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Washington Post columnist Damon Young was the latest media figure to show concern for the racial makeup of his daughter’s toys.
On Monday, Young penned a perspective piece for the publication’s magazine that described his shock at seeing his daughter playing with “a White baby doll” one day in his house without knowing where she got it.
Young wrote, “Either way, two months ago, when my wife and I noticed that our 6-year-old daughter was playing with a White baby doll with long blond hair, our immediate thought was ‘Wait … where did that come from?’ And then, after watching her dote on it for two days, our thoughts shifted.
“‘So … how do we get rid of it?'” he asked.
A general view of the exterior of The Washington Post Company headquarters in Washington, March 30, 2012.
(REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo)
Young later outlined several ideas he had to “disappear” his daughter’s doll for the sole reason of its skin color. He claimed that he and his wife both agreed that “few things matter more” than their daughter “loving her features, her hair and her skin.”
“Our rationale is simple. The physiognomy of a baby doll represents what the person buying it considers to be precious. And a decision to gift a White doll to our daughter — who’s already aware of the ceaseless cultural proselytization of Eurocentric beauty — could communicate to her that we value those features more than hers,” Young explained.
He also insisted that while his house does not necessarily ban White dolls, he and his wife have been intentionally buying their children only dolls and toys of color, mostly Black.
American Girl dolls, a brand owned by Mattel, are seen at the American Girl Place New York in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., November 24, 2021.
(Reuters)
“She’s perceptive enough already to see and feel, even if she can’t quite articulate it yet, how White beauty is considered the standard here in America — a status reinforced when she notices monochromatic magazine covers at a bookstore or watches advertisements during her favorite cartoons. It’s made explicit each time she hears ‘dark’ and ‘black’ thoughtlessly interchanged with ‘bad.’ It is waves and waves and waves pounding a shore. So, we surround her with reinforcements. Books and movies featuring little girls who look like her. Intentional language of affirmation and pride,” Young wrote.
He then revealed that his daughter eventually stopped playing with her doll and moved back to old toys in an “aggressively anticlimactic” conclusion.
In June, author and prominent critical race theory advocate Ibram X. Kendi admitted similar concerns over his daughter’s attachment to a White doll. Rather than subtly attempt to “disappear” the doll, however, Kendi opted to pull the doll from her hands.
Ibram X. Kendi visits Build to discuss the book Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You at Build Studio on March 10, 2020 in New York City.
(Michael Loccisano)
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“Sadiqa and I were probably unduly sensitive about the whole situation. But we wondered if our Black child’s attachment to a white doll could mean she had already breathed in what the psychologist Beverly Daniel Tatum has called the ‘smog’ of white superiority,” Kendi wrote.
Fox News’ Nikolas Lanum contributed to this report.