Barbie Cummings Wants to Have a Black Baby

Many people were touched past a recent viral story on social media about a white girl who dedicated her option of a black doll when a cashier told her the doll didn't look like her.

"Yes, she does. She'southward a dr. similar I'thou a doctor. And I'chiliad a pretty girl and she'due south a pretty girl. Meet her pretty hair? And see her stethoscope?" said Sophia, 2, co-ordinate to her female parent's Facebook postal service about the incident.

Little Sophia's indifference to the color of her doll is as adorable as it is inspiring, and both the mother and daughter were heaped with praise on social media.

But, lost in the focus on her centre-melting statement is an of import fact: Blackness girls and boys regularly play with white dolls and action figures without whatever fanfare. And they accept for a long time.

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Debbie Garrett, the author ofBlackness Dolls: A Comprehensive Guide to Celebrating, Collecting, and Experiencing the Passion, grew upward playing with only white dolls. When she had a daughter, she wanted to "make sure that as an African-American kid, she saw herself in the dolls that she played with in order to reinforce her significance, her self-worth and self-esteem.

"All children need to see themselves in a positive lite, and that begins with their playthings and the books that they read," Garrett said.

She said this is particularly of import for non-white children "in a club where everything is geared toward whiteness." If children don't meet themselves reflected in their toys, books and popular culture, they might think, "'Well, what is incorrect with me?'"

Blackness dolls have been around since people began making dolls, but in the U.S., their availability has ever been an issue. Until the 20th century, most black dolls were handmade.

By the 1930s, a number of manufacturers were mass-producing black dolls, only African-Americans remained disproportionately underrepresented.

For Garrett, who grew up in the South, finding a black doll was compounded by the unwillingness of shop owners to stock them. And on the rare occasions when she would stumble upon black dolls, her female parent would reject to buy them because she plant their depictions to be too racist.

In low-cal of the paucity of black dolls, it'due south "of the utmost importance for black children" to take dolls that look like them, Garrett said. Conversely, she argues because "white standards are promoted as the norm," information technology'due south important for white children to have dolls that represent dissimilar ethnicities, "to promote cultural multifariousness and an awareness that we are all 1 race: homo."

Samantha Knowles, director of the documentary pictureWhy Do You Have Black Dolls?, agrees. "Blackness girls have had to play with white dolls for a very long time because they had no other choice," she said.

Knowles believes Sophia's story resonates because "people get very excited at the idea that black dolls are desirable."

"That piddling daughter loving a black doll was a positive thing because historically they haven't been loved, they haven't fifty-fifty been bachelor," she said.

Knowles takes issue with those who might argue it'southward hypocritical to say black children should play with black dolls, merely white children should play with dolls of other races.

She said there is often a "desire to create a fake equivalency between two groups of people that historically have non been treated equally in the land. I recall that's reflected when yous await even downwards to toys. Historically, black dolls have not been available. So, in reaction, there's been this push to brand them available to blackness kids."

In the 1940s, a study looking into the effects of segregation by psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark plant that black children non but overwhelmingly preferred white dolls, just they too had negative perceptions of blackness dolls. The "doll test" was cited in the 1954 Supreme Court exampleBrown vs. Lath of Education, which led to desegregation.

In 2010, Margaret Beale Spencer, a professor of comparative human development at the University of Chicago, helped CNN behave a re-creation of the Clark doll test. They plant "white bias" remains strong amid both white and black children.

"Children's play is serious business," Spencer toldThe New York Times. "They are getting ideas near who they are from these objects. There are messages about 1'south conviction, one'due south sense of self in terms of what I look like and being powerful."

If black children have a difficult time finding toys that reflect their own advent, information technology's even harder for Asian, Latino, Native-American and other non-white children to find toys that look similar them. And the lack of representation is even worse for children with disabilities.

But there has been progress. information technology'south getting easier for parents to find Latino, Asian, and black dolls. Two women recently launched Howdy Hijab, making traditional Muslin headscarves for dolls; 3B scientific makes dolls with Down's Syndrome; there are now dolls for boys, and Barbie and Lego offering characters in wheelchairs.

American Girl has launched a major diversity campaign, offering dolls of multiple races and disabilities.

The success of characters similar Doc McStuffins, a blackness daughter who acts equally physician to her toys, and Dora the Explorer, a proud Latina, show toy makers that at that place is money to be made in diversity.

"The toy manufacture makes what sells," said Chris Byrne, content manager at the toy review site TTPM. "I call back that for many years you would not find a black doll except in a Toys R Us that was in a predominantly blackness zip code, or demographic expanse. Now you encounter that diversity beyond the board."

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Pressure from groups calling on the toy industry to make its products more diverse played a large role in the increase of options available. The explosion of online shopping has as well been key, making it exponentially easier for parents to find what they're looking for. And information technology makes those products more than profitable for the toy industry, which can now be confident the toys can reach the target consumers.

While the toy industry's progress has been significant, most agree minorities remain underrepresented amid dolls and action figures. Byrne is confident demand for diversity in toys volition continue to grow, driving change in the companies.

"Every bit children are more exposed to diverse communities then the toy manufacture is going to first reflecting that," said Byrne. "The toy manufacture always reflects the culture at big. It doesn't really lead it."

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Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/04/08/black-girls-have-playing-white-dolls/100137970/

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