Green’s Dictionary of Slang

bobo n.1

[? Sp. bobón, a clumsy simpleton or popular children’s entertainer, Bobo the Clown]

1. (US/W.I., also bubu, bubulups) a fool.

[[UK]Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions n.p.: Booby. Bobo. Spanish a Fool].
[US]F.G. Cassidy ‘Iteration as a Word-forming Device in Jamaican Folk Speech’ in AS XXXII:1 50: bobo, a foolish person.
[WI]L. Barrett Sun and the Drum 20: A person who is mentally dull is called bobo from the Twi word booboo, meaning a foolish person.
[US]P. Hamill Dirty Laundry 151: Ah, he said. The world is full of bobos.
R. Coniff N.Y. Times Mag. n.p.: He is a nutsy-bobo [R].
[WI]L.E. Adams Jam. Patois 51: Bobo, or bubu: fool.
[US]J. Stahl Permanent Midnight 205: What a bigot I was, what a close-minded cliché-ridden bo-bo.
[US]J. Stahl Plainclothes Naked (2002) 124: So when did these bo-bos talk showbiz, before or after they ran the priest over?
[UK]R. Antoni Carnival 160: ‘Bubulups!’ she said.
[US]D. Winslow ‘Crime 101’ in Broken 103: ‘[Y]ou don’t want him looking like a bobo or a clown’.

2. a generic insult: an ugly, fat oaf.

E. Shrake But Not For Love 256: ‘I got prospects of being richer’n Waddy Morris or Clint Murchison or H.L. Hunt or Bob Smith or any of them bobos’.
[US]J. Stahl Plainclothes Naked (2002) 49: Every bo-bo with a phone’s gonna be gunnin’ for the reward.

3. (US black) generic for a white man.

[US]G. Pelecanos Hell to Pay 239: White man gonna try to keep a black man down from birth. But Bobo, he couldn’t do it to this black man.

In compounds

bobo wagon (n.)

(US black) an ambulance.

M. Fulcher ‘Believe Me’ in Afro-American (Baltimore, MD) 23 Feb. 12/1: Fortunately for me an ambulance was in the neighborhood [and] Ernie Stokien [...] grabbed the driver of the bobo wagon .