#BarbieSoWhite? Race-baiting WNBA star Angel Reese acts like she’s never seen a black doll before

The WNBA’s Atlanta Dream held a Barbie Night on Monday in celebration of star player Angel Reese getting her own doll, but Reese’s pregame comments are what stole the show.

With her mini-me sitting on the table in front of her, Reese made a bold claim for the ages that brought more unneeded politics into a league that could sorely use a break.

‘I didn’t have dolls that really look like me.’

Barbie basics

Reporters were lobbing softball questions to Reese before the game, with one journalist referring to the player as “Barbie” before asking how it feels to be the first Atlanta-based athlete to have a doll modeled after her.

“It feels amazing,” Reese replied. “To be at first always means a lot. Especially [since] there’s a lot of women that have come before me.”

Following up with another beach ball, the reporter asked, “What were some of the dolls you played with when you were little?”

Reese immediately turned to identity politics for her answer:

“Honestly, I didn’t have a lot of dolls because I didn’t have dolls that really look like me much,” the baller claimed. “And that’s why I kind of really wanted to make sure this was super intentional because, now that they have a doll that that looks like you and nails and hair, but also you can be a killer on the court as well. So that was something that was important for me when getting the doll.”

Reese’s baffling claim defies all known Barbie history, which launched its first black doll named Francie in 1966, billed as Barbie’s cousin. Christie followed in 1968, Barbie’s friend. Creator Mattel then went against its own storyline in 1980 when it released Black Barbie.

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Doll partisans

Reese was born in 2002, the same year several major doll lines featured prominent black characters. This included Bratz doll Sasha and My Scene doll Madison. My Scene released a Jamaican line of dolls in 2003 as well.

In 2005, music group Destiny’s Child (which included Beyonce) had its own Barbie dolls.

These dolls are not cherry-picked; the examples are widespread.

Reese’s new doll is part of the Barbie Signature lineup that is now sold at $38 each on Mattel’s website. Other dolls in the same line include one modeled after singer Miley Cyrus, astronaut Ellen Ochoa, and Juneteenth activist Opal Lee.

NBA icon LeBron James even has a Barbie doll too.

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Paras Griffin/Getty Images

Celebrity thoughts

Reese’s statement is reminiscent of bold celebrity claims in recent years that likely sounded groundbreaking during inner monologues, only to be laughable when they were verbalized.

This includes actor Jennifer Lawrence’s 2022 idea that “nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie” before her “Hunger Games” films. This was debunked in seconds when viewers pointed to Sigourney Weaver in 1979’s “Alien” or the many subsequent “Resident Evil” and “Underworld” movies.

In 2024, action star Lucy Liu claimed that before her film “Charlie’s Angels,” the media “had never before had three women on a magazine cover.”

“They didn’t even know how to do it. It was such a strange thing for women to collaborate and be seen as colleagues and friends,” she added.

This claim ignored the history of the original “Charlie’s Angels,” who shared not only a 1976 cover of People magazine but also Time magazine that same year. Liu went on to make false statements about female television leads as well.

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