Public history

February 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Prior to today, it had been several months since I had updated this blog because I’ve embarked on a new and (to me, at least) exciting project: working as a history professor and public historian.  It’s a demanding and challenging choice of career, and I’m thrilled to have landed this position in such a competitive job market for folks with humanities Ph.D.s.

What does this mean for The Multicultural Toybox?

Aside from the aforementioned hiatus, not much.  You can expect more posts soon on a variety of topics, but because history—and particularly U.S. and women’s history, which is what I’ve been hired to teach—is on my mind, chances are you’ll be seeing a more historical flavor to the site.

That said, my new job does mean I spend a good deal of time thinking about what it means to understand history, how average Americans come to know (or fail to know) U.S. history, and what we can do to get history (as well as the other arts and humanities) back into K-12 classrooms in an era of budget cuts and high-stakes testing for reading and math.  I’m revisiting my ideas for projects for Learning Trails Media, so if you have any requests for historically-themed lessons for your students (including home-schooled students), I’d love to hear them.

Filed Under: history, lesson plans

“Washington” is America’s “blackest name”

February 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Booker T. Washington

As I write this, in the U.S. we’ve just celebrated Presidents’ Day and we’re concluding Black History month. Accordingly, I found this article about how 90 percent of Americans with the surname “Washington” are African American. As author Jesse Washington explains,

The story of how Washington became the “blackest name” begins with slavery and takes a sharp turn after the Civil War, when all blacks were allowed the dignity of a surname. 

Even before Emancipation, many enslaved black people chose their own surnames to establish their identities. Afterward, some historians theorize, large numbers of blacks chose the name Washington in the process of asserting their freedom.

(Apparently only a small number of George Washington’s slaves bore his last name.)

I’m curious what George Washington and his family would think of this turn of events.

The second blackest name by percentage? Jefferson.

It’s an interesting article–definitely click through to read it.

Filed Under: history, holidays

Link love: Ethnic dolls, multicultural toys, ethical toys, multicultural superheroes, and more

August 19, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Some interesting and relevant links from around the web regarding ethnic dolls, multicultural toys, multicultural superheroes, ethical toys, and more:

From The Toronto Star, The Trouble with Ethical Toys. An excerpt:

assistant professor Gavin Fridell, who specializes in fair-trade issues, doubts fair trade toys will ever have much of a market presence, since ensuring that all the parts and processes involved are completely ethical would be next to impossible.”Think of all the different sourcing you would have to do to make a toy,” says Fridell, whose book, Fair Trade Coffee: The Prospects and Pitfalls of Market-driven Social Justice, was released this year.

An action figure, for instance, needs rubber, plastic, paint, metal, hair and cloth. Ensuring all that is produced ethically would be prohibitively expensive, Fridell says, adding fair trade works best with simple products such as coffee.

Besides, he says, where fair-trade coffee has the romance of keeping small farmers on the land producing quality coffee on a beautiful mountaintop, fair-trade manufacturing is more about workers’ rights and anti-globalization.

“These are more uncomfortable ideas,” Fridell says. “The best way to buy ethical toys might be to buy locally.”

The Asian Pacific American Toy Chest, from the superheroes page:

For the early part of superhero comic history, Asians tended to be the bad guys in comics, taking roles of either Super WWII Japanese Spy or some kind of Fu Manchu emperor. But, thanks in part to Marvel Comics’ popular X-Men and the influence of anime on American comics, we are seeing more and more APA super heroes exploding onto the scene.

From Young Money, Comic Books Enrich Their Character Mix: “Comic book fantasy is believable, he says, to the extent that it’s grounded in the real world. And the real world is not exclusively white, Anglo-Saxon, male or heterosexual.”

From the librarian at The Gentle Reader, some adorable multicultural dolls: Polly, Tali, Holly, Ali, Jolly, and Molly.

The Sacramento Bee brings us From Barbie to the Bratz dolls: Do media images push girls to go too sexy, too soon?

The Diva asks for readers’ opinions on ethnic Barbies. Personally, I find all Barbies a bit creepy, but I confess to being wowed by some people’s customizations of Barbie’s wardrobe. Case in point, these customized Indian Barbies from Dolls of India.

From the Courier-Mail, A Storm over Golliwog Dolls. Read the story, and then check out the history of Golliwogs at Wikipedia and The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia.

Filed Under: ethnic dolls, ethnic toys, history, multicultural dolls, multicultural games, superheroes

Ethnic dolls from U.S. history

August 17, 2007 By Leave a Comment

There are historical precedents for the mass production of ethnic dolls. Did you know Marcus Garvey set up a factory to produce black dolls?

In a darker era in U.S. history, companies produced racist caricatures of many ethnic groups, but especially of African Americans. These toys and collectibles are featured at The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. (Click on the link, then scroll down for a menu of categories of caricature.)

Curator David Pilgrim explains why the museum collects racist memorabilia.

Filed Under: ethnic dolls, ethnic toys, history, multicultural dolls, multicultural toys, racism

Why do black girls still prefer white dolls?

August 17, 2007 By 2 Comments

Diversity Inc. reports on a young filmmaker who has revisited Kenneth Clark’s famous 1954 test on black girls’ doll preferences. The article quotes filmmaker Kiri Davis, who is 17 years old, as saying she was inspired to repeat the experiments to see if black girls’ preferences had changed. Her results? Sixteen of 21 girls surveyed preferred white to black dolls–and in fact, according to the experiment, such girls see black dolls as “bad” and white dolls as “good.”

You can read some notes by Davis and view the film at Google Video.

People aren’t sure what causes the girls to see black dolls as less desirable or less valuable than white dolls. Marketing of white dolls? Low self-esteem about black girls? A combination of the two, or something else entirely? What are your thoughts?

Filed Under: ethnic dolls, ethnic toys, film, history, multicultural dolls, multicultural toys, racism