Black Barbie Costs Less Than White Barbie at Your Local Wal-Mart

Guanabee recently called out Wal-Mart for putting black barbies on sale ($3.00) while white barbies remained full price ($5.93) on the shelves of a Louisiana store.

ABC News picked up the story, eliciting a highly encouraging response from Wal-Mart spokesperson Melissa O'Brien: "Both are great dolls. The red price sticker indicates that this particular doll was on clearance when the photo was taken, and though both dolls were priced the same to start, one was marked down due to its lower sales to hopefully increase purchase from customers."

Because nothing encourages customers to buy black barbies like implying that they're far cheaper than white ones: "hey, honey, let's buy this black barbie because obviously Wal-Mart thinks that blackness is worth a lot less than whiteness." Sure, they're both "great dolls," just that the darker-skinned one is obviously not of the same value economically (nor, as it is implied, is she as pretty or as desirable) as the white one.

Sociological Images covered a similar topic last year, when again black babies were blatantly priced less than the white babies next to them. The writer, Lisa Wade, examined the logic that there simply isn't the same demand for black dolls and therefore capitalism naturally requires them to be priced less.

She saw it as a question of "ethical capitalism," in which producers would take into account the difference in demand between white and black dolls and supply them accordingly in order not to fall back on that "oh well, one is simply less desirable than the other and thus worth less!" argument. She also stated in an interview with ABC that white parents are much less likely to buy black dolls, creating a difference in demand. Finally, she suggested that in this case Wal-Mart could have simply absorbed the losses within it's 4.7 billion dollars of profits last month in order to avoid sending the message that black skin is worth less.

About that message: it's not just Wal-Mart sending it, but all of society. A recent study by ABC confirmed just how much black girls' perceptions of their beauty and worth are affected by social messages. The study was a follow-up of a 1940's study by professors Mamie and Kenneth Clark, which showed that the majority of black children preferred playing with a light-skinned doll. ABC repeated the study and determined that, while the majority of black children now prefer playing with a doll of their own race, 47% of black girls still say that the white doll is prettier.

There is something deeply disturbing about watching that ABC video and seeing an adorable black girl say that she prefers the light-skinned doll but then reluctantly pointing at the dark-skinned one when asked to identify which looked more like her. "But I'm not bad!" she rushes to say before the clip cuts out. Amazing.  It is incredible to me that a company like Wal-Mart can still cop the ol' "it's just capitalism at work" plea as if their blatant devaluing of blackness had no social impact.

It's at least encouraging that this discussion is taking place: it seems the Obama administration has given companies like ABC leverage to actually talk about race and its representation in the media, and hopefully this will lead to further criticism of the racial messages on display in the aisles of the local Wal-Mart.

Photo credit: DPStyle