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Among many things, discrimination and racism persist as the United States’ most cringe worthy flaws. It’s affects penetrate all facets of American life. It transcends gender, class, age, identity—and oddly, holidays. This 2015 YouTube video resurfaced and proves the point.

In the 43-second clip titled, Parents Give White girls black baby doll, viewer’s get a line of sight into the phenomenon of racism. Two young white girls are given gifts from their Uncle and Aunt, but upon unboxing, weren’t too thrilled receiving Black baby dollsAs one of the girls reveal that they are Black dolls, both of their faces quickly read: Whose idea was this?  They are clearly displeased. A woman asks what’s wrong:

“Nothing,” the girl replies.

“Do you like it?” the woman asks.

“Mhmm,” the girl says under her breath.

After an awkward moment of silence, the woman bursts into laughter. She then pans the camera to the younger girl and asks her if she likes her doll. The young girl breaks out in tears and flings the doll in the mother’s direction.

The video is disturbing and brings plenty to question: Why is this funny? What were the aunt and uncle’s motives?

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If anything, this stood to be a teaching moment about diversity and inclusion; not just for the young girls but for the adults as well. The adults could have made connections between the dolls and Black TV characters or cartoons and perhaps Black people in their lives—that’s if any actually existed.

The video has accumulated tons of comments with varying opinion. Interestingly, one user commented:

Then, if they were black girls with white dolls and they reject it, all those assholes commenting here would say: “It’s normal, they prefer dolls with the same colour, it’s self love!” “whites loving whites = racism” “blacks loving blacks = self love”

What are your thoughts?

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