In the night garden light skinned doll

[spokette]

So according to the makers of In the night garden, the characters are toys, not representative of real people here?. I guess that is why most of the characters have light skin then.

One of the reasons I actually liked "In the night garden" is that there is a character who has dark skin and is therefore a positive reinforcement to my mixed race 4yo DTS because, there are very few dark skinned characters on TV and hence why their TV viewing is strictly rationed. Non-blacks will probably not understand why this is important but for those interested, I grew up in 70s Britain and the constant, relentless barrage by the media that black people were either criminals or only good at sports was not only dispiriting and erroneous but also insulting and designed to remind us of our place in society.

This cynical and deliberate ploy to market a lighter skin doll as oppose to the darker skin one was done to appeal to the non-black buying public as usual and demonstrates that the BBC, like many of these institutions are still paying mainly lip service to providing inclusive TV viewing.

Guess who will not be tuning in to this programme again?

I think Bob the Builder has black characters in it. JJ the parts supplier is the one that springs to mind.

anyone tell me the percentage???

Sorry if the influence comments are because of what I said I probably didnt say it well enough.
What I meant was that if children see characters/adults/children of all different races, disabilities hair colour anything really and they absorb that information and are influenced by it in the fact that they don't see them as being 'different' then surely that is a good thing.
Of course my dd will watch a program and notice that Pui looks different to Chris who looks different to Sydney but as long as she doesnt think that its a negative thing then its a good influence isnt it? (in other wors yes theyre different no theres nothing wrong with it)

Seeing that all women who look pretty are thin is a negative one so we should be worried about it. (not that I believe this to be true but it does seem to be the consensus of the sleb world)

I'm sure I still haven't phrased that very well but I hope you understand what I mean

its true if you are white bronze that a general perception of difference with no negative connotations is probably adequate, but if your childrne are not white most paretns are striving (consciously or sub-consciously) to provide actively positive role models for their childrne outside the immediate family.

An example, as someone mentioned red hair - if you are a red head and growing up see plenty of people in the media who also have red hair then you will feel subconsciously that its OK and even good to have red hair. If you see few positve role models with red hair and even come across people dying their hair to be "acceptible" then the message it gives you as a person of hair colour is that there is something wrong with red hair and by association you

Is the way to help then to overdo the percentage of say black characters in a television program compared to the percentage of black people in the UK. Would this help as the black characters would become more prominent.

Genuine interest by the way not snide comment.

I've been trying to find out how much of the uk population is actually black and it only seems to be about 3%. The problem then for a program with a cast of 10 then even one character doesnt truly reflect true proprtions but maybe thats the way to go and to almost overdo the point. Afterall it doesnt harm white children to see black characters but you're saying it would help black children to.

I'm just really struggling to see this as anything other than a cock-up.

I'm still not convinced that Upsy Daisy is supposed to be a black little girl, but even if she is, why would anyone deliberately lighten her? If she is a character in the show, and the show is a hit, why would she be deliberately changed? If there is racism here, why would they have a "black" character at all? Very easy to just not have one.

I'm just really struggling to see this as anything other than a cock-up.

I'm still not convinced that Upsy Daisy is supposed to be a black little girl, but even if she is, why would anyone deliberately lighten her? If she is a character in the show, and the show is a hit, why would she be deliberately changed? If there is racism here, why would they have a "black" character at all? Very easy to just not have one.

In the report it says the doll was based on the cartoon version whose 'skin' is definitely lighter. I'm sure that the lightening wasn't done on purpose to offend anyone. At least I like to think so.

Maybe Upsy daisy fancied doing a Micheal Jackson I think it was just a cock up with the Doll tbh
and my god daughter says that upsy daisy is brown not black.

Desi I have to say your very naive after reading your comments on here about racism you really need to open your eyes abit and a chip on the shoulder comment are you serious?

OP if your on facebook find the group That's baitly racist it has some very intreasting things on there and the BBC pop up alot on there as well.

spokette, if you were talking about a tv show that had real people in it and some of those people were white and some were black, then i could see your point and understand how this would be a good thing to show your dc and how it would be sending a positive message out.

However, you are talking about a show where the main charactor is blue! Plus a charactor that lives in a cave and plays with stones, ten tiny little wooden effect charactors and giant balloon things that float around with giant eyes. With the charactors being so out there, i very much doubt your dc even notice that uspy daisy is brown. Looking at the programme, i wouldn't even consider most of the charactors as human, let alone class them as white people Imo spokette, i find it quite confusing why you have singled out a charactor, the black charactor and made an issue of it and made it a reason for your dc to watch the show? So if Upsy Daisy didn't exist in the show, you wouldn't want your dc to watch it because you think the show is too white, despite the fact the main charactor is blue?

