Historical Racialized Toys in the United States

Christopher P. Barton, Kyle Somerville

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781629581941
• eBook ISBN: 9781315528878
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores the history of children's toys and games bearing racial stereotypes, and the role these objects played in the creation and maintenance of structures of racialism and racism in the United States, from approximately 1865 to the 1930s. This time period is one in which the creation of structures of childhood and children's socialization into race was fostered. Additionally, commodities, like toys, were didactic and disciplinary media in the creation, modification and reproduction of Victorian society. This volume:

• will shed light on issues of identity, ideology, and hegemony;
  
• will appeal to those interested in historical archaeology, critical theory, and constructions of racism and class, as well as material culture scholars, and antiques collectors;
  
• will be suitable for upper-level courses in historical archaeology, modern American history, and material culture studies.

CHAPTER 1

The Ideology of Race

Race is a learned ideology, and racism a cultivated practice. The ideology of race suggests that innate differences exist within the human species. This categorization is inherently hierarchical and leads to practices of racism, in which one or more racial groups are given privileged status at the expense of dehumanized “Others.” No valid biological evidence has been found to suggest there exist subspecies of humans; nevertheless, race remains a very real and powerful social construction that influences the daily lives of people. Similar to any social construction, race as an ideology has a fabricated origin, and the maintenance and reproduction of racial ideologies through child socialization is discussed in this book. This work is an examination of how mass-produced toys bearing racialized imagery of Asian, Black, Irish, and Native American stereotypes functioned as a medium to socialize children of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries into a racialist worldview.

Toys, of course, were not the only objects to depict racialized representations of the “Other,” and objects such as salt and pepper shakers, cookie jars, decorative statues, advertising, and a vast number of other items and images depicted figures of all races, ethnicities, and classes (Dubin 1987; Husfloen et al. 1996). In many ways, however, toys depicting racial stereotypes are perhaps the most shocking to modern sensibilities because they were objects specifically made for children. Toys, as a form of material culture, are not only reflective, but also constitutive of societal structures, beliefs, and practices. Children’s toys underscore the projective and constructive disposition of material culture because they are didactic objects purchased by adults and used to teach children. The toys discussed in this book reflect popular racial stereotypes, and demonstrate the explicit attempt to cultivate these ideologies and practices in White children. The socialization of children into structures of race and racism was not limited to toys, as there existed myriad everyday practices meant to socialize children into a racialist worldview. However, mass marketed, produced, and consumed toys represent some of the more salient and objectified forms of racist culture directed toward children.

This book is built upon our 2012 paper, “Play Things: Children’s Racialized Mechanical Banks and Toys,” published in volume 15 of the International Journal of Historical Archaeology. Toys, utilitarian objects, and advertising images depicting racialized figures have been the focus of scholarly examination for some time (Barrett 2003; Brown 2006; Dubin 1987; Gould 2010; Lattimer 1976; Wilkerson 1974). Here, we build on those previous works by considering not only the historical circumstances in which these toys were manufactured and sold, but also how these objects socialized children into racist structures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In taking a multifaceted and multidisciplinary approach, this book is meant to be many things. It is an archaeological study, a sociological examination, an anthropological study of the (primarily) Victorian culture of the United States, and a material culture study. These approaches are always shot through with one another. No doubt this approach has produced a study rich in interdisciplinary perspectives on a specific social phenomenon, while requiring something of a tradeoff in a systematic and coherent research agenda. With that said, it should be abundantly clear to practitioners of these fields that no one discipline enjoys a monopoly on explaining the entire depth and breadth of human society and culture. Nor would a monopoly be desirable, as different intellectual approaches and methodological competencies are vital for a “thick” understanding of any social phenomenon (Grindstaff 2008:211).

