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WORD COUNT
703
FEBRUARY 14, 2007
BLACK KIDS’ SELF
IMAGE – NO PROGRESS – by Marian Wright Edelman
In her extraordinary
new award-winning documentary "A Girl Like Me," 17-year-old New York
high school student and filmmaker Kiri Davis recreates the famous "doll
study" that was cited in Brown v. Board of Education to demonstrate the
harmful effects of racism and racial segregation on young children.
Davis says she wanted to test "how far we've come" in developing
positive self-image and self-esteem among our children. But what she
learned from the children in her study was that we haven't really
progressed much or at all.
The doll study
originally was designed in 1939 by pioneering Black psychologist Dr.
Kenneth Clark and his wife and partner Dr. Mamie Phipps Clark. The
Clarks would show a young child two dolls, one Black and one White, and
then ask them which doll was pretty, which was nice, and which was bad.
They were not surprised to find the White children they interviewed
overwhelmingly preferred the White dolls. But when they interviewed
Black children, they found two-thirds of them also said the White dolls
were the nice, pretty ones, and the Black dolls were bad. By the time
Brown v. Board of Education appeared before the Supreme Court in 1954,
the Clarks had collected years' worth of data from these studies that
led them to conclude racial segregation and negative images of Blacks
had damaged many Black children's sense of identity and self-esteem.
But how would these
results hold up 50 years after Brown? This was Davis’ question when she
recreated the experiment–-and her documentary shows the sad answer she
found. In her sample of 21 Black 4- and 5-year-olds at a Harlem
childcare center, 15 children preferred the White doll-the same ratio
the Clarks found in the 1940s and 1950s. How painful it is to watch the
interviews with the children and hear their honest and simple answers:
"Why do you think this doll is the nice one?" "Because she's White."
"Why do you think this doll is the bad one?" "Because she's Black." One
of the children, who had just said she thinks the Black doll is bad, is
shown answering a follow-up question: "Which doll looks like you?" The
little girl hesitates, touches both, and then slowly pushes the Black
doll forward.
In the film, Davis
also interviews several of her own peers–-teenaged Black girls–-about
their ideas of Black beauty. These girls have all grown up in the
post-"Black is Beautiful" era, but their intelligent, thoughtful
comments share a different message: They all say that since they were
very young they've been exposed to the old ideas that light skin and
long straight hair make a Black girl pretty. One girl says she always
assumed she was ugly because she was the darkest person in her family.
Another remembers how dismayed her mother was when the girl first tried
wearing her hair in a natural style that made her look "too African."
The girls talk about friends who've tried soaking in a tub with a capful
of bleach in the water and relatives who start using bleaching cream on
their daughters at age 6–-stories that could easily have been shared by
Black girls 50 and maybe even 100 years ago. How sad to see that some of
us are still passing on the same physically and emotionally damaging
Black versions of the beauty myth. And for the small girls and boys in
the film who said they would rather play with the White doll, how
disappointing to see that almost seventy years after the Clarks started
their studies, adults have not been able to give them a stronger sense
of positive self-identity and self-respect.
In a provocative
op-ed piece published in “The Miami Herald” after Davis’ film was
released, columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr., argues that today Black adults
share more of the blame for the results. After all, he says, up until a
certain point Blacks had very little say about the negative stereotypes
of us that were perpetuated in the media and popular culture. But "[w]hat's
different now is that African Americans are, themselves, often the
makers and gatekeepers. And under our aegis, the images have, in many
ways, gotten worse. To surf the music video channels is to be immersed
in black culture as conceived by a new generation, a lionization of
pimps and gold diggers, hustlers and thugs who toss the N-word with a
gusto that would do the Klan proud . . . [I]t's little excuse to say
we're only buying lies we have internalized, lies that become
self-fulfilling prophecy. That's all well and good, but the moment
you're able to understand that you've been lied to is the moment you
bear responsibility for promulgating some truth in reply. That too few
of us are willing to accept that responsibility is driven home every
time one of those black children chooses a white doll."
Will we adults
respond by taking more responsibility for teaching our children the
truth? This point actually reinforces one of the Clarks' observations
from the original studies: Black children with positive Black role
models didn't reject the Black dolls. The solution for that is the same
as it was 50 years ago–-to make sure more Black children have those
strong Black role models. And for some of that, at least, the ball's in
our court. I am so proud of Kiri Davis for creating a powerful and
remarkable film about these critical questions.
--
Marian Wright Edelman
is president and founder of the Children's Defense Fund and its Action
Council whose Leave No Child Behind(r) mission is to ensure every child
a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral
Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of
caring families and communities.
www.childrensdefense.org A photo of Marian Wright Edelman is
available
CLICK HERE
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