Also, like there are countries in this world where the majority of people are black, England is a country where the majority is white. So of coarse your going to see more white people on tv than you are black people. Isn't that obvious?

MsSparkle, point taken that England is a country where the majority are caucasian.

And it is precisely for this reason, that when there is a character in the media who isn't caucasian, it is noticable to people who aren't caucasian.

If you lived in a country where the majority of people were black, and a white character was shown on the television, you would remember it.

Upsy-Daisy is a doll-like character. And like a doll, children place human character traits on it. She is noticably darker than other human doll looking characters such as the Tombliboos. So it's not so surprising that people may equate the doll as a representation of a black doll/mixed race doll, regardless of whether that was the creators intention.

Georgimama, I don't think anyone is saying that the programme is racist - in fact the opposite, but that the colouring of the doll produced by Hasbro, was at best, an unfortunate accident where details of the show were overlooked, and at worst a blatant pitch to increase sales in caucasian countries by pandering to subconcious racist demand (whether such a thing exists or not!)

hoi bronze quite poking fun at the Scots. do you see me laughing, like?

bessiebighead, sure i can apprieciate what your saying I understand the concept of why people could be angry if it was a delibarate ploy. What gets my back up though is when implications are made that there is too many white people on tv and not enough black people. We are living in a country where the majority is white so as a result of that, you would expect the majority of people on tv to be white too.

Statements such as "I guess that is why most of the characters have light skin then." are going to get my back up because to me that statement implys that there is something wrong with having lots of white people on tv, even in a country where the majority is white.

I don't see anywhere that someone has said the maority of characters aren't/shouldn't be white. I certainly haven't read that into anything anyone has said.

The OP'soriginal point was that a noticeably brown character (I surely can't be the only otehrperson who thought Upsy Daisy was intended to represent a non-caucasian?) mysteriosuly became pink in the merchandising. The colour of the doll is defintely a traditional causcasian "pink" skin colour.

The population of Britain is approximately 92% white and therefore in any one particular programme if you tried to apply this you would need a cast of at least 13 to include at least one non-white character which not many childrens programmes have. A reasonable approach is to have some programme with a greater representation and some with none which would also reflect the significant differences across the UK. London for example is 72% white 28% non-white so I would expect at least a quarter of all characters to be non=white in some shows to reflect that.

I wonder if a show like EastEnders is?

"So according to the makers of In the night garden, the characters are toys, not representative of real people here?. I guess that is why most of the characters have light skin then."

"One of the reasons I actually liked "In the night garden" is that there is a character who has dark skin and is therefore a positive reinforcement to my mixed race 4yo DTS because, there are very few dark skinned characters on TV and hence why their TV viewing is strictly rationed."

That whole statement says to me (especially with the at the end of the light skin sentence) that the op is saying that to her, most of the charactors are light skinned and one of the only reasons she likes the programme is because there is a dark skin charactor.

This implys that if there wasn't a dark skinned charactor, the show wouldn't be watched and that her kids tv viewing is strictly rationed because there are too few shows with dark skinned people in them. That then says to me that she rations her dc's tv because there are too many shows on with white people and that this is somehow wrong and not good for her dc to watch?

Kew can i ask you where you got that statistic from about London? It's just i don't believe for one second that 72% of people who live in London are white people. The only place that would be possible is in Eastenders!

Office for National statistics based on 2001 census but I doubt its changed much. Obviously some boroughs are much higher, some lower.

I don't read the OP encouraging viewing a progrma that reflects the ethnicity of her DC's to be omplying tat she has a problem tat all programmes don;t, so we'll just have to agree to differ on how we interpret er posts. Ithink she subsequently clarified that she restricts her DC's viewing on the grounds that she doesn;t like them watching TV and is perfectly happy for them to wacth programmes with no non-white characters... but I can;t be arsed to look for that post.

Ms Sparkle - figures will be for Greater London, which includes an awful lot of suburbia.

just in case you think I made it up

I got that opnion of the op from;

"there are very few dark skinned characters on TV and hence why their TV viewing is strictly rationed."

But i guess we all look at posts in different ways.

Although the figures for London may not be terribly reliable as it's really, really, really hard to get census returns out of every address in a city with a highly mobile population. And all the people who don't read and write very well at all. And all the people who don't speak English...

as I said she clarified that post later

I don't think you made it up, i was just curious because the times i have been to London i have noticed that most aren't white.

I doubt the numbers are wildly out given teh door to door visiting of any household who haven't filled the form in.

Out of interest why are you convinced that London is less than 72% white? I live and work in London, borough is probably 90% white andmy office which has people wholiveallover london is about 80% white. Not exactly scientific but its why I'm not surprised by the statistics.