PLEASE WATCH AND SHARE: Young student's documentary leaving audiences stunned

[terip64]

I posted this in Race and Equality and it is getting lost. Please watch this.

Send it to everyone you know. It is so important!!

http://www.komotv.com/home/video/5001856.html?video=YHI...

Young student's documentary leaving audiences stunned

Kiri Davis is a young filmmaker whose high school documentary has left audiences at film festivals across the country stunned -- and has re-ignited a powerful debate over race.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

1. Heartbreaking. n/t

[Whoa_Nelly]

2. Wow! (and here's a link to watch her documentary)

http://www.mediathatmattersfest.org/6/a_girl_like_me/index.php?fs=bios

Video link to "A Girl Like Me" above

[terip64]

3. Thanks! I will send that one as well! n/t

[Buzz Clik]

7. The feeling conveyed by the full film was a bit different than the news story

It was still disturbing, but for different reasons.

When the little girl says that one doll looks bad because it is black, and the nice doll is the white doll, that's ouchie. When she says that the black doll looks like her, it takes on new meaning. Putting all that in the context of the young women discussing their looks, it's a huge moment.

[terip64]

8. It really is and it show how much work we have to do in this country. n/t

[Buzz Clik]

4. Wow.

That's pretty disturbing.

I wonder if the results are somewhat localized -- Kiri conducted the interviews at a single child care center. Would the results be different under other settings in different cities? Different neighborhoods?

I'd really like to think that some progress is being made in overcoming this. It's depressing to think that we gone nowhere in all these years.

[bettyellen]

14. same thing at my kindergarten in the bronx years ago, no one played

with the black dolls. i did the first day of school and all the other kids (at least half of them black) shunned me.
i knew it was fucked up then, but i also wanted the other kids to play with me. so, no doll for me. :shrug:

[terip64]

16. That is so awful.

[FourScore]

5. That broke my heart.

That just really broke my heart.:cry:

[terip64]

9. I'm sorry. Don't you get tired of being the bearer of bad news all the time?

Some days I feel as if that's all I do. But everyone has to see this and be as upset as we are.

[Joe Chi Minh]

6. Bear in mind that this would have been before they learnt about the

fierce fight to retain slavery on mainland USA up to 1863-65, when Lincoln definitively abolished it, and the implicit right it gave to murder other human beings, to chop off their limbs with an axe or abuse them in any way they chose, if they tried to escape, or even at their whim; and some of the prisoners' captors evidently had the imagination of a Mengele.

Then there was the demoniac lynchings, which continued up the second half of the 20th century, with the tacit acquiescence, moreover, of the Senate.

Those poor infants still have much more pain to go through.

[terip64]

10. shameless kick

[Colobo]

73. Kick it up!

[aikoaiko]

11. Its sad to see., I agree, but such demonstrations are difficult to interpret.

The Clark study is famous in legal, civil rights, and historical circles for being used as evidence that segregation harmed Black students. The study infamous in psychology for showing just the opposite. Clark found that Black students who went to segregated schools preferred the blacks doll at higher rates than the Black students who went to desegregated schools.

There is also an assumption that rarely gets addressed in these demonstrations: Children should prefer dolls of their own race. Why this assumption would be true is rarely addressed. In most cultures there is a preference for lighter skin colors. Some evolutionary psychologists think that lighter skin may just be our version of big, colorful, symmetrical peacock's tail, so to speak.

[Judi Lynn]

12. Thank you, terip64. Kick.

:kick: :kick: :kick:

[terip64]

15. Thank you for helping me get it to the greatest page. I knew DU was a great place to get this out!!

You guys are the best!!


:grouphug:

[The Doctor.]

13. Stunning...

I'm speechless.

[tblue37]

17. Very troubling--but there are other elements that should also be

addressed. The sheer matter of numbers, for example. I teach college, and many of my African-American students tell me that they feel tremendously stressed by being so much in the minority on campus and in any given classroom.

