My mother wouldn't buy white dolls and I understand why

When Cabbage Patch Kids hit the market in the mid-80s, I wanted every doll the company made. At around $40 a doll, I suppose they were comparable to today's American Girl Dolls.

That Christmas, the dolls were one of the hottest items, with parents lining up at toy stores in hopes of nabbing one and rioting over the toy to make sure they fulfilled holiday wishes for their children.

They were hard to come by, especially a Black one.

My mother admitted to me about a week before Christmas that she was having a hard time finding a Black one. Mama didn't buy white dolls. I was heartbroken.

I was about 10 years old. In prior years, my mother stressed to me less than a handful of times (I knew not to keep asking) that she did not buy white dolls. But as a child, I really didn't understand, nor was I allowed to question her authority.

As I look back at colorism and how it impacted little Black girls, I completely understand why my mother was adamant about me having dolls that looked like me. This understanding became even more evident after I had my daughter. I wanted her to know she was beautiful, and I invested a lot in building her self-esteem despite what was perpetuated by the media. My job wasn't nearly as hard as my mother's. As a 70s baby, the challenges I faced were completely different than what my daughter would face being born almost 30 years later.

I didn't weigh the differences between generations. I went in full force. I didn't buy white dolls. For the first seven years of her life, she did not have white dolls. I refused to allow her to fall prey to the idea that white dolls were better than her brown-faced babies, which might foster a belief that white people were prettier or better than Black people.

When she was about six years old, American Girl Dolls piqued her interest, and I could hear myself telling her, I don't buy white dolls. It would take about two years for my mind to change, and it was still a struggle. White dolls are still a minority in my house.

What changed?

It wasn’t just my daughter’s interest in wanting to have a collection of dolls from one of her favorite brands. I had a more realistic view of the world and my parenting. I had spent the first seven years of my daughter’s life building her up. I told her how smart and beautiful she was nearly every day. Even now, at 14 years old, she’s confident in those things.

So, she eventually was able to add white dolls to her collection. She looked at them as dolls. Sometimes the dolls were friends. Sometimes they were sisters. The relationship depended on her imaginative play of the day. But never did she coddle her white dolls as if they were better because of their color.

All of those things that were in my head never came to fruition. She’s a strong little melanated queen, but I also realize we still have a long way to go as a community.

We still have a long way to go

In 2021, a university professor published an article regarding her redo of a controversial study called the ‘doll test’ that looked at how Black children see race through their interaction with dolls.

“Without asking specific questions as the Clarks did, I still found a great deal of bias in how the girls treated the dolls,” wrote Toni Sturdivant, an Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Texas A&M University-Commerce. “The girls rarely chose the Black dolls during play. On the rare occasions that the girls chose the Black dolls, they mistreated them. One time a Black girl put the doll in a pot and pretended to cook the doll. That’s not something the girls did with the dolls that weren’t Black.”

So, the fears are valid. As parents of Black children, we have to fight programming that may impact their perceptions of who they are and how they perceive others who look like them.

But I don’t think the answer is don’t buy white dolls. Things are more complicated than that. From my experience, the first step is starting a solid foundation of self-confidence from birth. That’s just the first step.

(Sidenote: Mama did find a Black Cabbage Patch doll for me that Christmas. Her name is Kendra Hope and we still have her along with all of her sisters and brothers that I accumulated as a child.)

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