Quote:
Originally posted by Deuces
But like...no. Representation is important and there's a lack of it from mainstream media so in order to counteract all the forces that will tell my children that only white is right, I will instill my own values of black is beautiful and important as well. The goal is to not even have my child want a white doll so I wouldn't have to ban it. Not playing with a white doll in a society that will tell you white people are the best in every other facet of life will not breed hate or resentment, I can tell you that from personal experience. It will breed self-acceptance and self-appreciation.
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My point is: Is that all that different than what, essentially, society pushes? Look at the world in reverse for a second: what if all these little kids didn't want white dolls ever, and only wanted PoC dolls? I know that's not the world we live in and it's an imaginary alternate universe (that we are almost guaranteed to never achieve), but I bring it up because I think picturing the world through both extremes is important to understand that you really want to go more in the middle to promote equality and acceptance. Do we want a world where kids are put off by a person being white? Or a person being block? Or a person being some other skin color? Or do we want a world where a kid thinks all of them are beautiful in their own way and not at all representative of the person (after all, biologically, race is no different than hair color or eye color. It's entire meaning is from sociological codification)?
As said, I think getting your kids dolls that are a variety of races (black, Latina, Asian, and countless more) is great, and I think all parents should do that if the kid wants dolls. There is an incredibly unfortunate slant in media towards "White is beautiful, and the less white you are, the less hot you are" which absolutely needs to be addressed. But I guess what I'm trying to say is, you want to address it with "Black AND white and all other skin colors are beautiful in their own way." I mean.. is it really worse for your kid to want the black doll AND the white doll instead of just the black doll or just the white doll? I hope that makes sense, I'm not trying to be attacking here, I think your heart is in this white place, but I'm not sure the methods
completely capture what you're trying to encourage if that makes sense.