Then there is the matter of playmates and role models while growing up. I had a home daycare for 18 years (yes, while still teaching college). During that time, a 6-year-old African-American boy who had been with me since he was two months old told me that he wanted his pregnant mother to give birth to a sister for him--specifically a white sister. He was with me 55 hours a week, and surrounded by white children, so he simply wanted a sister who would look like his playmates.

I used to try to find African-American children for him to play with, just so he would have an opportunity to have friends who were not all white, but it was hard to find African-American mothers who were willing to leave their kids in a daycare, even for a few hours at a time as a sort of playdate. I offered to babysit for free for a few hours to let them get errands done or to do other things that are easier to do without a small child in tow, but very few ever took me up on it. The usual response was that it was no trouble to have their child along with them, and they liked having their child with them.

My young friend is now a very handsome and charming 18-year-old in high school. He is very popular, and girls really like him. But his girlfriends are always blondes--like the little girl who was his best friend for so many years in my daycare. I suspect that being surrounded by white children and being cared for so many hours of his waking life by a white woman imprinted him, so that he is simply drawn to white girls rather than African-American girls. I haven't talked to him about it, but I do sometimes worry that he is just not attracted to African-American grls, though I know that like the other girls in school, many of them are very attracted to him.

If it is just chance, based on shared interests and personality, that the girls he chooses to date are all blondes, then no big deal. But I do worry that the operative dynamic might be the same one that causes all those little African-American kids to choose the white babydoll as "nicer" or as their favorite, and to choose the black doll as "bad."

His mother and father worry about that, too.

[Solon]

21. You know what, I guess I never thought of that for myself...

I wonder if such imprinting occurred to me, though, I'm not sure if it did. I'm a white guy, blond hair and all, and the neighborhood I lived in growing up was mostly white, except for the kids. Most of the kids that were MY age, or around it, were of various mixes, Filipino, Black, and a girl who was Native American, and my first "girlfriend", I was young then, 6-10 years old, till she moved out. There were 2 other boys who were part of our "gang" that were also white. However, as I grew up, I get a stronger attraction to women who are "ethnic" looking, if that makes sense?

Usually I'm attracted to women who have darker hair, skin tone, apparently, doesn't seem to matter that much to me, but the brighter the hair tone, the less attracted I feel towards those types of women. The first woman I went out with in high school was Black, she called me "Snoopy", Snoop Dogg was popular at the time, and she thought it was cute. :)

Since then I've dated women of all ethnicities, except for blonds, I guess I never really considered why before. I don't know if there is anything wrong with that, its just the way I am. :shrug:

[tblue37]

26. I think that as with almost anything, what we are most frequently

exposed to during our most impressionable years ends up being what becomes normative for us. I would not be at all surprised if your attraction to dark-haired girls is at least partly explained by early experience.

For most Americans, including minority kids, the constant bombardment with images of idealized blonde types is bound to affect their sense of beauty and desirability. I believe that "on the ground" experience, like yours with dark-haired girls, can counterbalance that effect to some degree, but I also think that a lot of it depends on the relative weight given to media images in a child's experience and in the value system of his or her peers.

For example, if a little African-American girl grows up among other African-American children, but they have been indoctrinated by media preference for blondes, and also by the fact that their older friends and siblings have also been indoctrinated and tend to reinforce that indoctrination among the younger girls, then I would guess that just being surrounded by African-American girls would not protect them against a negative self-image, since their friends would also be subject to that self-image. But having a lot of African-American friends who had their own sense of beauty and self-confidence would probably ehlp a lot.

That is one reason why I think it is so important to have African-American men and women more heavily represented in fashion magazines, TV shows, and movies. And I also think there should be more men and women role models who don’t just have white-looking features and darker skin. For example, Halle Berry is absolutely gorgeous, but her beauty is the same sort of beauty you find in stunning white women. I like that Jennifer Hudson rather than Beyoncé won the Oscar, not just because of her outstanding talent, but also because Ms. Hudson does not follow the standards for white female beauty—including the insistence on thinness unattainable for most women. Sure, Beyoncé is stunning and talented, but just think of what a role model like Ms. Hudson means to young Black girls and women in the US—not to mention women of every race and ethnicity who have flesh as well as bones.

