Black! Not White Dipped in Chocolate (a repost)

The Beautiful Black Doll on the Shelf
Posted on June 26, 2011


Black and White Dolls

I remember the time I got what would become my favorite doll. I was about four years old and I went with my maternal grandma to Toys-R-Us. I remember being ecstatic to finally be getting the doll that I had seen so many commercials about on tv. My grandmother and I promptly walked up to the cashier and asked where they kept the dolls that we were looking for. While we were talking, a young black girl heard us asking and said “I know where the dolls are, I’ll show you.” She was probably about 12 or 13. She led my grandmother and I over to the display where I saw the dolls I had been dreaming about for weeks. On one side of the display stood a replica of the doll that had been featured in the tv commericials. She was blond, blue-eyed with a pretty pink dress on. On the other side of the display stood the doll, which I hadn’t even noticed in the commercials. She was chocolate colored, with brown eyes and black curly hair with a ribbon in it. The black girl who had shown us the shelf, handed me the chocolate doll. I held the doll in my hand, looked at her, and promptly put her back.

I picked up the blond, blue-eyed doll, clutched her to my chest and headed to the front of the store. My grandma thanked the little girl and we went over to pay for the doll.

From that point on my doll, “Wishous,” became my bestfriend. We did everything together, we took pictures together, we traveled together and Wishous never left my side. I even brought Wishous to preschool and kindegarten with me. She stayed in my cubby in my backpack, the whole day, but she was always with me. I loved her.


I even took Wishous when we went on vacations. One time we all went on Vacation to Virginia, and we took a tour of a slave plantation. I was about five at the time, so I can’t remember the name of the plantation, but my mother tells me it might have been Monticello. As we left our car to take a tour of the plantation, I remember my mother asking me, “why don’t you leave Wishous in the car? It’s hot, leave her in the car.”

I refused. After going back and forth a few times, my father finally said”just let her bring the doll so we can go.” All I can remember from that day is walking along the dirt path of the slave plantation, with the slave cabins on each side and clutching Wishous, my blond-haired, blue- eyed doll to my chest…it would be years before I truly understood what that moment meant to me.

When I started first grade at a predominately white prep school, Wishous came to represent much more than a doll that I loved. One day, I brought my doll “Wishous,” in for Show and Tell. As I walked to the front of the class and held up Wishous in her new pink, flowered dress, I began to tell my classmates about all of the adventures that we had together. I told them that I had her since I was “little,” and she was my baby. Before I could finish, one of my classmates promptly stated, “but she’s WHITE.”

The teacher shot my classmate a look and the class went silent. I was hurt. That day , when my grandmother came to pick me up from school, I told her that one of my classmates had told me that “Wishous couldn’t be my baby because she was white,” to which my grandmother replied, “well, tell them Wishous is your baby, she’s just light skinned…”

The more I thought about it, the more I realized, Wishous was white…she didn’t look like me at all. In fact she looked more like my blonde classmate who promptly corrected me by telling me that Wishous was NOT my baby because she was white.

Not long after that, I stopped bringing Wishous to school with me and soon after that she went from occupying a special place on my mermaid pillow to a place in the corner of my closet.

When I started middle school , I ‘ finally’ got my first relaxer at 12 years old. I remember loving the silky, flow and how my hair moved in the wind. I loved how ‘cute’ I looked and I loved that I finally had the hair that most of my classmates had, the hair that Wishous had.

Before I knew it, our first mixer had rolled around. I remember dressing up and getting my hair done. I remember giggling with my friends about the girls who slow danced and the boys who asked them. I watched with excitement as my friends danced… waiting anxiously for my turn to come…

But, time after time, I went home sad and disappointed. Even with my “pretty hair,” and my pretty clothes, I never got asked to dance, except maybe at a black awareness dance…once a year.

As a black girl in a predominately white school, I was pretty much condemned to be a wallflower.


No matter how pretty I looked, no matter how straight my hair was, I would always be black first. Every time that I dreamed of dancing the night away, only to be rejected and ignored…every time that I imagined myself with long, flowing hair, only to be confronted with a reality of damaged hair and harsh chemicals, I relived that moment where I was forced to recognize that I would never be like the doll that I had loved and cherished my whole life. The traits that I subconsciously desired and coveted in my doll, were the very same traits that betrayed and condemned me to social invisibility later in life.

