Black Doll, Like Me
As an eight year-old girl, it wasn’t my intention to make a political statement: I simply wanted a baby doll for Christmas that year.
However, it wasn’t just any baby doll: It was a Black baby doll.
It made perfect sense for me to have a doll that looked like me. After all, I had a Black mother. So…why shouldn’t I, as a Black “mother” have a Black “baby”?
Two Christmases later, my parents gifted me with a second Black baby doll. Incidentally, I didn’t specifically request the second baby doll, but, my parents were at that point in time well aware of my preference.
My mother and I talked about my baby dolls about a year ago. She – my mother – found it strange that I would ask for a Black baby doll. Especially since race was not something my parents focused much on in my childhood home. Additionally, my mother was a child during the 1930s and 1940s, and, the only baby dolls available at the local store in her town were White. Therefore, my mother had only White baby dolls. The fact that I was even allowed to exercise a preference 30 years later was significant progress, which was due to the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, i.e. “I’m Black and I’m proud!”
My brother and I weren’t raised to be color-blind. To the contrary: we were well aware of what race was. From a very early age, we were exposed to many different types of people. Furthermore, we were raised with a solid grounding in our family history, and who we were as Black people. However, race was not discussed in negative and denigrating ways. Thus, my brother and I weren’t phased by the races, ethnicities and religions of my parents’ friends and colleagues, not to mention our doctors and dentists, and people we saw on daily basis, such as teachers, classmates, neighbors and our beloved babysitter. One’s race was something we accepted as a natural part of one’s being. It didn’t matter to us, in MJ’s immortal words, “if you were Black or White”, or any other color. We saw race – with both eyes and mind – and we were fully aware of it. But, race was as esoteric to us as washing one’s face.
In reflecting on my baby dolls – which reside at the family compound – and on that experience, I believe that they were indicators of a child who possessed a very healthy sense of self – as a girl, and as a person of color. I hope my parents know and understand that, and for which I give them mad props. 
What are your childhood memories and recollections about race and racial awareness?
I was born and raised in the south Bronx where everyone where everyone was of color. We hurled racial epithets at one another and they meant nothing to me because we didn’t take them seriously.
I didn’t truly become aware of my “blackness” until I moved south to Atlanta and attended a school in a middle class mixed neighborhood and I attended a school with white teachers for the first time. For the first time in my life I wasn’t the norm…I was the other. I was the northerner. The word was never said to me but I grew to understand how older people who were called nigger must have felt.
There were times at that school where I felt disrespected and degraded and, unfortunately, my experiences at that school were my earliest when I became of my race.
Hi, Jovan. Thank you for reading and responding.
Your unique experiences, Jovan, only go to confirm that each Black person is shaped at a very early age, and in different ways, regarding matters of race. Which makes the topic so very fascinating to me, especially with respect to how these early experiences impact us later on as adults.
From a white guy looking at it from the other side: Like Jovan, I grew up in a racially mixed environment — a few years ago, a friend looked at my high school yearbook (1974), and was surprised to see all the different-coloured faces, among the teachers as well as among the students. My father always taught me that everyone’s the same… or, really, that everyone’s an individual, and you judge each person for what s/he is, and the shade of skin makes no difference. I internalized that at an early age.
I started my life in Brooklyn, but we moved to south Florida when I was quite young, and that’s where I grew up. Realize that “south Florida” is not “the South”, but that other parts of Florida are, so I sporadically had glimpses of what that meant. It was the early 1960s when we went there, and, while it was unknown where I lived, I did see “Whites only,” and “No coloreds,” signs in other parts.
I’ve always been skeptical of people who say they “don’t notice” skin colour. Of course we NOTICE it, just as we notice hair colour and style, and choice of clothing. The question isn’t whether we notice it, but what it means to us. The difference never meant anything to me, because of how I was brought up, and I often “didn’t notice” in the sense that the race of someone often didn’t really stand out for me, until someone pointed it out.
I’ll share one particular story that stays with me. My family had black-and-white TVs only, and the first program I ever saw in colour was the Star Trek episode “The Ultimate Computer” (so I can even tell you the date, thanks to IMDB: 8 March 1968, so I would be 11 in a month). I went to a friend’s house, and it was the first time I saw the colours of all their shirts (references to “red-shirted guards” didn’t mean much to me before that). The episode was about a scientist who invented a computer system that could run the whole starship by itself. The Enterprise got to test it out, and, of course, there were some bugs in the system that they had to work out.
As the episode progressed, I heard occasional mutterings, grunts, and grumbles from my friend’s father, a middle-aged man from the deep South. Finally, about halfway through, the scientist said something and my friend’s father said, “Huh. This is ridiculous! They’re making out like HE’s as smart as THEY are.” I replied, “He’s smarter! He’s the scientist!” I was quite impressed by scientists, you see. And friend’s dad burst out with, “But he’s a n*!”
