Shop owner sparks race row over ad for golliwog-like garden gnomes
Sarah Cope, 52, insisted the figurines were not racist and reportedly mentioned an African ex-partner as evidence she was not prejudiced.
A shop owner has been accused of racism after advertising a set of garden gnomes reminiscent of controversial golliwog dolls.
Susan Cope posted a picture of the three gnomes on her shop’s Facebook page, asking: ‘Would any of you be interested in buying one of the Gollie Garden ornaments?’
Ms Cope, 52, who runs Angelstone Gems in Stoke-on-Trent, claimed she had been ‘bombarded’ with ‘hate mail’ after the post and decided not to sell them.
But she initially appeared to make light of the backlash and suggested the fact she had previously had an African partner countered accusations of racism, according to StokeonTrentLive.
In response to a comment telling her she would have ‘them BLM d***heads after her’, she wrote: ‘They’re big sellers, apparently. Haven’t got them in the shop yet. Just testing the water. Lol.’
The shopkeeper insisted she never owned the gnomes and was simply gauging interest to resell the items from a supplier because ‘people do still have them’.
She added the gnomes are ‘not illegal, because they altered the name’.
Terms such as ‘golly’ have increasingly been used to advertise the dolls amid rising opposition to the racist slur ‘w*g’.
But they usually bear the same exaggerated features and costumes derived from blackface minstrel characters, which became popular in derogatory caricatures of ethnic minorities in the 19th century.
A 2018 YouGov poll suggested 63 per cent of Britons do not consider it racist to ‘sell or display a golliwog doll’, while 20 per cent believed it was.
The same year a man was fined £250 for displaying a golliwog doll in his window in Wales after pleading guilty to a racially aggravated offence of intent to cause harassment, alarm or distress.
Ms Cope told StokeonTrentLive: ‘Sometimes it’s like a memory for people isn’t it? Like a memory, when I was little. There’s no harm intended whatsoever.
‘(The supplier) says “I’ve got these, there’s only three left”. He sells absolutely loads of them. I don’t see it as a racist thing at all. It’s not like, “I’m a racist, buy these”.’
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