The black guy and the girls: the get no action action figures?

i think mo is very lucky

Boomer, if you just step back and don't over-think this, it really isn't hard to understand why all the 'white guy' GI Joes would be sold out, leaving only the black guy and girls...

Is it?

Well Mo certainly thinks he's lucky to have all these new GI Joes!

But seriously, I've never thought about the "why" of it. And now it makes me feel kind of stupid and unobservant.

We have gobs of soldier toys. It seems I would have noticed the white guy-ness of them but I really hadn't.

I'm not mad about it but really kind of sad about it.

The black girls and Hispanics must think this is completely bizarre since they aren't represented at all.

I wonder if the store's toy buyers are on the ropes for having bought black guys and girls.

Weird.

I think that you're not raising Mo right. Leaving him content with such deviant behavior will make it tough for him adjusting to real life. What's going to happen to the poor little guy when he tries to take his "friends" out to play with kids who have been raised in a more realistic fashion?

I was just going to ask what colours the girls are.

I have read, and cannot vouch for the accuracy of the contention, that given a choice, little black girls will choose a white baby doll over a black baby doll. Maybe the same applies to "action figures." Maybe little black boys prefer the White GI Joe.

It's true, there were studies in 1950's in which little black girls picked white baby dolls over black, but I don't think that is the issue here. I know someone who is a buyer for a popular retailer and she cannot discriminate her doll orders based on race, even if the store is located in a very white, hispanic, asian or black neighborhood. She has to order 100 whites, 100 black, 100 asian, 100 hispanic etc. So if your store, Boomer, is in a very white shopping district the odds are the white dolls went first and the black dolls are leftovers. If you lived in a predominately black consumer area it is likely there would be more white dolls lying around. Supply and demand.

It's an interesting idea - not sure if I agree on your conclusion that the white dolls would be left behind in similar fashion if the shopping happened in a black neighborhood. You see, I believe strongly that our (of color) children internalize from early on in this country a sort of devaluing. I think it happens subtly - whenever there are months and years of angst-filled stories about some random missing blonde haired blue eyed child, and every little black or latino missing child is relegated to a couple of paragraphs in the 'B' section. I think its subtle, but relentless. I think little children notice that their "history" is relegated to a single month, but the real, American History is propagandized every school day.

I think those little white dolls might move off the shelves just fine in a black neighborhood. I mean, to a black child, they might appear to be the "best" ones, so to speak.

One thing I've noticed about my own daughters - although they are both brunettes, my younger (which is more "pretty" "girly" oriented) tends toward dolls with blond hair or associates blond with "pretty".

Someone probably should do a study on this. You would have to factor in the parents' influence also. Would a black parent buy a white GI Joe or Barbie doll if given a choice between skin color if they are shopping without the child in tow? I doubt it. Would a black parent question their child if the child showed preference for a white figure? I think they would. Few children get to make these decisions on their own, so I think one would have to look at the bigger picture before claiming facts. I lived in Crown Heights Brooklyn for over a year and saw lots of little black kids playing with predominately black action figures and dolls, there were some white ones thrown into the mix, but mostly child and doll matched up. However, I have no idea if the local stores had unsold white dolls clogging up the inventory.

As to history, as a Jewish child, I got the idea that my people disappeared between the death of Jesus and the Holocaust. In public school, in the 1960-s-70's, I learned a lot about slavery, Jim Crow, and the early Civil Rights movement, but never a word was mentioned about the pogroms of Europe that drove my relatives to this country. In English I read Cry The Beloved Country, The Invisible Man, and Uncle Tom's Cabin. The only literary Jew I remember was Shylock. I can only imagine how a Chinese American student feels about their lack of representation. To the victors go the school curriculum.

You and Snood are full of it. Everything is hunky dory for minorities in North America.

I really wish you people would get over it.

There was an episode of "The Office" about this....

do you practise being a dick or does it just come naturally



i'm lucky it comes naturally to me


<cough>dick<cough>

A girl just recently repeated the experiment. It's heartbreaking to watch.

You're very flexible, dj. At least you're learning something while you're on the dole.

why am i on the dole?

if you're referring to the fact that i'm not working, true, but i'm not receiving any government benefits

Toy makers need to be politically correct, they are corporate and not doing it would cause expensive problems. However, kids are not political, they like what they like, and normally parents forgo the politics and get their kids what their kids want. Parents can comfort themselves with seeing the "right" toys on the shelf, rationalize that people are buying the "right" toys, and thus they are free to buy the one their kid really wants. The black doll is the PC approved version, the white one is the one the kids wants, is the one sold.

the only exception that comes to mind is Barbie, which a lot of middle aged women now hate, in a perfect world no one would want Barbie anymore...they think. So parents are very happy that many of their girls would rather have Bratz. Not that this is much of an improvement, as Bratz is far more slutty than Barbie ever was.

So do you ever kick yourself in the balls from having your knee jerk so quickly?

Why don't you try to actually comprehend what people are writing? You might find you are on the same side as they are.

boomer, when I was just a wee thing, I asked for and got a rubber dolly similar to this one.