In my position as Research Specialist for Black Play and Culture, I am often asked to provide a metric for determining Black playthings. Is it Black because it was produced by Black people? Is it Black by virtue of it bearing the image of a Black person? Is it Black because Black people are the intended audience? As a result of a recent cataloguing excursion into The Strong’s collections, I now wonder if any of these questions are sufficient for the exploration of playthings of, for, or depicting peoples of the African diaspora. It might be more useful to explore Black playthings by whether they proliferate violence through Negrophobia or Negrophilia.
These terms that originate within the social sciences help to explore the phenomena associated with race as it applies to Black people. “Phobia” is a suffix that should be familiar to most readers, as it is used in words that describe fears related to small spaces (claustrophobia) or of spiders (arachnophobia). In the case of the latter, the phobia also does the work of objectifying. The spider is no longer a life to be considered in its complexity, rather it is a phobic object ripe for destruction. Similarly, Negrophobia, and the antiblack racism that animates it, flattens the dynamism of Black life to an object to be feared. The suffix “philia” may not be as familiar, as it tends to show up in more scientific settings. In fact, my first time encountering it was while working at a science museum. I was charged with conducting a science experiment that helped kids see the difference between a special hydrophobic sand, and the regular hydrophilic, beach sand. “Philia” in that context meant that the water was easily absorbed by the sand. In the case of Negrophilia, it stands not in opposition to Negrophobia, but in support of it—a sublimation of fear into phantasm. Negrophilia is the idealization of Black people as servile, simple, yet magical. The personhood of Black people is absorbed by the imagination of the dominant group. In either case the humanity of Black people is lost. This alone is a type of violence enacted upon Black identity. However, it lends itself to other forms of violence.
The Jolly Darkie Target Game, produced by McLoughlin Brothers in 1890—a paltry 25 years after the passing of the 13th amendment and the legal abolition of slavery—is an example of a Negrophobic game. Like many games of its time, the eponymous Darkie is presented as a phobic object draped in fancy dress that mocks the player, begging to be hit by one of the game’s balls. An outlet for the racial tensions to which it also contributes, games like The Jolly Darkie Target Game rely on insidious visual language to communicate the implicit directive to inflict harm. The underlying tension is relieved when the specter of the Darkie is vanquished by the balls.
Unique Art Manufacturing Company’s Jazzbo-Jim “The Dancer on the Roof” (about 1920) mechanical toy is an example of a Negrophilic object. First arising to prominence as a movement of the early 20th century, Negrophilia played on the plantation fantasy of happy enslaved people. Jazzbo-Jim is one of many tap dancing, jigging, or otherwise entertaining toys that feature a dark figure in action from the early 20th century. His dazzling abilities are animated by the white gaze, in that he cannot operate without winding. This type of coerced merriment mirrors life on the plantation, where enslaved persons were often forced to perform joy through song and dance for their enslavers’ amusement. The owner of the toy enacts a similar power dynamic that sublimates the fear of Negrophobia into the fantasy of jovial subservience, which serves as the basis of Negrophilia.
That returns us to the question of what determines the Blackness of a toy. I think there are a few ways, but my favorite is what I like to call the afterlife of playthings. Drawing upon Saidiyah Hartman’s conceptual framing “the afterlife of slavery”—which she uses to discuss the holistic and longitudinal effect of slavery upon the formerly enslaved—the afterlife of playthings aims to do similar work with respect to the practices and materials of Black play. Negrophobic and Negrophilic playthings are how most of the public is exposed to play. For members of the African Diaspora, as the plaything of the imaginations of toymakers and toy consumers, we find ourselves in need of objects that allow us to shape play according to our own gaze. That often looks like a practice or function that redefines the plaything. Though typically not considered in the development process, the needs of marginalized people often dictate the way things are used. The example that is often circulated around The Strong Museum is double Dutch jump rope, a game with special popularity in urban Black communities. Collecting a jump rope or two doesn’t elucidate the public on the value of that toy to the community that holds it dear. How do we collect beyond the object? How do explore the afterlife of playthings? These are questions that are currently informing our development of a metric for a Black toy.