Capitalism, racism, and baa baa black sheep

Kids! Do you remember the poem that celebrated the life and time of the black sheep. Well if you don’t, lemme give you a nostalgic jolt and take you to the times when wetting our pants was acceptable in the society and even considered cute.

So the aforementioned poem goes something like this;

Baa, baa, black sheep,

Have you any wool?

Yes, sir, yes, sir,

Three bags full;

One for the master,

One for the dame,

And one for the little boy

Who lives down the lane.

Two things that feel like red signals here.

Number One; We address the sheep as a black sheep. Attacking him with the colour of his skin. Why couldn’t we just say, “Hey sheep! Do you have any wool?”? Does calling him black get us a discount on the wool he’s selling? Oh wait a minute! Is wool a lingo for something else? You know what I mean. Oh c’mon! You’re reading a stupid, absurd, racist piece while (probably) chomping on that giant piece of pizza and smoking a doobie. You knew what was coming. In fact, ‘a controversy emerged over changing the language of "Baa Baa Black Sheep" in Britain from 1986, because it was seen as racially dubious. This was based only on a rewriting of the rhyme in one private nursery as an exercise for the children there and not on any local government policy. A similar controversy emerged in 1999 when reservations about the rhyme were submitted to Birmingham City Council by a working group on racism in children's resources. Two private nurseries in Oxfordshire in 2006 altered the song to "Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep", with black being replaced with a variety of other adjectives, like "happy, sad, hopping" and "pink". In 2014, there was reportedly a similar controversy in the Australian state of Victoria’. Trust me on this, the facts have been verified on Wikipedia. In fact, I copy pasted that whole chunk. Making writing easy, one ‘Ctrl+C;Ctrl+V’ at a time.

Anyway, did you know that the version of the poem that was more popular isn’t really the “original”? The rhyme was first printed in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, the oldest surviving collection of English language nursery rhymes, published (c. 1744) with the lyrics very similar to those still used today. It goes something like this:

Bum! Bum! Bum! (C’mon, let me add that bass line.)

Bah, Bah, a black Sheep,

Have you any wool?

Yes old mate i have

Three bags full,

Two for my master,

One for my dame,

None for the little boy

That cries in the lane.

Which brings me to my second point. These few lines reek of capitalism. Don’t you feel so? I feel bad for the little boy though.