Barbie Releases Surprisingly On-point Vlog About Racism

In yet another surreal happenstance of 2020, Barbie, the incredibly popular doll with over a half-century of history, released a video about racism. What's more surprising is that it's actually pretty good.

If you've been out of touch with Barbie in recent years, you may be surprised to learn that Barbie now has a vlog which she posts to YouTube every Friday for over 9.6 million subscribers. Most of the time, it features inane skits like dance-offs with Ken and make-up tutorials, but she's also delved into important topics such as mental health, coronavirus, and teaching young girls lessons about not overusing the word "sorry."

Still, it's stunning to see Barbie hand over the reins to her black friend in the Barbie universe, Nikki, who does not sugarcoat the racism she's experienced as a black woman (or could experience if she were a real person).

"I, and so many other Black people, have to deal with racism," Nikki says. "All the time. It's really hurtful, and it can be scary and sad."

Nikki talks about experiences she's had dealing with casual racism, such as a French teacher dismissing her perfect test score as "lucky" because the teacher couldn't imagine a black person being proficient in French. Another time, she says security stopped her from selling stickers at the beach while Barbie was never harassed.

"People did these things to me because I was Black, and they made the wrong assumptions about me," she said.

"They don't make those assumptions about white people, like me," adds Barbie. "That means that white people get an advantage that they didn't earn, and Black people get a disadvantage they don't deserve."

The video, at only three minutes long, was widely praised on Twitter for explaining racism so succinctly and effectively, and that such an explanation was coming from Barbie, of all sources.

The vlog was written by Aydrea Walden. Global Head of Barbie & Dolls at Mattel Lisa McKnight told Mashable, "We made a commitment to the Black community to leverage our global platform, including Barbie herself as a YouTube vlogger, to tackle important topics such as racism. Being an ally includes having difficult conversations to better understand discrimination, so we hope that by leveraging Barbie and Nikki to explore these conversations in a kid-friendly format, we can spark productive discussions for families and empower our next generation of leaders to become advocates for change, raising their voices against racism."