There was a great / sad / sadly hilarious NPR segment - maybe from This American Life? - a couple of years back from a woman who worked in a high-end toy store. She talked about selling expensive baby dolls and how much harder it was to sell darker-skinned dolls. It wasn't a study, just a story, but interesting nonetheless. When my friends have kids, I make a point to buy them the darker skinned dolls - they might end up being the only such dolls they ever get.

Nicely put. In some cases, higher price leads customers to associate the product with higher value (even if they are less likely to buy it). Would probably have been worth it to avoid the bad publicity. (see, for example, an old study: http://www.jstor.org/pss/3172866).

It's kind of worse than that, because they didn't just lower the price. The red price tag indicates that the black doll is not just on sale: it's on clearance, while the white doll is continuing to sell normally. The clearance tag sends the message that they're actually just trying to get rid of it.

And that means something, especially at Walmart. Good merchandise essentially *never* goes on clearance there. Clearance sections are things that are out of fashion, are out of season, or just turned out to be bad products. (And if you think Walmart sells crap to begin with, just think what that means for their clearance sections!)

I know the underlying issues here are complex, but come on now. They weren't selling one kind of doll, and they were selling the other. Price generally reflects demand. Is it sad that there isn't as much demand for dolls without Caucasian-like features? Yes. Is it sad that even those girls with a skin tone that may more closely match the more desired dolls are still idealizing an idea of 'beauty' that is unattainable for 99% of the population? Yes. Should the store be reprimanded for putting a product that is not selling as fast as another item from the line on sale? No. WalMart is a company that has never really been aligned with high ethics, but that aside, the store doesn't exist to help shape our sociological ideals, and this problem stems from the general consuming public.

"Walmart, however, could have chosen, in this case, to opt out of profit maximization."

Well, not really. Legally, they're obliged to maximise profits for their shareholders. However, even if one conceded that in a particular instance like this they could have acted otherwise - either by making a case that not fucking up on race is good for business overall, or just that if they acted in a way that didn't maximise profit in this case they're not exactly likely to pick up on it - this doesn't change the structural imperatives which mean that as a whole, a capitalist entity will necessarily privilege profit over all other considerations.

Which is why opposition to capitalism is a necessary part of any comprehensive anti-racist, feminist critique of existing society. Because within a capitalist system, ultimately absolutely anyone will be thrown overboard whenever it makes economic sense to do so.

I have to play the devil's advocate here for a moment:

As someone in sales, myself, it is entirely likely that their clearance price system is mostly - or completely - automated. I'm not personally familiar with Walmart's sales data processing system, so I can't say for sure, but it could easily be argued that their system reads UPCs, not descriptions of the products. UPCs that don't sell well (or are being discontinued or whatnot) automatically get flagged for clearance.

With as much merchandise as Walmart moves it is highly unlikely that they have anyone going through each product to make sure that putting any one item on clearance would be politically correct.

Now, I hate Walmart as much as the next liberal anti-consumerist, but I'm going to have to cut them some slack here until I see evidence that this was, in fact, a conscious decision on their part.

P.S. Maybe someone should be chastising the manufacturer for giving the dark skinned doll a blue dress and the light skinned doll the pink dress... Or the parents for buying light skinned dolls for their dark skinned children. Or for buying this anorexia-propaganda at all..... I think there's a lot more wrong with that picture than just the red price tags.

I mean, no offense...but this is irrelevant academic B.S.

If the white doll had been on sale, everyone would be freaking out because the white doll was easier to get. I've seen that happen.

To me this is further proof that conflict theory based analysis is just bunk. It induces a perceived conflict in everything then extrapolates out some huge socioeconomic impact.

Does anyone *really* think that this has any relevance in the big picture of the situation of race relations, and further the residual socioeconomic crap that non-whites have to deal with? If so, then you may need to leave the dorm and go out and get involved in a minority community. The real problems will become very apparent very quickly....and barbies have nothing to do with it.

"because black people have been compared to primates for centuries"

Just a note: Black people are primates; all humans are. Humans are apes. Apes don't have tails, and monkeys do. Sorry, these errors bother me.

