It's a Multicultural Barbie World?

Race is often associated with the term ethnicity. This refers to the idea that your race is what you most identify with. Race is often socially constructed to separate what society and culture deem to show who you are. This isn’t how you look necessarily, but rather your ancestry and your primary biological or genetic reference. You could look a certain way, but be of another race. It’s often hard to identify race based on looks, because not everyone in every race looks similar. The census bureau looks at race rather differently and constructs who you are by your origins. For example, you are considered “white” because of the origins of your ancestors whether they come from Europe or they consider themselves Irish. Another example would be those who consider their race to be “black”. These persons consider themselves black because of their familial origins- whether they come from Kenya or Afro America.
When discussing Barbie World in relation to race, it only allows you to be one of the two races listed above. I had talked with Kelly S. about Haboo World and asked her what race options there were in the world, and she mentioned that you could be several and they were quite a few ethnic looks. Whereas in Barbie Virtual World, you can only be dark skinned or light skin and something in between. There is no Hispanic or Latino, nor is there Asian. It’s very limiting in the sense that you can’t truly be who you are, but you must be what Mattel says to be “normal”. Barbie is basically discriminating against other races to cater to the black or white middle class. Though they must only discriminate on Barbie World because when researching this topic I stumbled across a great site that showed the different ethnic Barbie’s over the years (http://kattisdolls.net/faces/bethnic.htm). Races ranged from “black Barbie” to “Ghanian Barbie” to “Latino Barbie” to the international series called “Oriental Barbie”. There were even Native American Barbies along with Dolls of the World, Indian Barbie. It was refreshing to see such that Barbie has come from all over the world.