Nulla-Nulla
Nulla-Nulla (/ˈnʌlənʌlə/) is a brand soap with tagline "Australia’s White Hope, The Best Household Soap”. The other definition of Nulla-Nulla or waddy, or hunting stick is an Australian Aboriginal war club. It was used in hunting, fighting and as a ceremonial tool.
Racist Ads
This ad published back in 1920s with the tagline "Australia’s White Hope, The Best Household Soap” and "Knocks dirt on the head".
Wiradjuri heritage, Central-West NSW Australia author Kathleen Jackson written about the Nulla Nulla ad and the kingplate, a badge of honour given by white settlers to Aboriginal people, labelled “DIRT”. Jackson said she was instantly drawn to the product’s slogan: ‘Australia’s White Hope, The Best Household Soap’. Below the slogan sits an image of a grimacing face of a seemingly black female domestic worker. She wears a breastplate or a ‘kingplate’ similar to those awarded by white authorities and landholders to Indigenous people they deemed to be leaders or otherwise honorable. This kingplate is labeled not with the name of a venerable individual, but rather the word ‘DIRT’. The white hand of an unseen person hits the head of the black woman with a nulla-nulla. The image is bordered ornately with eight nulla-nullas – or clubs used by Indigenous Australians for hunting or war – and the phrase ‘knocks dirt on the head’.[1]
She explains that whiteness was seen as purity, while blackness was seen as filth, something that colonialists were charged to expunge from the face of the Earth. Advertising suggested imperial soap had the power to eradicate indigeneity.
This coincided with policies that were expressly aimed at eliminating the “native”. In Australia the policy of assimilation was based on the entirely spurious scientific whimsy of “biological absorption”, that dark skin and indigenous features could be eliminated through “breeding out the color”.[2]
References
- ↑ Jackson, Kathleen. "Nulla-Nulla: Australia’s White Hope, The Best Household Soap" 1920s. Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues Vol 18 No 1. March 2015. Retrieved January 12, 2021.
- ↑ Conor, Liz. Dove, real beauty and the racist history of skin whitening. The Conversation. Retrieved January 12, 2021.