Sambo (racial term)

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Contents 1 Origin 1.1 Sambo's Grave 1.2 Little Black Sambo 1.3 Alternative origins 2 Sambo imagery 3 References 4 External links

Sambo is a racial term for a person with mixed Amerindian and African heritage in the Caribbean, also for a black person in the United States and the United Kingdom. It is considered a racial slur.

[edit] Origin

[edit] Sambo's Grave

The origins of the word "Sambo" stem from an occurrence believed to be at the height of the British Empire. An unknown Caribbean slave ship had docked in the then-popular Morecambe Bay area to buy various sundry items. One variation of the story begins when it was noticed that a black member of the ship's staff had been left ashore when the ship went back to sea. This man's name was Sambo; shunned by the people of Morecambe, he was made to live out the remainder of his days on the outskirts of the villages at that time. To this day there is a monument known as 'Sambo's Grave' on the coast of the Lancashire village of Sunderland Point.

[edit] Little Black Sambo

Several origins of the term itself have been proposed, but it gained prominence through the children's book The Story of Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman, in 1894. It was the story of a boy named Sambo who outwitted a group of hungry tigers. The setting of Bannerman's story was in India — as can be seen by the presence of tigers and the reference to ghee (a type of clarified butter, commonly found in the region). Other books from Bannerman are also set in India, like Little Black Mingo has hindi words like Jungle, Mugger, Dhobi, Mongoose etc, Little Black Quasha has Bazaar, Tigers, Little Black Quibba has Mangoes and Elephants.

Sambo as an Indian word, is a modified form of Shambhoo or Shambhu the name for lord Shiva one of the major three deities in Indian mythology, who was self incarnated. Shambhu in turn is derived from Swayambhu which means someone who is self-manifested or created by its own accord. Also Svayambhuva Manu is the first man (analogus to Adam) in Hindu mythology as he is also self manifested. In the story Sambo is shown to be of Tamilian origin, people in Tamilnadu follow Hinduism and hence have Hindu names but being closer to the equator have comparatively darker complexion.^{[citation needed]}

Thus, the generalization problem — Bannerman, a Scot living in India, gave an Indian character a name associated, in the U.S., with African slaves. The book's original illustrations show a Sambo character resembling a golliwog, a European version sometimes viewed as an iconic, racist "darky" stereotype, which could be taken as a stereotype of African people. As the book made its way across the Atlantic to the U.S., the illustrations were adapted to the possibly more obvious stereotype known as blackface in the U.S. At this time, the racism of the term was not overt or hostile. But the unconscious racism evident in the blackface stereotype was clear. When the eventual public uproar brought the issue to the attention of the general public, some renounced the use of the term "Sambo," but others embraced it as a racial slur.^{[citation needed]} Thus, the use of "Sambo" as a racist term went from being unintentional to being open and derogatory.^{[citation needed]} Although the term sambo is considered pejorative to African Americans and American Indians its likely origin is unrelated to them and more related to dark skinned but not as curly haired people of Southern India.

One recent edition has renamed the book The Story of Little Babaji, and the blackface caricatures were replaced with illustrations that reflected the character's Indian origins in a non-marginalizing manner.

The once-popular "Sambo's" restaurant chain used the Helen Bannerman images to promote and decorate their restaurants although it was named after the chain's co-owners, Samuel Battistone and Newell Bohnett; see Sambo's article for more details.

[edit] Alternative origins

Sambo probably came into English from the Latin American Spanish word zambo, which in turn may have come from one of three African language sources. Webster's (Third International Dictionary) holds that it may have come from the Kongo word nzambu (monkey). Note, though, that the z of (Latin American) Spanish is pronounced as the English s rather than as the z in the word nzambu. Another source holds that it is a variant of a Foulah word meaning "uncle," or a Hausa word for "second son."^{[citation needed]} The Royal Spanish Academy gives the origin from a Latin word which in modern Spanish means "bow-legged," but does not explain how this would become a racial term. Zambo is still the Spanish word in Latin America for a person of mixed African and Native American descent.

Examples of "Sambo" as a common slave name can be found as far back as the 18th century. In Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair (serialised from 1847), the black skinned indian servant of the Sedley family from Chapter One, is called Sambo. Similarly, in Harriet Beecher Stowe's controversial novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), one of Simon Legree's overseers is named Sambo. Instances of it being used as a stereotypical name for African Americans can be found as early as the Civil War. The name does not seem to have acquired the intentional, open racist connotation until the first half of the 20th century — possibly in defiance of protests made by African Americans.^{[citation needed]}

In modern British English, the term "Sambo" is used offensively^[1] Formerly, it had the technical meaning of a person having a mixture of black and white ancestry, more black than white — contrast with mulatto, quadroon, octoroon etc.

[edit] Sambo imagery

In American animation in the 1930s and 1940s, the use of "Sambo" imagery was common in all the major animation houses. The scenes which show such imagery have either been cut from their respective cartoons, or the cartoons have been banned altogether. The image that is usually associated with the "Sambo" is that of a happy-go-lucky, clueless, head-scratching black man. The voice is usually high and the syntax elementary. Bill Robinson made the image popular by acting in popular movies such as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and The Littlest Rebel. They are always very chipper and willing to go on any adventure, such as Jim from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

[edit] References

1. ^ Oxford English Dictionary

• Boskin, Joseph (1986) Sambo, New York: Oxford University Press
• Goings, Kenneth (1994) Mammy and Uncle Mose: Black Collectibles and American Stereotyping, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, ISBN 0-253-32592-7

[edit] External links

• e-texts of The Story of Little Black Sambo:
  • HTML version with the illustrations
  • Plain text version with no illustrations (Project Gutenberg edition)