(Headline USA) Critical Race Theory advocate Ibram X. Kendi said in an essay for the Atlantic this week that he worries his daughter will inhale the “smog” of “white supremacy” if she plays with a white doll at her daycare.
Kendi, who has pushed the theory of “anti-racism” and teaches at Boston University, said he took away a white doll with blue eyes from his 1-year-old daughter. She allegedly began crying and throwing a tantrum when he tried to take it away.
“Sadiqa and I were probably unduly sensitive about the whole situation. But we wondered if our Black child’s attachment to a white doll could mean she had already breathed in what the psychologist Beverly Daniel Tatum has called the ‘smog’ of white superiority,” Kendi wrote.
Kendi said that an “alarm was ringing” in his head when he saw the doll because he believed his child’s preference for a white doll was a larger indication of “racial prejudice.”
He then blasted his daughter’s daycare for even offering the white doll to his child in the first place.
“When Imani released her grip, I walked around the day care and found the large toy chests. I rummaged through the toys and did not come across a single doll that looked Asian, Native, Latino, Middle Eastern, or Black,” Kendi said.
“Every single doll I saw looked White. Anger overtook me.”
He concluded that his daughter had not in fact chosen to play with a white doll over other dolls of color, but rather she had no other choice.
“After all these years, how many children still don’t have another option in their toy chests, libraries, or schools? What does the overrepresentation of white dolls tell children about who their caregivers think is important?” he said.