[Solon]

34. I agree about body types and self esteem...

Which can be racial or just plain unrealistic looking, I won't say that men are affected the same way as women, however, I did have problems, growing up, knowing I wouldn't look like GI Joe. I know that probably sounds silly, but its true.

Then again, I also wanted to look like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, so take what I said with a grain of salt. :)

I do find it interesting that many fashion and makeup companies are beginning to realize that realistic is sexy, so to speak. I mean, I see commercials of the latest Cover Girl, Queen Latifah, who is beautiful, though, and I say this because it of my age, she's more like a mother figure, to me, than anything else. That probably sounds silly too. :)

Role models can be of all types, but most importantly, I think we should instill in kids the need for SELF worth, rather than looking OUTWARD for approval. There is a danger in emphasizing race and linking it to self worth. This is especially true for multi-racial kids, which can have there own difficulties with acceptance. I have a nephew, of sorts, he's the son of my BIL's sister, who is bi-racial, and, to be honest, since his father refuses to even so much as interact with him, he has no male role model. I'm trying to fill that role, as best as I am able, at the very least, to help teach him to be a good and decent person, but I somewhat dread the questions, in the future, when he actually realizes he looks different than me. He's far to young to recognize such differences now, but, by the time he enters Kindergarten, I do hope that he won't think of himself as odd or strange because of skin color.

[tblue37]

45. Oh, he recognizes that you look different. He just probably

doesn't realize yet that other people think it matters.

When my young friend whom I mention in my original post on this thread was about 3, a friend of his mother's--a white woman she worked with--asked him what his baby sitter was like, he stroked her bare arm and said, "She's like you."

[Spiffarino]

50. The part where the children picked the "bad" doll

...was painful to watch. The look on their faces was crushing.

...but it was hard to find African-American mothers who were willing to leave their kids in a daycare...very few ever took me up on it...they liked having their child with them.

I can relate. I wish I could take mine to work with me.

[tblue37]

51. That's why I ran a home daycare for 18 years--so I could have mine with me.

I taught college, had office hours on alternate Saturdays, when they were with their father (after the divorce), and graded paper late at night when they were asleep. I got very little sleep, but except for 2-4 hours a day, three times a week, they were with me during the work week.

My kids are adults now, but my memories are filled to the brim with their precious childhood moments. Sure, I got very little sleep back then, and I was quite poor, since I had to earn a living as adjunct faculty, a daycare provider, a seamstress, and a freelance editor and tutor, doing poorly paid odd jobs that fit around my time with them--but I don't regret a single minute of it.

[Colobo]

67. I can relate with your friend...

I think we have the same problem...

[CrownPrinceBandar]

18. knr

Damn. That was hard to watch.

[Colobo]

79. And let's kick it

[mopinko]

19. it is disturbing, but

i do not think this or the original were good social SCIENCE. it is not a very well conducted experiment. it has always bothered me. there is no control, no baseline, no children of other colors and cultures, and only 2 choices of doll does not give much data.
how do we know that this is society's prejudice seeping down? we don't. this could just as easily demonstrate the children's self esteem that is handed down to them by their own families.
the data does not support the conclusion.

[Skidmore]

20. Let me tell you a story about two little boys.

My son from my first marriage to a Middle Eastern man has jet black hair, very dark eyes, and has very olive skin. When he was a small boy in kindergarten in a very liberal town, he became fast friends with a little boy in the same class who was the child of a mixed marriage, with a black father and a white mother. They have been firm friends for 20 years now. Well, one day during that kindergarten year, he and I were playing on the floor and somehow he asked me why a couple of people our family knew were friends, because he didn't like one of them. Thought I'd make it a teaching moment and asked him about why he and his buddy became friends. The answer just floored me. He replied, "Because he and I are the only two kids in the school that are the same color." It never had once occurred to me that this type of thinking was going on in my son's head. I spoke with the child's parents and learned that their son was thinking the same way, and we decided to go talk to school personnel to point out that there was a dynamic somewhere in that learning environment that prompted that kind of belief. The school was very responsive and made every effort to address diversity.

