Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. As we close out our last show before Christmas, we're going to turn our attention for our remaining few minutes to a topic I'm sure many of you in families with children have been thinking about, toys. I bet there's someone listening out there right now who's taking advantage of the kids being at school and wrapping up toys that'll be given as gifts in the coming days. Look down at the toys in front of you. What made you choose that particular toy for the kid in your life? What colors are the packaging? Who's featured on the box? What's their gender and race? Did you get it from the boy's or girl's aisle of the toy store?
All of these questions point to some underlying political natures of toys. In fact, the exploration of that political essence spurred the most popular movie of the year, Barbie. The state of California is also thinking about the politics of toys. On January 1st, California will begin enforcing a law that punishes the reinforcement of the traditional gender binary through toys. While we're continuously reminded of how the civil rights, feminist, and anti-war movements of the 1960s and '70s changed society, have you thought about how they shaped the way children play?
Our last guest before Christmas has connected California's gender-inclusive toy law, as well as the feminist and racially inclusive themes in Barbie, to the forgotten history of progressive activism centering toys. Joining us now is Rob Goldberg, chair of the History Department at the Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia, and author of Radical Play: Revolutionizing Children's Toys in 1960s and 1970s America. Rob, welcome to WNYC.
Rob Goldberg: Thank you so much, Brian, for having me on the show. It's really an honor to be there. I was a New Yorker for 20 years until I moved to Philly. Thank you. [chuckles]
Brian Lehrer: Great. I apologize for a relatively short segment, as we've had so many other things going on on the show today. Listeners, jump right in if you have any gender awareness when it comes to your selection of toys for your kids, and how much you think that should be regulated by the state, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Rob, I'm sure some listeners are cringing at the idea of politicizing toys, so why was it that the activists of the '60s and '70s focused any attention there?
Rob Goldberg: I think the activists of the '60s and '70s, people coming out of the peace movement, especially as the Vietnam War was escalated in the mid-1960s, but also the civil rights and Black power movements, as well as second-wave feminism. They really felt that society needed to change in every little way, and so toys, these little symbols of the way we want our world to be and the messages we want to send about the way we want our world to be to our children, are as important as anything else. All of the activists I write about in the book, coming out of these movements that take toys up as a political issue, they never give up their other struggles.
In fact, almost all of them are deeply involved, deeply immersed in the struggles for Civil Rights Act or Title IX, or again, an end to the Vietnam War, and US empire abroad but they also see toys as part of that. This is a 360-degree struggle for a more just, democratic, and inclusive world. They want to make sure they telescope that to kids and nothing sends a message to kids about how adults think the world should be so much as toys.
Brian Lehrer: What kinds of toys did progressive activists of the time find particularly problematic?
Rob Goldberg: The peace activists, they were especially against toy guns and particularly realistic toy guns of that time, which were really popular during the Vietnam War era. Starting in '64 and '65, there were some toy guns that had never seen before, realistic M16s and other rifles. '64 was also the birth of the GI Joe doll and so activists were against what they saw as glorification of American patriotism and American militarism in the 1960s.
Feminists went after all of the gender stereotyping, and the gender-type marketing of some toys to girls and some toys to boys. What they found when they started going to toy stores and really doing consumer research and tallying up how many packages marketed the toy to girls, how many to boys, what they found was all the science and the engineering and the mathematics and educational toys were always geared invariably to boys. All of the homemaking toys, and tiny vacuums, and tiny laundry machines, that was all geared toward girls. What the feminists saw in particular was that basically, the toy industry was behind the times.
Feminists were clearly changing the United States through policy, through legislation, through electing women to office, but the toys were back in the 1950s and so they're thinking to themselves, "Well, how are we going to raise a generation that is going to grow up to see a more egalitarian world, if we've created that world, but the world we're giving to them in miniature is so retrograde."
Brian Lehrer: I want to get to California's new bill in a minute but let me take a memory from Naomi in Brooklyn. Naomi, you're on WNYC. Hi there, real quick.
Naomi: Yes. Hi, Brian. When I was about five in 1960, my Midwestern grandmother gave me a tractor-trailer truck model. It was big and I loved it. I wasn't into trucks. I never told her that, but I could tell at that very young age that this was just terrific and different.
Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. The point being very clear. CJ in Port Washington, anticipating the New California law conversation. You're on WNYC. Hello, CJ.
CJ: Hi, thanks for taking my call. I think a person should be able to buy whatever toy they wish for their child. I think it's frightening to think that the state would have anything to do with what-- Buy a tractor for a girl or a Barbie for a boy is great, but don't have the state control what you may choose. It's dystopian and it's frightening.
Brian Lehrer: CJ, I'm going to leave it there for time but your point is very clear. Yes, California is set to begin enforcing Assembly Bill 1084 on January 1st, making it a civil offense to perpetuate to traditional gender binary through toys. What does that law mean in practice?
Rob Goldberg: I think what the law is trying to do is ultimately just disrupt the separation, the segregation of toys into boy's and girl's sections, which leads to just a sense of taboo around certain kinds of toys.
Brian Lehrer: They can't be sold and displayed in that configuration, is that the law?
Rob Goldberg: Interestingly, the law doesn't go that far and some of the assembly representatives had pushed for one that would eliminate that kind of labeling altogether. From what I understand, what the law basically says is that if you're going to create a girl section and a boy section, you also have to have a third section that is labeled as a gender-neutral toy section. Now, what most large toy retailers, the only ones that this law applies to, retailers like Walmart or Target, I would guess that they're going to follow actually what Target has already done a few years ago, which was to just get rid of the gendered labeling altogether.
I think that's what the law ultimately aims to do because it's about belonging. It's about every kid feeling that they should get to play with the thing that interests them and that their interests aren't wrong. That there's nothing wrong with them because they want a little toy truck, but girls aren't traditionally supposed to play with those trucks, or the boys aren't supposed to traditionally play with the Barbie's. The law basically sets up gender identity as a protected class. It invokes the Civil Rights Act from 1959. It's rooted in trying to protect kids and make sure that we really have an inclusive culture of belonging from an early age. That's where it's coming from at least.
Brian Lehrer: For our last minute, and for the last minute shoppers listening in, what makes for a socially responsible but still super fun toy?
Rob Goldberg: That's a great question. I think the best toys are the kinds of toys where kids can have unlimited imagination, where they get to choose the world and the scenarios they're going to create. I want to say that they're some great independent toy makers and toy advocates out there who are revitalizing this movement for socially conscious and inclusive playthings in the realm of representations of-
Brian Lehrer: 15 seconds.
Rob Goldberg: -people of different races and ethnicities. There's Yelitsa Jean Charles of Healthy Roots Dolls. Mark Ruffin has a company called Black Dolls Matter that are making different kinds of dolls with different complexions. There's a great company called Upbounders that makes, again, all kinds of representational toys showing men and women in different roles. [unintelligible 00:10:40]-
Brian Lehrer: That shout-out has to be the last word. We thank Rob Goldberg, author now of Radical Play: Revolutionizing Children's Toys in the 1960s and 1970s America. Rob, this is great. Thank you very much.
Rob Goldberg: Thank you so much, Brian.
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