Fuse ODG has launched a black doll enterprise—I mean to sell black dolls.
On the face of it, this seems like a laudable initiative, a way to help safeguard the esteem of black people—and encourage self-love among black people in this era of skin lightening.
But a deeper evaluation makes this useless, almost empty in terms of the practical impact it will have.
Apart from the fact that children of today hardly play with dolls, the problem with our generation when it comes to self-esteem, the worshipping of everything white and from the West has little to do with toddlers, rather grown-up men and women.
The image a child becomes accustom to is not that of a doll. Don’t be deceived. It’s his or her mother, the person who will feed her and nurture her and all the many people she will grow up seeing regularly.
If you have the mother, aunties and friends of the mother of a child wearing long weaves, and portraying themselves as “white” in appearance and mindset, buying some dark coloured doll for the child to play with wouldn’t change much about her perception as she grows.
The problem is not with unintelligent children. But arguably, semi-intelligent adults, who hate their natural hair, complexion, accent, religion and history.
If we cannot win the war of ideas with adults, and help eradicate the widespread notion of everything aligned to white being supreme or more acceptable, then any attempt to shape the thinking of toddlers with what we reject would be fruitless.
No child is a recluse: they live with people and learn from people—more than dolls which our generation of iPad and television children hardly engage with.
We have a problem and it’s the adults.
Almost every black woman on social media has some long fake weave and employs lightening filters—and yet we want children to accept images that adults consciously reject and fail to associate with?
That’s a joke.
Until the adults who bring forth these children and are involved with change their appearance, it’s a lost battle to think that some doll will make any significant impact in the worldview of a child.
What do you think?