Written By : John Hawkins

Before you ask, this is not a story from The Onion, it’s not a prank, and, no, it’s not April Fool’s Day. To the contrary, the story you are about to read actually comes from ABC News:

Walmart is raising eyebrows after cutting the price of a black Barbie doll to nearly half of that of the doll’s white counterpart at one store and possibly others.

A photo first posted to the humor Web site FunnyJunk.com and later to the Latino Web site Guanabee.com shows packages of Mattel’s Ballerina Barbie and Ballerina Teresa dolls hanging side by side at an unidentified store. The Teresa dolls, which feature brown skin and dark hair, are marked as being on sale at $3.00. The Barbies to the right of the Teresa dolls, meanwhile, retain their original price of $5.93. The dolls look identical aside from their color.

My God. They’re charging different prices for different Barbies? But, that’s where it always starts, doesn’t it? First it’s Barbie, then next thing you know they’re selling black towels for half the price of white ones, having specials on black sneakers — where does the insanity stop? But wait, there’s more…

“The implication of the lowering of the price is that’s devaluing the black doll,” said Thelma Dye, the executive director of the Northside Center for Child Development, a Harlem, N.Y. organization founded by pioneering psychologists and segregation researchers Kenneth B. Clark and Marnie Phipps Clark.

“While it’s clear that’s not what was intended, sometimes these things have collateral damage,” Dye said.

Other experts agree. Walmart could have decided “that it’s really important that we as a company don’t send a message that we value blackness less than whiteness,” said Lisa Wade, an assistant sociology professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles and the founder of the blog Sociological Images.

Last year, Wade posted a blog entry on another case where a black doll was apparently priced less than its white counterpart at an unidentified store. Wade said that when white dolls outsell black dolls, it’s usually because black parents are more likely than white parents to buy their children dolls of a different race.

“Collateral damage?” What is this, a mortar strike? Oh, and the “implication of the lowering of the price is that’s devaluing the black doll?” Here’s an alternative “implication:” It’s a STORE and the doll is a product. When a product doesn’t sell well, the price is cut to increase sales. So, couldn’t it just as easily be said that Wal-Mart is trying to reduce prices in order to get more black dolls into the hands of consumers?

Oh wait, I’m treating this like it’s some sort of real discussion as opposed to a bunch of fruit loops nattering on about the cost of !%^&*$# DOLLS! Hey, you morons, they’re just DOLLS. Who cares? What is wrong with the freaking “experts” who were contacted for this article? What’s wrong with ABC that causes them to run nonsense like this? Even for race-baiting libs, this bottoms out at a brand new level of dumb.

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