Like, can you imagine? Imagine being stolen, chained, shoved under a ship across the Atlantic for up to 2-4 months, stuck side by side with the dead or dying, suffering and suffocating, starving, the smell of death and blood and sick and shit all around you.
You survive that, you're tossed off the boat and given a name in a language you don't even understand (and they'll whip you if you don't figure it out in fifteen seconds). You are now seen as chattel, no better than an animal (and YES I know cattle and chattel aren't the same. Cattle are still chattel.)
This situation won't be solved in your lifetime. You are going to live and die as a slave to these monsters who think they're better than you because of their white skin and some made up bullshit. Your children will likely live and die as slaves, and you might not even get to keep them because they will also be sold off as cattle, as is your "master's" or "mistress'" right.
And after surviving under the physical and psychological horror of all of that, you happen to get a vision of your descendant in 2026, fed and bathed with privileges no longer within your comprehension including reading and talking to white people, saying that "it's too hard to discuss racism here, I can't change anything". As if the change has not happened to put them in that situation.
I would whoop your ass 🤣🤣🤣 so yeah I do think we're all capable of something and I 100% owe them the good college try.
tumblr users love jacking themselves off to the idea that they’re more intellectual than tiktokers but in reality you guys are just as vapid and moronic you’re just more annoying about it because you’re not conventionally attractive and you think that makes you inherently more virtuous
liking a ship but disliking the distinct set of stock fanon that they have been assigned is like one of those punishments dante came up with when he wrote the worldbuilding for hell in inferno
what if we stopped making Ambiguously Brown Character and started actually thinking about the race and ethnic features of the characters we made? what if instead of drawing a character that looks like you painted a white character brown, we started varying noses, lips, eyes, and hair? just a thought
I would like to read the rant about the doll community and anti blackness if you ever feel like sharing it 😮💨
I am so down for it, I just didn't want to derail your post too much talking in the tags!
I've been interested in dolls my entire life, and active in the broader doll community for probably the better part of a decade. There have been times when I have been more or less active in it, and a great deal of this come-and-go activity has been due to racism (among other issues regarding fatphobia, anti-native racism in particular, and other general clownery).
[I do want to lead with what dolls I am primarily interested in, so that there is context for which spaces in particular I am active in and may bring up as examples for this kind of behavior: Monster High, Rainbow High, Barbie, BJD, and doll customization. I also want to lead with mentioning I am native Cherokee, so will have a hint of the Native experience mixed into this rant as well.]
I feel that doll-collecting as a hobby lends itself as a breeding ground for antiblackness. I've found the bulk of the issues that I have run into are related to white fragility, and what happens when that delicate balance of white feelings is upset. Regardless of whether it is the dehumanization or fetishization of black women, it can still trigger that white fragility.
For starters, people being emotionally attached to particular characters that, by the nature of dolls, are often being interpreted based purely off of a character design, sets up a scenario in which white people can easily feel fragile. I have seen more than once a white person get inordinately upset when a BIPOC brings up a popular headcanon, or even outright black-coding of a doll. 99% of the time, this sudden protectiveness over the whiteness of a doll that they like comes following a completely friendly comment from a black person.
Why is this? Because, to them, black is the worst thing that a person can be. A BIPOC expressing a colored headcanon for a doll is therefore read by some white doll fans as an insult. This results in torrents of microaggressions similar to what many black gamers experience in gaming communities: "why do they have to be black?" While masked behind the curtain of "artistic preference" and "just giving criticism," it really boils down to racism.
[examples to back up my point: the whitewashing of Delilah Fields (Rainbow High), who is black with albinism and upsets a LOT of white folk; and G1 Clawdeen Wolf (Monster High), who I have seen be put through the "she's not black, she's a werewolf. That's why she's brown" argument more times than I can count.]
Additionally, there is the issue of, should black doll collectors (or other collectors of color), want to carve out a space to discuss this without incurring constant comments from white folk, white people feel entitled to black spaces.
I was a part of the Rainbow High subreddit for some time, and, following the release of Delilah Fields (or thereabouts in that time frame), a woman of color from that subreddit made her own separate subreddit for Rainbow High collectors of color to discuss headcanons and opinions without white people adding antiblackness to the conversation. I'm sure you can guess what happened next: floods of hate on the subreddit whenever any conversations surrounding blackness would get brought up, ultimately leading to the subreddit being deleted. This is just one example from my admittedly very small doll-focused pond, but illustrates my point of white fragility leading to some people feeling defensive over their favorite dolls to the point of harassing POC.
And that is nothing to say of white collectors who, like you pointed out in your post, conveniently have a "preference" for white, light-skinned, or fantasy-tone dolls. I've seen white collectors who argue that the lack of textured hair in dolls (a problem that I believe has improved over the years) isn't rooted in racism, and it's just because producing textured hairstyles in dolls is more expensive from a manufacturing standpoint. I've seen it argued that dark-skinned dolls are more expensive and not worth it due to the dolls needing more dark-colored dye to produce.
Regardless of whether or not black dolls do actually cost more to make, the willingness of white fans to jump at the defense of white doll designers centering whiteness is again a symptom of pervasive antiblackness within this community. At its very worst, I've even seen a white collector argue that little black girls aren't as interested in dolls, and it's okay that there are more white dolls than black for this reason (which in turn relates back to the racist, antiblack idea that little black girls are "more grown" than little white girls).
Doll customization lends to a particular kind of antiblackness. Doll customization, by nature of being related to makeovers (from the hair to makeup, clothes, and body modifications of a doll), faces the additional problem of fetishization of black women. These issues coexist as a matter of antiblackness: they manage to both adopt black aesthetics in their redesigns and AAVE in the way they talk about their process (I am not going to list any particular creators due to not wanting to encourage harassment, but it's the same kind of AAVE adopted by white folk who are fans of drag) while also maintaining antiblack ideals. White women are "curvy," whereas black women are "thicc." The differences in the ways lightskinned vs. darkskinned doll bodies are talked about, the ways this manifests as the kinds of body types dolls are given, the aesthetics and personalities assigned to white vs. light-skinned vs. dark-skinned dolls; it all boils down to antiblackness.
I'm not even kidding it's so clear that everyone sees black people and especially black women as some sort of alternate species. I'm getting into doll collection & customization videos because I've been getting into collecting myself and toys and art are supposed to bring me happiness and even there I can't escape the anti blackness. Like... you're lucky if you find a character or doll that's consistently brown skinned and carefully designed in popular brands. Collectors will always favor light skin or fantasy colors anyways. I had to watch a white creator call a custom Garnet doll "dummy thicc" and describe her in progress proportions as "female rappery" why couldn't you just have said curvy? You're not funny or cool and I'm very tired
Several wildfires are forcing members of a number of First Nations to flee their homes in northern Ontario.
“I had time to run home and pack a bag and get to the beach where the boats were waiting,” said a member of Namaygoosisagagun First Nation (Collins). “We literally had minutes to get on the boats and flee before it took our town.
“Once we left my house finally after packing what I could in a pack sack, the fire was right behind our place. We had to run to the beach and once we got there, it was only moments before the fire had jumped over the (train) track and was coming for us.”
it has since been confirmed that namaygoosisagagun first nation has completely burnt to the ground. if you would like to help the community navigate an ongoing crisis, i urge you to donate to the anishinabek nation 7th generation, a registered charity seeking to improve the lives of first nations people. donations are going directly to members of namaygoosisagagun first nation.
if you're canadian, you can e-transfer [email protected]. if you're outside canada, they accept paypal as well. see more information HERE
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