A while ago I came across this short film directed by a young 17 year old girl named Kiri Davis called "A Girl Like Me" produced by Reel Work Teen Filmmaking a free after school program supported by HBO that Kiri attended. In this film Kiri reconducted the "doll test" which is and experiment originally done by famous husband and wife psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark which was used in the desegregation case Brown vs. Board of Education. The Clark's Doll experiment, found that black children often preferred to play with white dolls over black dolls, and when ask to fill in a human figure with the color of their own skin they frequently chose a lighter shade than was accurate. The Clarks saw that the black children viewed white as good and pretty, but black as bad and ugly. The Clarks viewed this as evidence of internalized racism caused by stigmatization. Now over a half a century later the outcome remains the same. Black children are still prefer the white dolls over the black Dolls and we are still seeing the same color issue as we did before.
After viewing this documentary I for one was a little confused about the whole thing. I guess I never really knew how serious this color issue was in our very own race this day and age. I mean, is that whole brown bag theory still going on today?Am I missing something here? What is going on in the minds of our youth and what are we as a society doing wrong to make them fell this way about themselves? Now we must ask ourselves what can we do to change it and actually stand up and do something about it? Mood: Ruminative
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