The thing is, the person at Walmart who made the decision to put the black doll on sale, probably didn't even know what item it was - just SKU4792 or whatever. There's a huge database that tracks sales curves and all that stuff, and it pops out pricing recommendations daily (or even more often). If anybody even reviews it, they just see that SKU4792 is selling at the rate of only X per day, and with a backstock of Y, they need to start clearing it out so they can have turnover of 42 days or less, or whatever.

When I was six or seven, I got a gift card to Toys R Us for my birthday, and there was a specific doll I'd seen on TV that I wanted to buy. I remember going there and seeing rows and rows of the black version of the doll, but the white one was sold out. I just grabbed a black one without thinking about it, and my parents immediately tried to talk me out of it. "That's for black people, honey."

They couldn't get me to back down, though, so we brought it home. I only had it for a couple of months before I threw it in my closet and refused to play with it again; I was sick of the, "Ew, why do you have a black doll?" comments from my friends and weird racist "jokes" from my relatives. I even brought it to school with me one day, and the teacher accused me of stealing it from one of the dark-skinned girls in the class. She confiscated it from me, and my father had to call in order for me to get it back.

So, I think, while this pricing is indeed "to move merchandise," it also says a lot about the amount of value most people place on dark-skinned dolls. I know my dark-skinned friends had white dolls, and no one ever noticed anything strange about it, but there was a much different reaction when I walked in holding a black doll; no one could imagine why a white girl would want a black doll. I think this all ties into white as the beauty standard and white as the default—black, as the "other," has no chance of competing, even in doll form. Thus, black dolls don't sell as well and must be marked down.

These are just my thoughts and experiences; if anyone else has had different ones, I'd be interested to hear them.

This racist Barbie doll price story is on the level of tabloids.

A paparazzi spends three days trying to get some titillating shot of Stupid Celebrity A, but all he gets is her sniffling away because of a miserable cold. Next day major tabloid headline reads, "Does Stupid Celebrity A have a cocaine problem?" Read all about it here! See the photos!

I like to see a difference between the Daily Mail and Sociological Images, but sometimes...

Who cares about the price of some Barbie doll?

The real interesting question to ask about Walmart is : what can it possibly be like to be the HR director of a two-million employee company?

What a job.

And given that half of the Forbes 100 richest people list is composed of Waltons, Walton children, Walton children's children, Walton pet animals, and their pets' pets, it gives us great pleasure to note that all the Waltons are ugly and look like 19th century farm peasants who recently changed their hairdos to the 21st century. But that "milking the cows" look is still with them to this very day.

There.

When I was a kid, I wanted a Barbie type doll to make clothes for. There was a Black Barbie type doll on sale, so I bought her. I didn't get peculiar reactions at any point (I'm very, very white, btw,) and I enjoyed making her what I thought were beautiful clothes. This was around 1975 in Nebraska, and I was 10.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I think she was a TV tie in from a show which had a Black nurse character. Julia? Something like that.

Funniest thing I've read all day: "Walmart, however, could have chosen, in this case, to opt out of profit maximization."

Walmart's sole value as a company is profit maximization. But yes, theoretically Walmart could have other values.

I'm curious as to what age kids start to notice different colours in skin. My son is only 3 1/2 and still describes people by the colour shirt they are wearing. If he says 'that black man', he means 'that man wearing a black shirt'.

I was always disappointed to not have a black barbie doll. I don't know why I never had one. I suppose my parents thought it inappropriate? Though, I only ever saw the black dolls in pictures, never in the stores.

It seems like a lose/lose situation here: if the black doll is cheaper, that's bad, if the white doll is cheaper, that's bad. If they mark down the slow moving stock, that's bad, if they have the same stock sitting on the shelf for a long time, that's bad.

Walmart, however, could have chosen, in this case, to opt out of profit maximization.

LOL - It's fucking Wal-Mart. You think out of everything they've done, the one time they're going to overlook profit for the greater good is when it comes to a black Barbie? Yeah, right. I'm guessing that if they could, they'd get Mattel to stop selling ethnic Barbies entirely, but Mattel is probably the only toy manufacturer that's big enough that not even WM can fuck with them to that extent.

