My four-year-old is enthralled by Barbie. We’ve got Barbie clothes, cars, horses, and everything else you can imagine all over our house. For awhile we resisted buying her a Barbie, but after Emma had some problems with toilet training we made a deal with her — if she could conquer the toilet, we’d let her pick out a Barbie.
That provided all the motivation she needed and in a few weeks we were headed off to the toy store. Anyway, to make a long story short she quickly picked out a black ballerina Barbie. She explained that she wanted that Barbie because it looked like her favorite woman from the day care she goes attends.
The only reason it was notable was because we assumed that a child would most likely pick dolls that closely resemble themselves. According to Clint Talbott, Dave Thielen’s 8-year old daughter had the same hypothesis and decided to subject it to a little testing for an upcoming science fair.
She took white and black Barbies and showed them to adults and children with different dresses and asked people to pick which one they preferred. Among her sample of 30 adults, the adults showed a preference for a lavender dress outfit but no preference based on race. Among the children, however, her hypothesis was confirmed — only six of the 30 children preferred the black Barbie.
Personally that sounds like a pretty clever 8 year-old but her school, Mensa Elementary School in Boulder, Colorado, apparently thought she was a bit too smart for her own good. Her science fair exhibit reporting her results barely lasted an hour before teachers removed it on the grounds that it might upset somebody. The director of elementary education told Thielen that the project was inappropriate because, “A science fair is not the way we choose to discuss race relations.”
Talbott writes,
No kidding. A science fair is not the way we discuss anything. It’s not a discussion. The girl was not propounding a point of view. She conducted a scientific experiment. She reported the results. She displayed initiative, curiosity and discipline. Just as she was supposed to do.
The weird thing, of course, is that we are constantly informed by various institutions that there is not enough dialogue and discussion of racial issues while at the same time those very same institutions are often very uncomfortable with open discussions about race. I don’t know how we’re ever going to resolve racial problems when people can’t even report on issues related to race without risking censure.