We have compiled a database of 172 toys depicting racial caricatures and other stereotypes, using data acquired from antique dealers’ and collectors’ websites, period retail advertising and catalogs, patent papers, and museum collections. The data collected include toy type, description of the toy from period advertising if applicable, name of the manufacturer (or distributor if the manufacturer is unknown), date or period of first manufacture/appearance in advertising, sale price, and the source from which the toy was found. Mechanical banks and clockwork toys and the numerous variants thereof are, by far, the most-represented of racialized toys, and therefore we focus the brunt of our interpretation on these objects. Other objects for children such as toy books and puzzles were produced as early as the seventeenth century and have received greater attention elsewhere. These were not included in our toy sample, although similar patterns of racial representation are present among these kinds of toys as well (see Gould 2010).

A few points regarding this methodology should be clarified before proceeding further. First, because these objects have been removed from the contexts of their original owners it is difficult to determine the extent to which these toys were successful in socializing children into structures of racism. It is also problematic to know how these toys were collected and displayed by children in the past, because they lack the controlled provenience of traditional archaeological finds. Presumably, parents purchased these more expensive toys, especially pricy mechanical toys, for special occasions such as Christmas or as a surprise (Roof 1917; Waits 1992). Board and target games were for use by groups of individuals, but the use of mechanical toys is more difficult to discern, especially since most children preferred toys of their own creation, the consequences of which we will examine in the final chapter.

Because children are socialized into their environments by adults through material and nonmaterial means, children’s use of space will therefore not be random, but will have patterns that reflect children’s behavior and the norms that direct the use of particular space. This disciplining of children’s space and behaviors often leaves behind material evidence (Baxter 2006a:79). It is reasonable to assume, then, that because they were fairly expensive objects, and consequently a visual reminder of the prosperity of the child’s family, and received for special occasions, they would be given a prominent place in the child’s room or elsewhere in the home, and were never taken outside where they might be damaged.

Mechanical toys were probably curated objects, and are one reason that so many exist today and why so few end up in traditional archaeological contexts. Due to their relatively rugged construction and popularity with collectors, mechanical toys made of iron, such as clockwork figures and banks, are much more likely to have survived into the present day than toys made of cardboard, paper, or cloth. Rugged construction, however, does not guarantee complete survival over a period of several decades, and indeed, many mechanical banks and toys are still fragile (O’Neill 1988; Waits 1992). That said, the number of toys in our sample is a fair representative of the total number and variety of toys produced through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (see also Gould 2010). As will be seen, however, the fact that most of these toys were mechanical has profound implications for the ways in which these toys may have been used to teach children about the “Other.” In addition, because mechanical toys were more expensive than other types, we argue that these toys could only be purchased by people with disposable incomes (however, see Mullins 2010).

The issue of gender and toys must also be considered. While many, if not most, playthings were gender specific, these toys underscore the difficulty of tracing consumption and the ambiguity of the meaning of material culture for consumers. It is tempting to attribute mechanical toys and target games to boys, dolls and doll sets to girls, and board games and masks to both, but the association of an object with a single realm or exclusively with females (or males) risks a devolution into essentialism, though mechanical toys are generally considered by most current researchers and in contemporary documents to have been for boys (Croswell 1898; Ganaway 2007; Mullins 2011:156–157; Roof 1917). However, given that the expression of gentility was the responsibility of both men and women during the nineteenth century, the values expressed by these toys are best examined as household items and a dialogue between parent and child, and perhaps between adults, rather than as discrete objects made specifically for either gender.

To frame the reflective and constitutive disposition of toys, we draw on Pierre Bourdieu’s (1977, 1984) theory of practice as a theoretical framework for interpreting the socialization of individuals into a racialized worldview, or habitus. These examples are situated within interpretations of the disposition of children’s toys as media for the socialization of children into a racialist habitus.

Practice Theory as a Model for Understanding Toys

Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice has been widely used by scholars from a range of disciplines as a model to understand social relations (Orser 2004; Ortner 1999). Bourdieu’s practice theory, encompassed under the umbrella term of post-structuralism, argues that individuals do not blindly adhere to social structures, but rather operate within a “grey area” of applying, rejecting, and modifying pre-existing social traditions. The ability to mediate social structures is predicated upon the lifelong socialization of an individual that cultivates a habitus, which Bourdieu (1977:53) defines as:

a system of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an expressed mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them.

