Ivory and ebony

The question of race and children's commodities is at once more complex and simpler than you would think. Books, toys the like.

I remember when we were headed to the house of a black classmate of Natalie's, we were a little uncertain of what kind of book to give: it was odd, it seemed, to give a book of all white kids cavorting about in some idealized pseudo-agrarian land of plenty, of which there is no shortage. But then we get there and what to they have, Mary Kate and Ashley, Barbie out the wazoo, and so on. No offense, apparently, taken.

The other day I saw a mother with three little black girls dolled up going to Nutcracker, with its neo-imperialist spectacle of Clara and the prince or whoever sitting up on thrones watching the dances of the Chinaman, the Russian, and so on. Sugar plum fairies are clearly universal, as the Allen Blooms of this world could have told us.

I'll tell you this, when selecting children's books, I reflexively turn away from books with kids of mixed race, because I need to choose quickly, and the overwhelming trend of these books is towards cloying politically correct hoo ha. All black or all hispanic books or all Asian books are less likely to be revoltingly pious.