So. Yes, now it was pointed out. Of course Dr Daystrom was a Negro, as we’d have said at the time, but what difference did that make? I didn’t know what to say, and, as a not-quite-11-year-old I had the sense not to say anything. So we watched the rest of the show. And I don’t remember spending any time around that friend’s father after that, but I’d have felt very strange if I had.
What makes me feel sad is that, while we’ve come a very long way in the 41 years since then, there are still people today who would respond as my friend’s father did.
Hi, Barry! It’s been such a long time since you visited and commented. I am glad you decided to do both today.
I appreciate your sharing your experience as a child with race. It’s funny: Such experiences a the one you relate, Barry, most often occur at a time when we are least capable of negotiating them. Sadly, many people never quite move beyond that level of capacity once they reach adulthood. Which is to say that anti-racism is a skill which one develops, and continues to develop.
In an ironic sort of way, I have a degree of respect for racists. The fact that the man in your story used the N-word to express how he felt let you know immediately what his position on the subject was. That’s not to say that I want everyone who I encounter to drop the N-bomb. But, I would appreciate more honesty from people re: their feelings on matters of race.
Actually, I lost you for a while, as you changed blogs. The feed address changed, and my feed reader just silently showed me nothing, rather than telling me there was a problem. When I realized I hadn’t seen anything from you for too long, I went looking.
Which actually seems related to your response: I hear you saying that, while you don’t want to be called nasty names, in some way it’s better to have the issues out in the open than to have people be insidious or two-faced, quietly undermining you.
I have nothing in my own experience to relate that to, but conceptually, I agree with you. It’s best to know where everyone stands.
I’m glad I found this blog. I’ll be visiting a lot.
I’m coming at this from the POV of white middle class child of the 70s, call me out on privilege if you need to, I know I can be clueless at times.
I grew up in a racially diverse neighborhood in Queens, and believe it or not I was bussed to a mostly white elementary school, along with most of my neighbors, because bussing was based on zip code around there. Ironic no? My mother eventually had me moved to a local parochial school where the racial makeup more realistically reflected the racial makeup of the neighborhood.
My mother was quiet on the subject of race. In her presence it never came up as a topic because people were people and what color they were didn’t matter. I’m not positive those were her actual feelings on the matter, but that was the face she presented to the world-family included.
My father was Archie Bunker. I never understood why that show was so funny, because isn’t that they way every family is? Mine was. When I was a little older I got the joke finally, and realized the joke was on my dad – whether he wanted to admit it or not.
I used to say, as has been mentioned already, that I was colorblind. I’m old enough now to admit that I am not colorblind. I notice what color a person’s skin is, the same as I notice what color their hair is, what color their shirt is, what color their shoes are. What I don’t do is make assumptions about a person based on what color their skin is. Just as I don’t make assumptions based on what color their shirt is (unless they’re on Star Trek – have to give a nod to the red shirt reference and show off my geekitude).
But I’m not sure how much my family is the reason for my attitude. Even as a child I don’t ever remember thinking that someone of color wasn’t as good as I was, or as smart as I was, or as whatever as I was. And if my dad had been the influencing factor there, I should have been a raging white-supremacist at a very young age.
I do remember that when I moved to the south (rural North Carolina) as a teenager, I was appalled by the race relations here. And it was for the most part self-segregation (from what I remember). Kids of color stuck together, white kids stuck together, and never the twain shall meet. Except for me in my ignorance striking up a friendship with a girl of color and both of us catching hell from everyone (including teachers) for it. And I remember a part-time job at a grocery store, where we often cashed social security checks, and so many of the elderly people of color coming in who couldn’t even write their own name. They had to endorse their checks with an “X”. I was horrified and that was when I finally realized that the Civil Rights Movement wasn’t just something I read about in a history textbook. It was an eye opener – even for someone who considered herself enlightened enough to be ‘colorblind’. And that my father (and Archie Bunker) were scary, not funny.
I guess my point in all this ramble is that no matter where you start from, it’s where you end up that matters. It may be an easier journey if you start from the right place, but where that journey takes you is entirely up to you.
Hi, Pega. Thank you for visiting, and for leaving such a thoughtful comment. I am glad you found my blog, and do hope you will return often.
I really appreciate your honest with respect to the topic. When people like you and Barry can be candid in retelling events from your childhood, this contributes to anti-racist understanding – for all of us.
Your description of your father is representative of the parents of many White Americans. But, as you so eloquently state at the end of your comment,
Each of us has a choice in terms of how we want to be as adults.
Your description of your experiences in rural North Carolina is so very different from the life my parents lived during the 1940s and 1950s in South
Carolina. It was segregated, to be certain, but, in as far as I am aware, the Black people my parents knew – friends, family and kin – could read and write. Which is to say that the Southern experience is not a monolith.
I’m glad we re-connected. I deleted my previous teacher/personal blog, which I am sure didn’t help matters.