Habitus both restricts and enables an individual’s practices within changing social situations. It is not simply an itemized list of choices that an individual can select from, but a learned worldview that filters individual practice based upon pre-existing social traditions. As individual daily practices cause reactions within social networks, an individual’s habitus is altered to conform to changing situations, and ultimately modifies social structures. The result is a dynamic relationship in which collective social structures influence individual practice, and individual practice can affect social structures, thus enabling the continuation and modification of society through time and space. This model leaves us with a reflexive interpretation of social relations as societal structures in which values and practices are not static or stagnant, but rather constantly subjected to (re)negotiation.

This lifelong learning cultivates a unique disposition, or habitus, that is the sole result of an individual’s own experiences, and yet, because of the collective nature of society, also shares similarities with the attitudes of other people. Simply put, no two individuals have the same habitus, but no two habituses operating within the same social networks are ever completely different. This enables both a level of uniformity and a diversified range of what constitutes social structures, beliefs, and practices.

Race and racism fit within this discourse, since both operate as structural dispositions that affect habitus and individual practice (Orser 2007:57–59). As mentioned, race is a socially learned construction that creates a habitus in which human physical variation, that is, genotypic and phenotypic responses to selective pressures, is conceived as evidence for human subspeciation. The result of these ideologies is a hierarchical taxonomy of human existence in which groups are categorized based on stereotyped, superficial, and biologically invalid characteristics. Taxonomies of race are subjectively used by groups in power to underscore their social authority as well as also to impose that authority onto marginalized peoples. Ultimately, structures of race are powerful influences used in the social relations between and among groups (Bonilla-Silva 1997:476–477). These dynamic social structures greatly affect the everyday lives of people, and in turn affect individual practice. Bourdieu’s theory of practice enables scholars to understand the relationships among social structure, habitus, and practice, facilitating a theoretical model from which we can interpret the reflective and constitutive disposition of material culture.

Overview

In Chapter Two, we briefly discuss the sociohistoric milieu of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing on the origins and reproduction of racial ideologies. This chapter provides a theoretical foundation of race from which our interpretations of toys will arise. Drawing heavily from the work of archaeologists, historians, and sociologists, this discussion situates the sociohistorical networks of race, class, and gender through an interdisciplinary perspective. In this chapter, we offer blackface minstrel shows as examples of both creators and creations of a racialized habitus. Minstrel shows were predicated upon pre-existing social structures that created, modified, and reproduced ideologies of race through the socialization of individuals (Barton 2012). This brief discussion of blackface minstrels offers a comparative example for interpreting racialized toys, as both practices were contemporaries in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America.

In Chapter Three, we discuss the concept of childhood within the United States as a distinct period in an individual’s life. Childhood is not a universally shared social practice; rather, the construct of childhood is a temporally and spatially defined ideology. In discussing the racialized toys of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, we focus upon childhood through the lens of the Victorian period (1837–1901). While the timeline of the toy dataset expands beyond 1901, it is important to note that the economic, political, and social networks that created these racialized toys are rooted within the Victorian era and continued well past this period. In order to fully discuss the meanings inscribed onto and through racialized toys, we contextualize the artifacts into a brief historiography of the Victorian era in the United States to provide a framework to build our interpretations of racialized toys.

Chapter Four provides a brief history of mechanical and still banks, toys, dolls, costumes, and board games, and some background information on the manufacturers who created them. In this chapter, the artifacts are quantified and described based on the form, dates, and country of origin of the product, and represented race. In addition, a discussion of patenting, specifically, the mechanization of banks, clockwork, and pull/push toys, is detailed, as manufacturers often did not patent the racialized depictions, but the mechanics of the toys. In this regard, issues of authenticity arise as manufacturers and advertisers proclaim the lifelike movements and appearances of their toys. Materiality is a core component in the study of object authenticity, and an understanding of how and why certain objects are made and for what purposes reveals authentication to be a negotiation of social relationships, and indeed the material precipitate of it (Theodossopoulos 2013:352–353; Livingstone 1998). In order to underscore the “authenticity” of the racial group depicted, there must be broader social convention of the ways that, for example, Asians look and act. This is so that, apart from the advertising and packaging, the toy can be easily recognized by the consumer as the represented racial group. Such recognition by the consumer depends upon pre-existing social conventions on racial stereotypes, and that those ideologies are identifiable when projected onto the toy. While these artifacts reflect pre-existing social ideologies of race, they also help to recreate and modify those ideologies through the socialization of children. These racialized toys were designed and purchased by adults to discipline children into both convincing of race and ensuring practices of racism against non-White “Others.”