For this reason alone, the little study this girl did seems plausible to me. In a society, where literally black and white thinking is rewarded, I can understand how children can make these choices. I would have liked to see the flip side of this with the same stimuli being presented to white children.

[mopinko]

22. i am not arguing that racism does not exist, but

all your story shows is that first graders start to notice skin color and social status. period.

[Buzz Clik]

25. As a science fair project, this film gets low marks. BUT....

in terms of raising a red flag, it deserves much attention. This is the kind of small sampling that absolutely demands that further studies be made.

Edit: Actually, this film is not cast to make comments about racism. It is more of a revelation of how young black women view themselves.

[Colobo]

68. Not only black women in the US

But Afro-descendents in the Americas in general.

[SemperEadem]

78. it goes beyond them noticing skin color at that age

it goes to stimuli in their home environment (mass media--commercials, television programs, parental attitudes)reinforcing preference/disfavor. If they can't tell you why, then it's something that has been allowed to embed in their psyche and take root and grow.

I made it a point to give my daugher black dolls and to let her know she was pretty. The girl in the video who said that she would never be a princess because princesses were never black should have been given a copy of the book on the life of Sarah Forbes Bonetta called "At Her Majesty's Request", written by Walter Dean Meyers (http://www.amazon.com/At-Her-Majestys-Request-Victorian/dp/0590486691) which tells of the true story of a little girl--an orphaned Egbado (in Africa) princess--who narrowly escaped death by human sacrifice in a West African village in 1850 when a British naval captain, Frederick Forbes intervened and talked King Gezo of Dahomey into proving to Queen Victoria that he is not a bloodthirsty, heartless man by letting take the child to England as a gesture of his good will towards the Queen.

She became Victoria's ward and the girl was raised by Forbes and brought up in a style which befitted her rank, as Victoria highly esteemed a person's rank and considered the child to be a princess, as her father was the King of the village which Gezo raized--he ended up killing both of her parents and she was next when her pitiful screams caught the captain's attention.

It is a book that all young black girls should read in order to show them that yes, there are black princesses.

[Patiod]

53. I used to take care of a little half-Indonesian girl

Beautiful child - absolutely beautiful - coffee-with-cream colored skin, long black hair, huge dark brown eyes.

When she was dying, her (pale-skinned, Polish-American) mother used to worry: "I afraid about how people will perceive her skin color. There's a lot of racism in the world, and I'm afraid for her because I won't be around to protect her from it." I used to pooh-pooh the mother - so the kid had dark skin - so what?

One day, I put her hair up in a tight bun like the other little girls in her ballet class wore, and then after ballet we went shopping. I noticed that people were treating us differently than they normally did, but couldn't put my finger on why. AT one boutique the lady became quite snippy with me, which was unusual. Finally, I noticed the teenage clerk at my local convenience store, who is normally rude to me, was being very sweet to her. Then it clicked. Without the straight-hair as a cue, the teenager, who was black, thought the child was black. The boutique owner, a snobby white woman, had come to the same conclusion. I can't PROVE this, but it's the explanation that makes the most sense. So they treated us differently than they normally did.

Quite an eye-opening experience - not so quick to pooh-pooh claims of bias anymore, that's for certain.

Also, this was back during the height of Brittany/Jessica/Christina, and she used to literally CRY because she wanted blond hair and fair skin so badly. She was at a highly diverse and diversity-minded Quaker school, so that wasn't the problem - it was the general cultural stew.

(on a more encouraging note, she had two boys named Jason in her class, and they featured prominantly in most of her stories. We could never tell which Jason she was talking about, which made her roll her eyes and say "there's Jason C and then there's Jason L" and continue her stories. At the end of the school year I met the boys, and one was black and one was white, but it hadn't occurred to her to categorize them this way, which was cool.)

[manic expression]

27. Not an unfair objection

I don't think it was meant to be a definitive or extensive study of the issue, it was a High School project that raised an important question.

By the way, I haven't seen the documentary, what is the conclusion given in the actual film?

[Buzz Clik]

33. She draws no conclusions.

The documentary is very short and differs in important ways from the original link.

