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You probably remember “Moroccan Christmas,” an episode of the television series the Office that aired in December of 2008. A subplot of that episode revolves around a seasonal business run by salesman/oddball farm boy Dwight Schrute: the hoarding, and then the marking-up and re-selling of popular childrens’ toys to desperate parents who are shopping at the last minute for their childrens’ Christmas presents.

At the end of the episode, Toby Flenderson (the office’s HR rep, who is as limp and pathetic as his last name implies he is) decides that he wants to buy one of the toys - a doll similar to Barbie - from Dwight. His daughter wants one, and Toby decides to buy it partially out of love for her but partially to send a passive-aggressive message to his ex-wife. Unfortunately Toby makes his decision too late, and Dwight has already sold the last doll to Darryl Philbin, who also works in the building. Having already told his daughter that he had the doll, Toby desperately buys that doll from Darryl at an even higher price before noticing that the doll is, like Darryl, black.

Toby’s fucked, of course. He ends up stuck with a black doll because he doesn’t want to offend Darryl. What an oaf! It’s a pretty funny joke, I have to admit.

So anyway… that was a long way to go before getting to the topic that I wanted to discuss: people that are depicted as black who aren’t really black.

Black Barbie was perhaps a bad example with which to start: actually, she makes a lot of sense to me. African-American children should have dolls that look like them - they have to learn important concepts about beauty and fashion that will allow them to participate just as fully as their Caucasian sisters in our vapid consumerist economy. How else to sell lipstick to little black girls?

Dolls are cool toys because children can make personal narratives with them. I used to create my own GI Joe stories when I was a kid, as did countless other dudes - and yes, I learned terrible lessons from that too, although the lessons were altogether different (and far more violent) than those learned by the girls my age who were playing with Barbie. And despite my criticisms of her, Barbie is versatile in this regard - an imaginative child can give her personality, thoughts, and actions. She can use Barbie to play out her fantasies for herself about growing up, she can modify her appearance, etc.

What I’m getting at is that dolls are very personal. Thus, ethnic Barbies make sense, even though the original Barbie was quite white. Barbie isn’t supposed to be any color - if girls are going to fill Barbie with their own personality, then they should have the option of a Barbie who looks like them.

We’ll move on.

Surely you are all familiar with Black Bart Simpson?

Some of the black kids at my elementary school had bootleg Black Bart Simpson shirts back in the day. I understand the impulse behind them - kid had a flat-top after all, and it’s hard to tell what someone’s ethnicity is when they are pee-colored and don’t particularly even look human. And while he began as an actual character in an episodic piece of art, Bart was also a product that for a while achieved ultimate pop-culture ubiquity. He was even a doll! I can see why people wanted to personalize him - and besides, he is a fictional character. It’s not like they were mis-representing a real kid.

So while I understand all that, the shirts always struck me as odd. Fictional or not, Bart Simpson is yellow. He’s present on television, on a daily basis and all over the world, in one color: yellow. He does not resemble Barbie in that regard, and he is also (by virtue of the fact that he is a character first and a doll second, unlike Barbie) far less flexible when it comes to personalization.

But whatever, Black Bart is just weird. Nothing but weird.

This, on the other hand, goes a bit farther:

Matt Leinart isn’t even fictional. I can attest to the fact that he is a real, living, human being. And just as Bart Simpson is yellow, Matt Leinart is white.

So what gives? I mean I think I’d understand it if African-Americans tried to take a really good white player as their own. If they are in the market for a quarterback, it would be quite understandable to go for someone like one of the Manning brothers or even Brett Favre. But Leinart? His biggest NFL achievement is warming the bench during his team’s failed Super Bowl attempt.

Maybe black people are just trying to creep up on us by picking someone who is ho-hum? I mean, if Peyton Manning’s doll was black I bet it would be big news - somehow Leinart has slipped under the radar, though.