Mattel's black dolls

You'd think that folks would have more urgent matters to be concerned about these days, but some African-American parents are saying that Mattel's new line of black dolls aren't, well, black enough. Actually, I can see their beef: Five of the six dolls feature fine-textured, waist-length hair and half of them have blue or green eyes. From the WSJ:

The criticism over Mattel's new black fashion dolls underscores how difficult it is for large commercial companies to please a widely diverse black community with a single image or two depicting young African-Americans. "If they had given the dolls short, kinky hair or an Afro, people might have complained that it was too Afro-centric," says Nicole Coles, a 40-year-old mother from Temecula, Calif. "We're so hard and picky."

El Segundo-based Mattel plans to expand the line next year to include a doll with more of an Afro hairstyle.