Thursday, March 11, 2010

Please Stop With Teh Crazy Everyone

"Walmart is raising eyebrows after cutting the price of a black Barbie doll to nearly half of that of the doll's white counterpart at one store and possibly others."


A white 'Barbie' cost more to buy than a black 'Barbie'. I am not surprised but I am disappointed.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/black-barbie-sold-white-barbie-walmart-store/story?id=10045008
Posted by Cal's Canadian Cave of Coolness at 7:32 PM

2 comments:

Wings1295 said...

Um, WHY?

March 12, 2010 at 7:27 AM
vancouver mark said...

Oh look, a lovely minefield, let's walk across it and see what . . .

Um, to me the problem is that some people (white people) may prefer to buy light-skinned dolls over dark-skinned ones for their little white girl Jane. meanwhile, some other people (brown people) may look at this brown Barbie with her white girl features, face and consumer morality, and not buy it either.
So, say the store orders one hundred white Barbies and one hundred brown Barbies, to show how non-discriminatory it is. Two months later, they have ten of the white ones left on the shelves and ninety-five of the brown. Is it a racist act to mark down the price of a product that isn't selling?

It reminds me of the controversy we're having right now regarding the Paralympics. The opening ceremonies of the regular Olympics were uber-hyped and broadcast live all over the world, and millions watched everywhere. The opening ceremonies of the Paralympics were only carried live here in BC and I think about twelve people watched. (OK, maybe twenty) Were the networks discriminating against the differently-abled by not insisting on the same level of coverage, or did they just reflect the reality of the viewing audience?

March 14, 2010 at 11:17 AM

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