I'd suggest taking a peek at it...

[manic expression]

41. That's a good thing IMO

Thanks.

[BoneDaddy]

58. I agree

Growing up in New Jersey all my friends had names that ended in vowels and I was the only Irish kid among them. For my high school years all I wanted to be was Italian. Wore the Italian horn, the capezios etc. Wnating to be part of a "dominant" culture is not unusual or pathological. In fact it is changing. I worked in some inner city schools where most of the population were black and hispanic. The few "white" kids didn't aspire to be Muffy and Ken, but rather adopted the speech patterns, dress and accoutrements of the black children and wanted to be black. It is about identity seeking. I have kids from Africa in my current school who spurn the hip hop culture as well as black young man who is more at home with the skaters than he is with the hip hop cultural group.

I think we miss the obvious sometimes in an attempt to be compassionate.

[mopinko]

59. i think that the idea about tabula rosa

is embedded in many ideas of human nature, even though it is long since discredited. i think that evolutionary psychology will give us a lot of insights into human behavior that will really lead somewhere.
we are all looking for our tribe. and for status. that is what it is all about. color is incidental, imho.

[BoneDaddy]

60. I agree

but I don't think color is incidental because it is all about the value we subscribe to "color", but I overwhelmingly believe in the blank slate in terms of this discussion. We are, in fact, the summation of every single event that has occurred in our lives.

[mopinko]

62. more educated people than i have argued this without

a good conclusion. but i think that we are far more the sum of our genes than our experiences. our experiences, after all, are filtered through them.

[BoneDaddy]

63. I use an scenario to demonstrate this with people

I ask them who was the most influential person in their life. Usually most say a parent or a real life person who influenced them heavily. Then I ask them to imagine if that person never existed or died when they were young and ask them if they would be a different person. All of them, without a single exception, say they would be irrevocably altered by that person's absence and that they would be different. It is so true.

[mopinko]

64. yeah, but

there is no way to know that. just sayin.

edited to say- twins raised separately actually make surprisingly similar choices in life. right down to what kind of car they drive, and what they name their kids. it is a deep subject.

[BoneDaddy]

80. True

on the twins, and I do believe their is a genetic component that is the underlying base, but I think nurture has so much more of an impact. Their is no way of proving my statement, but as an adoptee I think I would be an entirely different person if I was raised in my biological family.

[mopinko]

81. there is no doubt that a child can be either damaged or nurtured,

but even then, they will reflect their particular genetic proclivities in how they respond to that. what kind of chaos would their be if such a complex organism arrived without a blue print for growth and behavior? i think that a thorough understanding of evolutionary psychology will someday overturn most everything we think we know about human psychology. sometimes it makes me want to go back to school to study it.

[BoneDaddy]

82. Go for it

it sounds as if, at the very least, you have a passion and real motivation for it.... Good luck.

[mopinko]

83. yeah, i have other passions, tho.

there are any number of things i would enjoy immersing myself in, but i need art to survive.

[Colobo]

72. Bump

[yellerpup]

23. I forwarded this to my friend, the creator of Meeting Hate with Humanity

It hurts to see this negativity played out over the course of the ages. Senseless, stupid hate that hurts little children until they are old. :cry:

:kick:

Edited to add kick.

[WillyT]

24. Crying Here... Thank You For Sharing That... Will Be Sending It Around... K & R !!!

:kick:

[Karenina]

28. ...?

---.

[BlooInBloo]

29. Here are grown-up versions, scientifically valid (pace the racism-deniers here)...

... of the same phenomenon.

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selectatest.jsp

[Buzz Clik]

31. You've got to be kidding.

What does that site have to do with this thread at all?

You've got the wrong idea about what's going on here.

[BlooInBloo]

32. Do the race one.

[Solon]

35. This is something I always found odd...

OK, I've taken this particular test quite a few times, and this time it tells me this:

Your data suggest little to no automatic preference between African American and European American.

