IT'S hard to see how anyone can remain oblivious to the fact that the golliwog - dropped long ago from Roberton's jam jars, the Noddy television show and most toy shops - is a symbol of hurt and offence in today's society.

Yet repeatedly, we hear stories of some golliwog owner or seller who seems rather upset by the notion that the golly is anything other than a sweet, cuddly toy. The message should be clear as a bell: trade or parade these objects at your shame.

The issue resurfaced last week after a visitor to Edinburgh's Wardie Primary School saw the beautiful nine-panel Alice in Wonderland mural in the main hall. Margaret Neizer-Rocha - who had considered sending her child to the school - was shocked to learn that the recently restored artwork, originally painted in 1936, depicted a floppy golliwog figure.

Neizer-Rocha, who is black, complained to the police, the city council and MSPs that the image was "racist and offensive". A row followed. Some people - from councillors to former pupils - stepped forward to defend the artwork. Others suggested that the offending golliwog be painted out.

In general, I am against the erasure of politically incorrect or shameful aspects of our history. Eliminating offence can easily tip over into pretending it never happened. One of the problems with dropping the Robertson's jam logo, or with the painting out of a black servant from a family portrait, or the dumping in landfill of all remaining golliwogs, is that we risk almost deleting that episode of our history.

Painting out can also be used as denial: one only has to look back through art history. When Emperor Rudolf II bought Pieter Bruegel's Massacre Of The Innocents, he had the dead children painted over with a layer of fresh snow-white paint, so that the real bloodiness of the massacre might not be seen. The reason was that the horror was far too close to events that had happened in his empire.

There are, however, only a few symbols - the swastika, for instance - which, in today's more liberal, free-speech democracies, we choose to paint out, and those relate to particularly brutal passages in history, from which we have not yet entirely recovered. Racism still exists. So does anti-Semitism. Hence we remain sensitive to these symbols. Perhaps, when all is equal in the statistics of power and colour, we will be able to see the golliwog as a funny, old-fashioned doll. But, for now, we are not yet out of the woods, and defence of it seems like a blinkered failure to acknowledge the realities of a relatively recent past.

At Wardie we have a dilemma. This is a primary school, and there are many things we censor for children: cultural products that are considered inappropriate to present to young, developing minds. Schools are also places that, we hope, strive towards inclusivity.

If the golliwog remains in place, its presence must be tackled through education - and currently "extra anti-racism lessons" are being proposed at Wardie - but it is hard to see how such a topic might be handled, and not also present a threat to the desired sense of equality.

One answer might be just to leave the Wardie golliwog be. Don't make a big deal and children will grow up seeing a funny-looking doll with a fabric-black face, which perhaps means nothing to them, just as generations of kids of my age did when they collected tokens for the Robertson's jam badges.

Up until now that appears to be what has happened. But that is not enough. For the golliwog really does come loaded with a dark and inescapable symbolism. For many, it is a colonial monster, a relic of a brutal time, in which humans treated other humans like stock, the second part of its name once routinely used as an insult.

The golliwog's sweetness is part of the problem. Many of its defenders seem to be pining for a time when they were blissfully unaware of its racist connotations. They forget that how they feel about this doll is not what matters. Who cares if they had one as a child which they wore threadbare with cuddles?

These fierce advocates ought to grow up, and acknowledge that their infant selves are no longer the centre of the universe.

Of course, ignorance does exist - and most of us are guilty of it. Though I never had a golliwog, I did, as a child recite the rhyme, "Eenie, meanie, minie, moe, catch a knicker by the toe." I had no idea it was racist and was puzzled by how knickers might have toes. It was only when, as an adult, I began reciting it, late night, at a party, that a Jamaican friend, with horror, informed me otherwise. I still cringe thinking about that. That's one small episode I would like to paint out.

Perhaps ignorance is to some degree forgivable - particularly when we live in a culture that paints out or doesn't talk about these issues. But there comes a time when we have been made aware, and have to change our ways.

Earlier this year, there was a press furore after the poet Lemn Sissay coming across the dolls sold in a shop on Shetland, and, just this month, a councillor in Brighton defended a shop selling them, saying they were nostalgic with "smiling little faces". One often wonders why these golly-lovers did not respond more respectfully to complaints received before their story became news. Do they enjoy causing offence, revelling in their political-correctness-puncturing, and slightly adolescent rebellion?

Almost as troubling as the golliwogs themselves have been the attitudes that have simmered up in defence of them in these stories. In the Wardie case, Tory councillor Dominic Heslop described the image as "not offensive", and the reaction as "political correctness gone mad".

He doesn't seem to realise that it is not for us white people to make that judgment. We are not the ones who know whether it creates offence. And if one black woman visiting the school thinks it does, then perhaps she is right. It is Margaret Neizer-Rocha we need to listen to. Not Dominic Heslop, not the head of the school, not the other white parents, not the white former schoolchildren - and not me.