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Big Boi Has Racially-Insensitive Dolls Removed From New Zealand Shop

Big Boi noticed some offensive dolls at a shop in the Auckland Airport in New Zealand and decided to take action and have them removed.

After posting pics on his Twitter page and getting fans to respond, the New Zealand Herald contacted Airport management about the dolls known as Golliwogs.

“Once we were made aware, the retailer was immediately asked to remove the product from sale,” said Airport Corporate Relations Manager, Richard Llewellyn.

So they had to be made aware that these dolls may have been slightly offensive to certain people in some way?

I guess they missed the description of the product they were selling.

Golliwogs were first introduced in the 1940s in children’s books by author, Florence Kate Upton, as a sort of caricature of an American Black minstrel figure. However, by the 1960s they began being associated with the insulting racial slur “wog,” and the books, deemed “racially insensitive,” were eventually withdrawn from libraries.

Well the Golliwogs are still selling apparently, this is just one spot where they were found and removed after a celebrity complaint.

Given the fact that Oprah Winfrey dealt with a similar situation in Australia last year, the words of Kanye West come to mind, “Racism’s still alive, they just been concealing it.”