Anti-racist professor Ibram Kendi is worried his daughter “inhaled” the “smog of white superiority” from a white doll with blue eyes at her daycare..Kendi picked up his daughter from daycare and took a white doll away from her so they could go home..Each day, his daughter frowned and threw crying fits when he told her to put the doll down..Kendi and his partner “wondered if our black child’s attachment to a white doll could mean she had already breathed in what the psychologist Beverly Daniel Tatum has called the ‘smog’ of white superiority.”.Kendi expressed his concern in an article for The Atlantic magazine..Kendi referenced a recent CNN study where white children “displayed a high rate of ‘white bias,’ identifying lighter skin tones with positive attributes and darker hues with negative ones.”.The black children in the study did “display a white bias but less than white children.”.The study said it's because “black parents actively work to protect their children from bias by ‘reframing messages that children get from society’ about racial preference.” .White parents “don’t have to engage in that level of parenting,” said the study..“Regardless of your race, it’s never too early to consider the messages a child is receiving from the world around them. Colour blindness is not an option,” wrote Kendi. .“Research has demonstrated that even at one year-old, our children notice different skin colours. We can impress upon children the equality of dark and light colours.”.At Kendi’s home, his wife and him keep a “wide array of diverse toys,” but never thought about the daycare toys..Kendi went to his daughter’s daycare and looked through the toy chests..As he “rummaged through” the daycare toy chests he “did not come across a single doll that looked Asian, native, Latino, middle eastern, or black. Every single doll I saw looked white.”.“Anger overtook me. Not at the daycare’s owner … at myself. Imani (his daughter) had been going here for several weeks, and not once did I examine the toy chests,” said Kendi..According to the article, Kendi’s daughter “did not choose to play with the white doll over dolls of colour,” but she did not have “another option.”.“After all these years, how many children still don’t have another option in their toy chests, libraries, or schools? What does the over representation of white dolls tell children about who their caregivers think is important?”.Kendi is the author of five books, including Stamped from the Beginning: The definitive history of racist ideas in America, How to be an Antiracist, and the children’s book Antiracist Baby.
