Positive role models and the doll house that meant so much

A MOM’S PERSPECTIVE

By Sonia Huggins

Sonia Huggins is an educator who recently gave up her distinguished career as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. She is a regular contributor to SideOne.

I remember when there was hardly any representation of black people on television, in magazines, in toys, in books, and especially in school.

I was 10 years old when our family arrived in Montreal from the U.K. I was inundated with images of people, places and things that did not represent me as a little black girl. My favourite doll was a white doll with long blond hair that I cherished, but she certainly didn’t look like me. There was nowhere that my mother could find a black doll.

When I started school, my classmates were studying a character called Bunga who lived in a place called Africa and wore a grass skirt and carried a spear. Our teacher let the class believe this was the real and only representation of black people. So I, as a little black girl from the U.K. with a heavy British accent who couldn’t relate to Bunga, was teased relentlessly for the entire first year of school in my new country because I didn’t sound like my classmates and I refused to accept that this was the only version of black people that existed.

Going to a white school and living in a whiteneighbourhood didn’t help my self-image, but despite this I survived and thrived. I never forgot this primary experience, which I used to steel myself against a society that continued to under-represent people of colour.

BEFORE OPRAH

This was before Oprah. This was before the African-American sitcoms that would mirror the lives of black people. And this was before I discovered an African-American magazine called Ebony that showcased black writers and black stories. Just as important, all the ads would feature black people. I would see myself represented in its pages.

As I was careening toward teenage-hood, it wouldbe another 20 years before The Oprah Winfrey Showwould become an inspiration to women, especially young black women like myself. Meanwhile, I was desperately seeking culture I could relate to. I voraciously read stories by well-known black writers because I needed to understand the significance of why we were underrepresented in Canadian society. As time marched on, I began to foment ideas about culture and race that would stay with me for the rest of my life.

Absolutely nothing made me happier that day than my girls playing with a doll family that looked like us and lived in a house just like ours.

Fast forward 20 years, and I was getting ready to bethe mother of two daughters. I knew that although alot had changed in 20 years, a lot of things hadn’t.

FINDING THAT DOLL HOUSE

I remember going to a local toy store to buy a toyhouse with a black family that was shown on theback of the box, and how I scoured through the shelves looking and opening all the boxes, only to be disappointed that there was no black family. A family that would represent and mirror my own family. A family that my children would play with for years and identify with in a deeply meaningful way.

A store clerk happened by. After explaining my dilemma in frustration, he went to the stock room to look. He returned with the house containing the black family and I bought it. Absolutely nothing made me happier that day than my girls playing with a doll family that looked like us and lived in a house just like ours. My daughters’ self-image would be confirmed and strengthened within a world of white faces in which they were barely represented.

My girls loved dolls, so I decided to make sure their Barbie dolls reflected their blackness. We had the largest collection of black Barbie dolls in the neighbourhood. I became even more intent on supplying my girls with positive role models to reinforce their racial identity. I knew based on my own experiences that this was of the utmost importance. We became Black Barbie Central and raised awareness in the rest of the neighbourhood.

Dolls, books, television shows – these were justsome of the cultural artifacts that were missing ordifficult to find 30 years ago, when my children weresmall, so hardly anything had changed since my ownchildhood.

THEIR OWN STORIES

As my girls grew up, I made a decision to surround our family with black images in our home, despite the challenges in acquiring these items. I knew themajority culture existed just beyond our front door and my children would absorb it by osmosis, somy duty as a black parent was clear: Teach, guide, seek out, and listen to information on black culture. Present my kids with their own racial stories.

I became even more intent on supplying my girls with positive role models to reinforce their racial identity.

Now that my children are adults, the task of findingblack culture in the wider society is no longer a major challenge. Black faces and stories are everywhere in the media. Black history and black studies have found a foothold in education, and black dolls line store shelves, alongside their white sisters.

As a result of my children’s upbringing, they naturally and proudly fill their own homes with black culture, and gift their friends diverse objects that are more easily found than when they were children.