Black Doll - White Doll

So here is my first doll purchase. As a perent to be I am already starting to feel very aware and concerned about how the outside world will influence my child. One of the first things I noticed in the store was that there were very few black dolls to choose from, and many of the ones that were on the shelf were tucked in at the back behind other white doll boxes.

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I also noticed that the girl dolls for the most part had pink outfits and long hair and the boy dolls had blue outfits and short hair. So there I was thinking – here is the message that society seems to want to send to my children – boys like blue, girls like pink and black is second best, but what message do I want them to get?

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I want my son or daughter to celebrate diversity and feel proud of who they are. If we have a boy I want him to know that it is good to be nurturing and caring and it is ok to play with a doll in pink. So I have a plan - and that is to get my litle boy a pink doll with long hair, and if we have a girl, to buy her some little blue trucks (to counter balance the stereotypes other people will try to send). But, since we don’t know the sex of our baby, and since I needed a little retail therapy to help with all of this waiting, I ended up going with a black doll with a white outfit. Am I over thinking the whole thing? Or, maybe as a parent you can never think too much about these types of things.
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When I got home I tried to research a little more and came accross this interesting article:

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What Dolls Can Tell Us About Race in America

In the article 21 black children in the states were asked to choose between a white and a black doll, and 15 of them choose the white doll saying it was “pretty” and “nicer” than the black doll.
Some people have responded by saying this is a reflection of the subtle messages we are sending our children about race. In another article I read one mother noted "I'm not happy about it, but I'm not shocked. My daughter goes to a predominantly white school and a lot of her friends are white, and that's what she sees around her in the media and so on. And, when we go shopping, for example, there are no positive images of people like her." Her sentiments were echoed by husband Clayton: "If there were more positive black images and more black teachers in schools, then life might change for our little kids, but what they see is whites on TV doing well and black people doing bad."

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As white parents adopting a black child I think it is really important that we think about what the outside world is telling our child. We, and our other family members, will not be able to act as the positive black role models our child needs and because of that we need to put extra effort into making sure we find ways to compensate. Especially since the media and outside world doesn't always seem to do a great job at this.