I either get this as an answer, or I have an slight automatic preference towards African Americans. I guess it depends on the time of day, who knows. I don't know how accurate it is though, I always end up focusing on the center image, and the white border and the words in the corners disappear, then I seem to forget my place and have to slow down, or, in some cases, I'll just be hammering away at the "E" and "I" keys, without any errors and blow through it without a second thought, as happened this time.

I don't really know what, if anything, this means, I figured I'd have a strong preference towards African Americans, simply because, being white, I end up with white folks coming up to me and saying the most racist shit, and pissing me off in the process. They assume that since I look like them, that I AM like them at the core, I don't know, it just pisses me off. To be honest, I'll be the first to say that I'm particular as to who I call friends, generally they end up NOT looking like me.

[BlooInBloo]

39. In reality, their test, while pretty good, would more properly be termed...

.... a test of EITHER automatic preference OR quick-reading-seeing-decision-making-response-time.

They do their best to mitigate the latter alternative, which is probably sufficient, practically speaking, in a country of slow-thinking dimwits, but it can never be theoretically ignored.

[Solon]

40. Yeah, I always thought of it as a "twitch test" myself...

Granted, supposedly that alleviates "thinking" too much about responses, and so you would end up being more honest about your responses.

Another thing that they probably didn't consider is that many people around my age excel at tests like this, from playing video games, which means I'm probably over prepared for such tests.

ON EDIT: Just thought of something, a bias might manifest itself from being slow on the test, and might be more accurate for those who play games that develop your hand-eye coordination, which is basically what you are talking about. Then again, I don't know the methodology of the test, so I don't know if there is a way to "cheat" at it, oh well.

[BlooInBloo]

43. I can't recall if this belief has a basis, or if I'm making shit up...

... but I have it nonetheless:

I think the test there measures not only the content of the subject's response, but the timeliness of it. In a manner along the lines of: establish a baseline time-to-answer from the first set of the subject's answers. On the second set, in addition to measuring the simple accuracy of response, examine the time-delta of the responses. The "correctness value" of the 2nd set of responses then would be a formulaic mixture of the correctness AND the response-time-differential. I.e., in the 2nd set, a correct answer given in the same-ish amount of time as the 1st set gets "full credit", while a correct answer in 4 times as much time gets only partial credit. The idea being that *comparatively* long answer times in the 2nd set indicate that the subject is attempting to trump bias with thinking (which is laudable, arguably, but has to be accounted for by a test aimed at *bias* detection).

Note that to link comparative response time difference to bias-hiding, the test-designer has to do everything possible to eliminate every OTHER possible reason for significant time differences - which is a microcosmic illustration of the reason peer review exists.


Once again: I'm strongly inclined to believe that something like the above is the case, but I have no recollection of where that belief came from. It's entirely possible that it's another one of my well-it's-how-I-would-do-it-so-it-must-be-the-case fantasies.

[Solon]

48. Of course, no test is foolproof...

I remember the first time it was mentioned on DU, quite a while ago, and I tried it and it said there were WAY too many errors so came back inconclusive or something like that. Anyways, I screwed up on the test, I'm a "hunt and peck" type of guy, and I made the mistake of not putting my fingers over the right buttons, plus they would "drift" to different buttons. It threw me off, completely, had to stop, look down, make sure I hit the right key, it was frustrating.

[Buzz Clik]

37. I did the test.

As suspected, it has no relevance to this thread.

I wish I had those ten minutes back.

[BlooInBloo]

38. If you don't see it, you don't see it.

[progressoid]

49. It's my understanding that IATs validity is under question.

Even they psychologists that created it, admit to it's inaccuracy.

"These tests are not perfectly accurate by any definition of accuracy."

[BlooInBloo]

61. Cool.

[annabanana]

30. Thank you for bringing the post over here.

That is so very very sad. There is so much that still needs to be done. NO child should ever identify a doll that looks like them as "the bad doll". It just makes me cry that this is apparently still the case.

[mzteris]

36. OMG - that's just

awful. . . I didn't know it was still so rampant.

bell hooks calls it "internalized racism" - I didn't know it started so young.

I think the MEDIA plays a huge role in this. Advertising, cartoons, movies - we need more positive black role models.

