The characterization of the black child, is something which particularly struck me in my reading of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Jayna Brown’s piece. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin the drama between Ophelia and Topsy, is whether she can enact an education for her, this is reminiscent of Brown’s argument that Topsy is “drawn in Stowe’s novel to represent the childlike races of Africa and India, the uneducated natives to be tamed and trained by Christian society”, this notion of civilizing a “native” is quite clear through the characterization of Topsy, she is described as “a funny specimen in the Jim Crow line” and as holding “a perfect carnival of confusion”. This notion of charity and civilizing has influenced popular culture surrounding colonial missionary programs, Jayna Brown points to the below cartoon from Punch, a satirical magazine published in London which was highly influential during the 1840s and 1850s. In the Cartoon, Uganda is characterized as “the black baby” on the doorstep of the white man who states “what another”, suggesting the “black baby” is a burden on society but highlights the alleged charity of the white man who supposes “he must take it in”.
Furthermore, Jayna Brown’s explores “the centrality of race in the formation of western ideologies of childhood and popular child culture” and how the character of Topsy has influenced this. Jayna Brown points to the example of the “golliwog”, a character which appeared in children’s books of the late nineteenth century, it is clear that the character is reminiscent of blackface and in particular Topsy. There was a resurgence of its usage in the 1970s, the character was used multiple times in Enid Blyton’s work and appeared on a Robertson’s jam jar up until 2001.
We can see how the centrality of race in western ideologies, borne out of the contrast between Topsy and Eva, seems unshakeable in its descendant characterizations of children. In a 1982 United Colours of Benetton ad, the white child seems to be characterized as angelic, whilst the black child is characterized with devil horns, separating colours into good and evil. Furthermore, the iterations of “civilizing the native” are present in an early 2018 campaign for H&M, with the black child characterized as “the coolest monkey in the jungle” and the white child as a “jungle survival expert”.
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