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Circa 1952 as part of the argument for Brown vs. Board of Education Dr. Kenneth Clark conducted a series of test with dolls. He used a black doll and a white doll and asked children a series of questions e.g. which one would you play with, which one is bad etc, etc. The results are well known. Fast forward to 2006! On CNN this morning I saw a video clip create by a 16 year old Kiri Davis who re-created the test. The findings, while not surprising to me, are saddening. This is the type of psychological damage that people like Dr. Joy Leary and Na’im Akbar have discussed for years and that has perpetuated itself over generations.

The video is 7 minutes long. But worth every sec!!!! Click link
http://www.uthtv.com/umedia/show/2052/

N.B. pay attention to the little girl that is first asked with doll is bad? And then, which one looks like [her]. Watch her pause. Sad

In addition you can find CNN transcript here:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP...08/ltm.04.html

Yes, I saw the same thing on CNN yesterday. Thanks for posting it. I can't watch it now but I'll definitely watch it later.

Yo I liked this a lot

and her being a 16 year old film maker I applaud her efforts.

Of course the study should be replicated and contain more kids etc but this was well put together and revealing.

__________________
**Life is short. Too young; too soon. Love everyone!**

be careful of who you pretend to be, you are who you pretend to be - kurt vonnegut

"Mommy, stop waking me up for Kindergarten. You don't see me waking you up for work. You do that because you want to." Ahhh, the joys of parenting :-) - RNH
(too funny) :

It's not like any of us needed a 16 yr old child to tell us adults whats going on now do we? I applaud this young empress for bringing this old topic to light again for us! At the same time all one has to do is go back to the threads about MANAGING hair and see what the Empress is speaking about! We Adults, parents and grown ups would put this young lioness work to the dumps!

back 2 the party

It's amazing (not to mention, upsetting) that only a handful of us recognize the problem. I will also add, that we contribute substantially to these perceptions when we denigrate ourselves. We can blame the media until we're blue in the face, but there are not many 5 year olds watching the news, and there are not too many kids movies where the black person is the villain (if portrayed at all). And, even if this were not true, we cannot possibly expect the media and the school systems to teach our children about themselves. Their self-image starts with what they get from parents and role models. It is in our words, actions and inactions, that our children learn these things.

By the way in watching the interview on CNN it was said that most of the children who chose the black doll were mainly from immigrant families. Interesting.

music while u read
BY ERIN EINHORN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

The camera zooms in on a sweet-faced Harlem girl, about 5 years old with her tightly braided hair pulled back, as she's asked to identify "the doll that looks bad."
She examines the white doll and black doll in front of her - identical except for their color - and tentatively chooses the black doll. It's bad, she says, "because this is black."

The "nice" doll is nice "because she's white," the black girl says.

And which doll, she is asked, is the doll that looks like you?

The camera then settles on her young, serious face as she slowly slides the black doll forward.

"People are just amazed," said Kiri Davis, 17, the Manhattan public school student whose powerful short film about race, self-esteem and cultural identity has stunned audiences and educators, and won the hearts of film festival judges around the nation. "Even at 4 and 5, you can still tell what America values and what it doesn't."

Fifteen of the 21 black children in a Harlem day care center who take the "doll test" in Davis' seven-minute film choose the white doll over the black one.

The film - "A Girl Like Me" - re-creates Kenneth Clark's 1940s doll test that was used to fight school segregation in the landmark Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Education. In Clark's studies, he and his wife, Mamie Clark, found that the majority of black children they tested chose white dolls over black dolls and ascribed negative attributes to black dolls.

Five decades later, Davis, a senior at Manhattan's Urban Academy High School, assumed things had improved - especially in black cultural meccas like Harlem.

But her film, punctuated with black teen girls discussing their relationships with their skin, their hair and their community, illustrates how the converse is true. Her study was conducted in 2005.

"You can tell someone all you want about standards of beauty and how they're affecting someone's self esteem and yada yada yada," Davis said. "But until you figure out a way to actually show someone, that's when I think people really get the message."

A "Girl Like Me" was produced through Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, a nonprofit organization based in Brooklyn's Prospect Park YMCA that paired Davis with a mentor, taught her basic skills and then helped her to market her film.

The driven filmmaker made a splash this summer at the Tribeca Film Festival. The film also won the audience award at the Silverdocs festival in Silver Spring, Md., and the Diversity Award from Media that Matters, a nonprofit Internet and traveling festival that screens films about social issues.

The film has made a mark in the educational world where it has been shown to grad students at the Bank Street College of Education and to administrators in the city Education Department. It may have had its most significant effect at Boys and Girls Harbor, the organization that granted Davis access to kids in Harlem.

There, teachers are rethinking their curriculum and educational approach. When Bernadette Wallace, the director of pre- and after-school services, screened the film for her staff, she said, "Some of my teachers had tears in their eyes. They couldn't believe it."

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/sto...p-371641c.html

That is interesting cus i find black immigrant families are most likely to buy their children white dolls. I never had them growing up, and my daughter only had one which was a gift from a W.I. friend. Think she got lost in the shuffle tho

That was definitely a sound piece of journalism from a 16 year old. It just goes to show that there are young black people who are interested in these kinds of topical issues and not watchin mtv all the time.

I think those participants were very mature to come on a be truthful about there behaviours and were not afraid to admitt to the pressure. But you know its not just the white world enforcing ideas upon us, I believe that its the black men too - in their videos, you gotta be light, have long hair, or they prefer to have non-black females in their videos, even on the streets with the multiracial relationship thing - of course that is going to make black women feel that they are not meeting the standards somehow.

It was sad to see the little girl who really didn;t want to say that the black doll was most like her after she done said it was bad - its like she really catch herself. This proves that parents are not doing enough to teach their children that there is nothing wrong in being black, we are a strong race who have survived the tensions of slavery and inequality which is why we are still here, but I suppose in certain neighbourhoods it's not that apparent.

As the girl was sayin there are many people who don't really know much about their past (african culture, etc) which means they don't really know much about themselves. They just have to be patient and strong while embarking on the journey of self discovery.