Racism In Toyland Summary

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I chose chapter 34,”Racism in Toyland” by Christine Williams in which she talks about the culture of retail. She starts off by saying she had to buy a gift for a six year old and discussed the choices she had to buy the gift. The choices were: The Toy Warehouse, which is a big box store that had a vast array of low-cost popular toys; Diamond Toys, which is a high end chain store that has a more limited range of high quality toys; or Tomatoes, which was a locally owned shop that sells relativity small, offbeat assortment of traditional and politically correct toys. To her retail like anything else also has a racial inequality (and gender and class inequality as well) influence to where we shop, how we shop, and what we buy. Within the retail industry, they sustain such inequalities with their hiring policies that favor certain kind of workers and advertising …show more content…

She notes at the warehouse store (which was the lower end toy store) that she was one of the few white women who were on the staff with the majority being African American, Hispanic or second-generation Asian Americans. Whereas as the higher end store most of the workers were white. The customers at the warehouse store were a mix of every racial and ethnic group and social class and at the higher end store were prominently white. She notes that whites have the better jobs in retail a lot of the times where the minorities are given the jobs that most people do not want. She also talked about the location and not only does the location of the store matter on what customer based you target it also determines the staffing as well. If the store is in a predominately black neighborhood the staff will be predominately black and vice versa. She also noted that race also determines what kind of service you get and customers' attitudes also are determined by who is

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