The world is fucked up, Exhibit #349:

There are no black dolls in Africa.

Cameroonian children don't have many toys to begin with, but I've seen a number of dolls either for sale or in little girls' hands, and I have yet to see one with dark skin or even dark hair. They are all cheap, plastic, made in China dolls with blonde curls and painted-on blue eyes.

(The made-in-China part raises the question of whether there are Asian dolls in Asia. Do Asian girls play with white dolls, too?)

I noticed one that one of the little girls in my neighborhood had replaced her doll's clothing with a swatch of African fabric, and had braided black yarn into its hair. It broke my heart, and if I could have, I would have handed her my Addy doll right then and there.

Counterpoint: at least they're not playing with Barbies, which are hyper-sexualized and idealize an unrealistic body type.

But the point remains. No one is safe from the global standard of whiteness-as-beauty; The push for multiculturalism that has taken root over the past two or three decades has yet to benefit African girls, whose dolls don't look like them or reflect their cultures. And before they even outgrow their dolls, they're subject to ads for skin-whitening creams.

The really scary part is that the ideology of whiteness is so effective: Africans--or at least Cameroonians--totally buy it.

Yesterday, I had a really enlightening/infuriating conversation with the man who owns the bar on my street.

We got to talking because he said that he sees me pass every day, but that I'm always looking straight forward and walking quickly. I explained to him that I don't mean to be unfriendly, but that when I pass by a bar full of men, they call out to me--"Come sit with us, white girl! You so fine!"

He said (and he's not the first person to say so) that they're just being friendly and trying to honor me, so I explained that, no, "Welcome to Cameroon" would be an honor; "Hey pretty white girl," however, is sexual harassment.

He seemed to understand, which was really satisfying, because it's very difficult to explain to Cameroonians why it is so difficult to be a white woman here.

Then the conversation got really interesting. "I've never been to the United States, so I don't know what it feels like to be the only black person."

I told him that it's completely different in the U.S., because in the U.S., he wouldn't be the only black person, and that if he were, no one would shout, "Hey black man!," and if they did, he could sue them.

To that, he said something about the legacy of slavery, but, he said, "Your next president will be black. Doesn't that mean that there's no more racism in the United States?"

My entire soul cringed. No, no, no, I told him. I tried to explain that while legal segregation ended decades ago, discrimination is still rampant; that racism may not take the specific, overt form of calling someone Black Man on the street, but the U.S. is still an extremely racist society.

I named the example of prisons, which are overwhelmingly black.

"But black people do more bad things," he said. "Like drugs."

My entire soul cringed even harder. No, no, no, I told him. That's a stereotype. A stereotype that's so engrained and so prevalent in American thought that black people are just more likely to be caught--or worse, more likely to be jailed unfairly.

He was perplexed. His idea of the United States and its streets paved with gold had just come crashing down, but he also seemed sort of pleasantly surprised to know better.

I walked away, head in hands, aghast that he, and so much more of the world, believe what they're told about the United States.

I see it as a mission here to dispell all the rumors, but I'm one woman against a global ideological machine.