Do Children See Race?
November 29th, 2009 | Published in Background | 4 Comments
The following two videos make powerful statements about how our children view race. Please watch them with an open mind – it’ll only take five minutes of your time, but it might change your views on color in America.
Sixty years ago, Kenneth and Mamie Clark studied a group of African-American children ages three to seven. The children were shown two dolls, identical except for skin color – one black, one white. What they found would help convince the nation of the need to desegregate.
Ten of sixteen black children preferred the white doll to the black doll. The children were far more likely to attribute positive characters – like “good,” “pretty,” and “nice” – to the white doll. In contrast, they were quick to point out the black doll as the one which was “bad” or “ugly.”
In 2006, a young high school girl repeated the test. This is what she found, more than half a century after the Clarks ran their original study.
Inspired by the recreation of the doll test, a junior college English class performed a similar study. This time, they involved children of different ethnicities and dolls of three colors: white, black, and brown.
