News/Commentary

Black lecturer refuses to take daughter to see Barbie because of overwhelming ‘whiteness’ in trailer

July 30, 2023 | | Print Article

Black University of Baltimore lecturer and Salon.com’s editor-at-large Dwight Watkins has refused to take his little girl to see the new Barbie film because the movie’s trailer “was overwhelmed with whiteness.”

It’s a curious stand to take, given that the cast of the hit flick starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling features a number of non-white actors who seem to get a lot of screen time in the short trailer.


(Video: YouTube)

Though Watkins admits the movie “does have a few nonwhite cast members, including [Issa] Rae, America Ferrera, and Ncuti Gatwa,” he insists the film “has one of the whitest trailers I ever saw in my life.”

“And no, I’m not that guy,” Watkins wrote for Salon.com. “I genuinely believe that artists and filmmakers can create whatever they want, but I must be cautious of what I expose my daughter to. She’s too young to understand the complexities of gender, so how do you even begin to open the door to conversations about race and how movies and commercials in America act like white people have a monopoly on beauty?”

“Google ‘attractive woman,'” he instructed readers, “and watch the page fill up with white faces.”

So we did, but, as with the Barbie trailer, the result didn’t seem to us quite as Caucasian-heavy as Watkins promised it would be.

Watkins goes on to assure his readers that, in refusing to allow his little girl to see the Barbie film, he isn’t teaching her “to only connect with Black art; it’s just that everything white is always available and at the forefront of everything.”

“You don’t have to search for white content; it’s already in your face,” he stated.

“I never heard a white person say, ‘The representation was poor; I just don’t see myself in the art,’ yet Black people and people of color deal with this daily,” he continued. “America intentionally and unintentionally shoves whiteness down our throats every day, every minute, every second, and there’s not much we can do about it, other than thoughtfully curating a child’s experience.”

Earlier in his rant, Watkins notes, “It’s wild that the first Barbie doll dropped in 1959, and even though Black people were everywhere, we didn’t get a Black version until two decades later.”

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“The fact is, I can do everything in my power to keep my daughter away from the ‘white is always right’ ideology and still may not be able to protect her from that way of thinking because our country is so fixed on that message,” Watkins concludes. “But that doesn’t exempt me from religiously teaching her that Black is beautiful, even though Hollywood is only willing to show it in small doses.”

“Avoiding films like ‘Barbie,'” he states, “is a part of that teaching.”

Online, the academic is being blasted as a “racist”:

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“The modern left,” wrote one user on X. “Open, blatant racism, supported by our establishment, and flaunted with impunity.”

 

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Melissa Fine
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