In Chapter Five, we provide a descriptive analysis of a sampling of toys depicting four “races”: Native Americans, the Irish, Asians, and the Black races. While it is not our intention to provide any validity to the conception of categorizing people into races, we use this approach to garner a better understanding of how the people who created, advertised, purchased, and played with these toys interpreted the racialized world around them. These racialized toys, like all artifacts, are products that reflect the social values and beliefs held within Victorian society. In this regard, we provide a brief description of the socio-historical networks concerning the emotional perspectives associated with each non-White race. This section concludes in stating that, while the primary objective for many of these toys was to ensure that White children would be socialized into understanding the perceived physical and cultural traits, as well as the desired emotional responses to each represented race, the tacit purpose of these autodidactic objects was to construct an ideology of the White Race. Simply, racialized toys were used to perpetuate the ideology of a racialized “Other,” but also through this “Othering,” children were taught what it meant to be White.

Finally, the conclusion of the book provides a brief summation of the various topics presented throughout the work. An important aspect of these interpretations of racialized toys, and in general, all toys, is not to underestimate the power that children possess as social agents. Children have the power to influence the toy purchasing decisions made by adults, and thus have power over the curation of material culture. In addition, despite the intentions of adults, the power of children’s imaginations and innovation can take any object and repurpose it to suit the play needs at any given time or place. That is to say, how many children who received these toys had actually seen a “real” Indian, a “real” Black person, a “real” Chinaman? These toys did not claim to accurately represent the “real” African American as an individual with bulging eyes and unchecked bodily movements, or the Chinese or Japanese as mysterious and magical, any more so than the illustrations in racist nineteenth-century anthropological literature meant to suggest absolute genealogical links between man and animal (Livingstone 1998). These objects are not authentic portrayals of the (real or perceived) practices of other races, but instead are representations grounded in the contestation of identity between producer and consumer, dominant and dominated, and us versus them. Indeed, while racialized toys were purchased by adults for the objective of socializing children into ideologies of race, the child had the power to circumvent parental control through his/her own play, and often did.

Social life is a flow of interaction, and in one sense, social life is shaped by the physical limitations of the body and space. Society is defined as an agglomeration of institutions, activities, and practices associated with those institutions, the people doing those practices and activities, and the structural relationships occurring between and among individuals, collectivities, and the institutions that create and recreate them (Pred 1981:6). The reproduction of society is an ongoing process where practice results in the perpetuation of knowledge, institutions, and relationships. Social reproduction and social life itself are inseparable from practices, and by extension, from the material world of man-made objects that facilitate them (Brubaker 1985:750). Therefore, processes of social reproduction can only be fully understood when it is understood how they worked materially. Given that material culture is important in how people create, experience, change, and give meaning to their world, it must be understood that material culture, in turn, creates people, and shapes their experiences and worlds (Dobres and Robb 2005). While these objects were toys made for children, they are also much more complex than “mere” playthings. Toys are not just tools of and for socialization, but are deeply symbolic mediators of race, class, age, and gender embedded in dialogs of parental control and child resistance (Baxter 2005:22; Calvert 1992; Mergren 1982; Somerville 2014; Wilkie 2000). The “Paddy and the Pig” mechanical bank on the lower right-hand corner of the cover of this book, for example, was a fun plaything made for children, a source of humor and whimsy for the adult who purchased it, a dialogue between the child and adu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• CHAPTER 1 The Ideology of Race
• CHAPTER 2 The “Problems” of the Times: Race, Class, and Capitalism in America
• CHAPTER 3 Children and Childhood
• CHAPTER 4 Methodology and Data Analysis
• CHAPTER 5 Racialized Toys
• CHAPTER 6 The Child’s View
• References
• Index
• About the Authors