His objection was actually to the Foreign Aid budget to countries who now have nuclear capability. I would have thought UKIP drew their support from those of an anti EU mindset. Naïve of me.

He's a politician, Sel and will therefore feel free to say what he wants, when he wants, without worrying about the consequences. If he had an agenda, he's really mucked it up, hasn't he?

Wouldn't it be good if those who have taken on responsibilities acted responsibly? Too much to ask, I suppose. Like you, naive of me to consider it!

Yes but this is obviously his mind set - I've met many of the same ilk years ago..it all seems so antiquated, so Golf Club Must worry Nigel Farrage - he's spent lots of time appearing main stream.

Yes, the problem is that they are a breed who think (if they do) that they are something important and special. There are a lot of them about too!

It is interesting that when the Duke of Edinburgh makes equally crass remarks, many people seem to think that he is just charmingly droll rather than an ignorant racist.