I rejected the raven-haired, brown eyed black doll, only to realize years later, that I WAS that black doll. I was the black doll abandoned and invisible on the shelf in the Toy Store.


My doll that had comforted me through so many nights, my doll that had been my security blanket …could never truly reflect who I was. Not in a culture, so steeped in racial animosity. Now, I understood why my mother wanted me to leave Wishous in the car at the slave plantation… my clinging to my white doll, as I walked amongst the slave cabins, was a representation of the emotional and mental scarring that a history of slavery, oppression and racism has left on my mind. Even before the age of five, I had already learned that my blackness relegated me to a place of undesirability and invisibility.

I’ve come to understand that my choosing of the white doll over the black doll was a byproduct of a culture that teaches whiteness as normal and blackness as abnormal. This mindset is so deeply ingrained in our culture that many times people do not even realize how brainwashed we are. Even though culture plays a large role in self perception, I do wish my parents and grandmother would have done somethings differently. I wish that my parents would have asked me why I chose the white doll over the black doll. Even just simply stating that ‘black dolls are pretty too,’ would have meant something to me. But sometimes, the legacy of racism, which comes from a history of slavery and oppression, runs so deeply in our culture, that it almost seems natural. But, it is not natural. It’s not natural that a girl should grow up believing her skin color or hair texture make her inferior. It’s not natural that a girl should feel unwanted just because she’s black.

It’s not that I hated my doll, it’s not that I had to let go of Wishous, it’s that I had to let go of what she represents. How could I reconcile the attachment that I had to my doll with the realization that much of that attachment came from a place of self-loathing and self-deprecation?

Well, I loved Wishous because of the joys we shared; I loved her because my grandmother, who I loved so much, went with me to buy her. But, I could no longer love her because she was white. I could no longer covet the idealized beauty that she represented. I could no longer grant her the sacred place that she occupied in my heart for so long because I had to learn to love MYSELF first. MYSELF.


A journey to acceptance of myself as a black woman means understanding that I do not have to feel shame for being black. My beauty and my self-worth are no longer defined by the constraints of society. I no longer need white validation to know that God has blessed me with my own unique beauty as a black woman and as a person. I’ve come to love the beauty that God has given me as a black woman.

I realized that I don’t need straight hair, pale skin or pale eyes to be beautiful, because I am crafted by the master jeweler and he never makes mistakes. All his creations reflect immense beauty.

I can stay out in the sun for hours and get a beautiful, vibrant shade of chocolate and I LOVE it. The damaged and dulled hair that I once tortured with chemicals now grows freely and beautifully from my head. I can walk out of my house and proudly show off my luscious afro-textured hair, which I KNOW is healthy and BEAUTIFUL, no matter what others think. It was only after kicking the chemicals that I realized it was the harshness of the relaxer that kept my hair from growing, not my hair itself.

Most importantly, I’m learning not to worry about those who don’t love or value me just because of my skin color. What they think of me doesn’t matter…the people who matter are those that have loved me my entire life…My mother, my father, my grandmother, my brothers and all the people who have loved me just as I am. I am a reflection of them, after all, and after all the love they’ve shown me, they couldn’t be anything less than beautiful, as am I.

Who cares what society thinks of me as a black woman, I don’t have to carry the mental bondage of slavery anymore. I’m made in an image of beauty and love , as we all are, and that’s what makes us beautiful.

As for the black doll that was left behind on the shelf…I finally picked her up…now I carry that beautiful black doll with me everywhere. She stays in my heart, in my smile, in my laugh, in my NATURAL beauty and in my love. That black doll is me and I won’t allow her to be left or forgotten on the shelf anymore. I AM LOVED.

*This is a repost from another blog. I haven't had quite the same experiences, but I can relate. I was talking to friends back home about relationships specifically romantic ones, and Arica said she had experienced only two responses from white boys/men. Either they thought she would be an easy f*** because she was black, or they wanted to just "be friends." I told her it was the same for me. I'd be hard-pressed to find a white boy who actually wanted to date a black girl. It makes me wonder, why? I ran across this blog post while we were talking, and decided to repost it.*