[Madspirit]

42. k&r and very disturbing...internalized racism...n/t

[Colobo]

69. That is the racism that kills the spirit

[Erika]

44. K & R n/t

[Unca Jim]

46. It is really that simple?

There are many kids who grow up in racist home, and there are many kids with self-esteem issues. I'm not sure they always go together, but I see them both all the time and I know they are both tragic.

What's important to note here is that white folks go to the tanning salon to get darker, they get perms to curl their hair, they "talk black" to sound cool, and they emulate black people in fashion and many other ways. Also, lots of white people date non-whites and find them more attractive than other white people. I don't think that necessarily means they hate their own race in just the same way black people who do all the stuff in the film don't necessarily hate their own race.

Can we accept that emulation of other races and/or cultures doesn't necessarily mean you hate your own? It might just be genuine respect and liking. I grew up on a naval base and was the only white kid in my neighborhood, so all my early girlfriends and friends were not white. I've always found non-whites attractive, but the woman I eventually fell in love with and married happens to be a blond with blue eyes.

This stuff is pretty complex.

[terip64]

52. Welcome to DU. It certainly is complex... n/t

[windbreeze]

47. Whoa....I find that hard to handle...

so what happens to those children that are mixed...do they ever adjust to their circumstances....wow...I am truly saddened...
wb

[KitSileya]

54. It's rather amazing.

My parents moved just after Christmas, so when I was there for the holidays, they were busy cleaning out the attic. The only thing I have left there (I live in another city) are my dolls.

When we were kids, my mom made sure to scrimp and save so that we three kids could get at least one really nice Christmas gift - one year, my sister and I got baby carriages, and another year, we got dolls. Now these dolls weren't any ordinary dolls, they were African dolls, or rather, African-American dolls, as they were probably produced in the US, but back then, we connected black people exclusively to Africa. This was probably around 1981-2. They were black, with black tightly curled hair, black arms and feet and head, and fabric torso, and when you turned them over on their stomach, they cried. We loved these dolls, which seemed so exotic to us pale-skinned Norwegians, and my mother and grandmother knitted clothes for them, and we drove them around in our baby carriages. Mine was called Bobbo, because that was the only 'African' name I knew.

Anyway, we got to talking about these dolls, and the memories connected to them, and my Mom told me that once, when we were carrying our dolls with us on the bus, a woman had spit out racial epithets about them, and how we should have proper dolls. It's pretty remarkable to think about, considering that most people in my hometown had probably hardly seen a black person back then - mostly people of color were the Vietnamese boat refugees picked up by Norwegian ships. It's sad that the US, with its nigh 400-year history of African-Americans, still haven't gotten further with young black self identity.

I still have Bobbo, and I appreciate her much more than the generic white baby doll I got after her. I wish we are not long away from a time when kids no longer assign value to dolls, and by extension to themselves, by the color of their skin.

[sonias]

55. Thank you for the tip

Kudos to Kim on this little film that has people talking about how somethings haven't changed. And heartbreaking it is.

Sonia

[MadJohnShaft]

56. Heartbreaking - but is it good science?

The study from the fifties is famous. But, I'd want to hear more about the science behind this - without a 'control' and without it being double-blind and all the things you need in place to really find out the cause of the phenomena you are observing...

It's sad to see what happened when they conducted the test - but what are we really seeing? I don't think it's valid to draw any conclusions from this short film.


For example -
Is the interviewer affecting the outcome?
Is the sample of the kids sufficiently large?
Do affluent and poor African-American children give different results?
How about geographical differences?
Did they interview white kids?
Did they ask neutral questions too (which doll is hungry?)?
Did they take any steps to assure the only difference is the skin color of the dolls?
What do kids in racially mixed and harmonious cultures say, like Brazil?


I imagine the results will be just as disappointing after a carefully conducted experiment - but still, this is an experiment and demands to be done via proper established scientific procedures before you can draw any conclusions.

Don't you think? I had a class on psychological testing when I was in college and it was amazing to me how the tiniest unsuspecting things could really skew the outcome of test results.

