After father's anger, Target adjusts sales price of black Barbie doll

And which part of Africa is the African-American doll supposed to be from?

Just seems like a broad and borderline racist brush to label a doll with darker skin pigmentation as "African-American".

And I agree with you and the OP.

This is offensive.

While it's nice to have a brown skinned fashion doll out there, doubling the price and restricting the ethnicity were both stupid and insulting moves by Mattel.

Phooey.

The AA Ice Skater Barbie.


http://www.amazon.com/Barbie-Careers-Skater-African-American-Doll/dp/B00F14I7VE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418292883&sr=8-1&keywords=barbie+ice+skater+african

What's Mattel's problem. Are they afraid of brown skin?

African Americans aren't from Africa, their ancestors were.

Same as most European Americans or Mexican Americans aren't from Europe or Mexico but are from the US, unless they're first generation.

You must know this, right?

It seems everyone with brown skin is labeled as some sort of "Hyphenated American" except for those of European ancestory.

"White"



"African-American"



About a year ago I took to wikipedia and started editing entries of politicians and actors who were labeled as "white" and started relabeling them as "European-American", I got banned within a week.

We do hear the terms "Irish American or "Italian American" at times, but that adjective "white" seems to be sacred (read privileged) and to mess with it is deemed sacrilegious.

Be careful with that, make sure you're not being followed.

at criticizing them?

Do you know nothing about African American children and their self image when it comes to toys/dolls?

be called "Black" and the other one "White"?

Edit- I appreciate the point you were apparently trying to make about the white barbie being unlabeled as to ethnicity making white dolls the "default" setting.

I though AA was the accepted, preferred term now.

I can't keep up.

I'm black and can't keep up. I prefer black to distinguish us from the current immigrants from Africa. But I know an Australian aborigine who prefers black too. My uncle prefers colored to distinguish him from a negro. Very difficult.

who refer to him as African American.

He does it in the nicest way but says he has no identity with Africa.

I never know what to say anymore.

I am terrible.
My mother does that too. We are all mixed up, some African, some Irish, some Cherokee. And there are a lot of nigerian immigrants up here, they make fun of me.....
I see black americans as a different style of African.
I just ask people how they prefer to be called. Easier that way.

The student commentator referred to Nelson Mandela as a "noted African-American."

We just like to take credit for him, I think. I was calling Idris Elba African American for a while. Then I saw Luther. Oops. The man is British. The finest man Britain has evah produced.

My husband, who is nearly white as snow, was born in South Africa to American parents and lived there for three years as a child before they moved back to the states. He's REALLY an African-American.

People probably look at him all kinds of crazy.

preference the skin color of a white person while telling a story about them while 100% of the time identifying the skin color of non-whites while telling a story about them.

and in fact reduced both items by another $3, to $20.99 each.

Given the store's rapid and apologetic response, I think I'd give them the benefit of the doubt.

After 40+ years in graphics, I've seen a lot of errors, most nonmalicious.

Packaging comes from Mattel. That's where the offensive screwups occurred. Or are my eyes screwing up again and is that the store circular?

Management was tone deaf on this one.

At least Target, when called on this, made it better

that is selling at around $64. I'll wait.

If it doesn't absolutely have to be under the tree on 12/25, that is.

I wanted to have presents for the grandkids there. I got her Jane Goodall's Mr. H. Jr. monkey instead and a Chimp Guardian certificate. She is such a Jane Goodall fan and wants to be just like her when she grows up, except she has the problem of being "allergic to animal spit".

and for whatever reason missed putting the black doll on the sale price as well. It's obvious just looking at the photo of the website in the OP. Whoever did the website was probably instructed to put the Barbie on sale for the sale amount not realizing that there was also a black Barbie or Asian Barbie or whatever that was set up on the website as a different product.

What they probably should have done was had a photo of all the races of Barbies on the same page with a check box for people to chose which one they wanted. Websites do this with shoes or clothes that come in different colors, and I think it would have made more sense for the different races of Barbies to be displayed much the same way. It would probably be easier for people that looked for the Barbie product as well... I wouldn't think I'd have to plug in a search for the product specifying the race of the doll seeing as I never have to do that for other products that come in different colors/fabrics/whatever.

Use a drop down menu and let people check a box.

With love,

Your non stalker.

my white nieces have some AA dolls - not Barbies, but dolls. Maybe it's white people wanting their kids to have diversity in dolls. At least, that's the optimistic way to look at it.

So they have a surplus compared to the black dolls.

Supply and demand.

Overlooked the existence of AA Barbies. That's white people for ya. (I'm one).

I hope that's the case.

I think because her all-time hero is Gabby Douglas (the gymnast).

so I guess everyone can relax.

I have seen them with not only darker skin tones, but with distinctively African features. I have also seen collectors' Barbies like this that were apparently representing African nations--wearing traditional national dress, that sort of thing. They were lovely. What happened to those?

It's pretty simple. If companies can make money off the barbie you describe they'd be all over it. I figure those barbies just didn't sell. Companies generally don't see black and white...they see GREEN.

a lot of them seem to be only available on direct order from Mattel:
http://www.barbiecollector.com/shop

They don't sell the very fancy ones in very many toy or department stores. I know this because several years ago, I was buying one of them as a gift for someone. I had to go to a separate Barbie store to buy one, located at FAO Scwarzes, NYC's premiere toy store. IIRC correctly, that store did not stock the toy dolls; those were located in the regular store.

They have a collectible whose inner dominatrix seems to want out:
http://www.barbiecollector.com/shop/doll/herve-leger-by-max-azria-barbie-doll-x8249

Is more expensive because she is more valuable.

Should the prices be the same? NO, not necessarily.

It was a bad error, certainly. They couldn't have made a bigger mistake if they tried.

The video also notes that the dolls are priced the same at Toys R Us so it's not an issue coming from the manufacturer.

But Im sure if we turn over another rock somewhere racism can be found.

I think it was great the black doll was more expensive...its like, "i'm not giving away this black beauty unless for a mint...now this white barbie? she's cheap if you are shopping on a bargain." lol

Then when the TV station called to get more info, they lowered the price of both dolls even further.

There's racism all over hell. The company responded appropriately though. I wouldn't be surprised if they've instituted their own little internal investigation into how those paired products didn't both get the discount that was only applied initially to the white doll. I'll bet they'll be attuned to those kinds of issues in future.

I am glad this problem was fixed and an apology was issued, for that reason I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it was an honest mistake.

That being said your comment about turning over rocks to find racism is pure ignorance, racism is a serious problem and has been a serious problem for centuries. If you believe we have to turn over rocks to find it you are wilfully ignorant.

Could be the reason for the discounted doll.

Just my thought.

I'm glad he brought it up and got the discount.