There have been several studies showing that black little girls prefer white Barbies and baby dolls, so it's not at all surprising that they wouldn't sell as well. :(

Mattel has made some truly beautiful face molds for their black dolls, it's very sad that they never sell as well. And I can tell you anecdotally that they don't - whenever a collector doll is offered in both races, it's much easier to find the black version discounted or on eBay much sooner than the white. I've gotten some very good deals on some beautiful dolls because I happened to like the black face mold better than the white.

Congratulations! That was, without a doubt, the dumbest thing I've read all week.

Good job!

I think it's disgusting that they're selling black dolls at all. By symbolically putting a price on a person of colour they are sending an unconscious message justifying the practice of slavery.

This... is not okay.

Let me point out my own privilege for a minute here. On the monkey issue.

Background: I grew up in Canada, in a small city, where the were about 6 black people other than the football team. (I'm exaggerating, but not by much - My highschool of ~1000 had 3 black kids). The most visible minority was First Nations.

Until a month or two ago, I had NO IDEA that there was any comparison of black people to monkeys (or other non-human primates) other than I once heard the term "porch monkey" and was totally baffled (still am to some extent). So a few weeks ago, in Canadian Tire, I was talking with a black lady and her kids. Her little girl was this adorable little thing who was asking me about my kids. Her boy was climbing all over everything. And I said, ever so ignorantly, "What cute little monkeys you have". Her face dropped. I was baffled, but (stupidly) kept talking. I said, "My own little monkeys..." and said a couple more sentences. Then she brightened and looked amused with me. *Then* it hit me. My face must have shown what I had realized because she cracked up laughing, while I stuttered and apologised.

Stupidest. Mistake. EVer.

As someone with more than a casual interest in toys and the toy industry, I wanted to post here, even if I'm tardy to the party.

I don't know how fashion dolls work, but it's not exactly uncommon knowledge that with action figures, the Black guy tends to not sell as well. For instance, Mattel is making web-exclusive figures based on the Ghostbusters films. The figures based on Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis's characters sold out quickly, in a matter of days, if not hours. The figure based on Ernie Hudson's character is still available months later, despite being produced in the same numbers.

could this be that black people dont buy dolls as often? people normally buy dolls based on their own ethnic background. i always wanted barbies mexican friend, teresea. or brunette barbie. but they stopped making brunette barbie because sales sucked. i dont think it's any one persons fault that black dolls, or ethnic dolls dont sale as well.

What a load of nonsense. This has nothing to do with sociological issues. What we have here is a buyer who doesn't understand demographics. The population of the US consists of 13.5 percent African Americans.

Without factoring in that whites will buy black dolls and blacks will buy white dolls....on its most basic level, a buyer should likely not stock 50 white dolls and 50 black dolls. It's simple math, not racism, when they are left with an excess of black dolls.

THIS IS exactly the stuff that perpetuates stereotyping and imbalance. Good grief.

The fact that black children are demanding white dolls does not add up to racism. What it demonstrates, is that even within the black culture...lighter skin is 'favored' over darker skin. Are you suggesting that they are racist against themselves ? An odd twist and worth consideration....but it still doesn't make WalMart's decision racially based.

Aaaaand a Merry Christmas to you too.

Just a correction: black people are primates, as are all other humans. A more accurate thing to say would have been "black people have been compared to apes and monkeys for centuries."

That's a more accurate thing to say ? Not sure what your intent was....buy I think it would be more accurate to say, some things are better left unsaid.

I feel like this is a catch-22 for the retailer; if they don't stock ethnic dolls, they are racist. If, when the ethnic dolls don't sell (and they don't. That's a whole different problem, but as best as I can tell it's not the retailer's fault.) the retailer does what they do with any product that doesn't sell and marks it down, they're racist.

White Hookers are also a lot more Pricey than Black ones. hahahaha

Doll Test, watch this video and see what black children said. They don't like the black doll!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkpUyB2xgTM#t=70

walmart offering great services. Now all walmart employees can make use of WalmartOne to get all benifits.

Brooke