[helderheid]

57. That is heartbreaking. Just heartbreaking.

:cry:

[Blue_Tires]

65. TTT n/t

[Colobo]

66. This touches me personally

I'm a black Latin American man, and I know what this is about... it is probably the most long lasting effect of racism: self hatred. It happened to me, and to be quite honest, I'm still recovering.

In Latin America, it is probably stronger than here. It is openly said in schools, TV, your own family, the job market: Whiteness is beautiful and directly related to intelligence and success. To be black is to be ugly, to be dumb, to be what your nation wants to hide, to be the "other". This breaks my heart because I had to grow up dealing with this, openly. Down there, there is only one solution to the skin problem: "whitening". You realize your skin color is a birth defect, something that shouldn't be passed on to future generations, something you need to work with. You need to compensate, so you adopt "whiteness" in any way you can: by embracing white role models and doing anything to your hair and body to look like them, to reject other blacks and choose white friends for all the wrong reasons and be willing to endure mockery and humilliations with a smile because you are "with the right people", looking desperately for a white boyfriend or girlfriend because you want to "improve your race" even if there is no love in the relationship and you have to act subserviently with your white companion, try joining political and social organizations that are identified with whites just to show them you can be as good as they are...

People don't know...

[Manifestor_of_Light]

70. something that happened when I was a little kid

I grew up in an all white town that kept out blacks by tripling the prices of houses. The real estate agents did that. It was reverse redlining. My cool government teacher explained all this to us.

I graduated from high school in 1972, and in my high school of 3,400 kids (yes, bigger than many universities) we had ONE black boy, and his dad was the janitor at one of the local banks. I don't know where he lived. This was a large suburb of 80,000 people. There were a few Hispanic kids.

My high school was still segregated long after 1972--they must have threatened to sue in the 80s or the Feds threatened to cut off their money to get them to integrate.

Anyway, when I was little, in the early 60s we had black maids. They lived in a worse hood than we did in the nearby big city. They were the only black people I met, were these ladies. Once Xmas was coming and Mom decided that one of them needed a doll to give her daughter, or maybe granddaughter. Mom went to a local toy store and found a black baby doll to give the woman, and I remember she refused to buy a white one. I remember that distinctly, and it was probably 1962. I thought that was very cool, even though I had almost no contact with blacks until I got to college. And Mom would talk about how great Ralph Bunche was, and tell me about people like him.

But then I'm a third generation Democrat. I went to Democratic functions my whole life, so hanging with blacks and Hispanics was not a big deal. In fact, in Texas, discrimination against Hispanics, such as refusing to serve them in restaurants was about as bad as discrimination against blacks, in the 1950s. My dad told me about that.

Having said that, it's sad that "Black is Beautiful" needs to come back.

[Colobo]

71. The thing is that the "animalization" of blackness

Was essential in the construction of American nations. It became part of the socioeconomic and political landscapes (blacks are inferior in all senses, that justifies their exploitation). It became part of our national narratives. Whiteness became the symbol of beauty, power, intelligence, morality, superiority, etc. Blacks and other oppressed groups had to deal with the "sad reality of not being white". In Latin America, that brought the social phenomenon known as "whitening"; blacks and Indians desperately rejecting themselves, humilliating themselves and praising whiteness in an attempt to become white themselves and their descendents. For instance, they look for ways to look "whiter" (hair relaxer, creams) and they look for white partners. "For a black, myself..." (Para negro, yo...) many people say in Puerto Rico, meaning that the only blackness they can barely deal with is their own, and that they would not even consider marrying a black person.

"The race has to be improved" is the phrase they use... that's the burden we have inside...

[NMMNG]

74. Very disturbing

It's almost as if the past 50 years never happened. :-(

[Colobo]

75. It's not 50 years... this comes since the introduction of forced African labor to the continent!

[NMMNG]

76. I was speaking more of the time frame between the experiments

And the Civil Rights Movement. Some people like to think that since the CRM everything is peachy for black people, but it obviously isn't.

[Colobo]

77. Of course, because

The CRM couldn't and can't erradicate the chains that still enslave the spirit of millions...