Diversity Inc. reports on a young filmmaker who has revisited Kenneth Clark’s famous 1954 test on black girls’ doll preferences. The article quotes filmmaker Kiri Davis, who is 17 years old, as saying she was inspired to repeat the experiments to see if black girls’ preferences had changed. Her results? Sixteen of 21 girls surveyed preferred white to black dolls–and in fact, according to the experiment, such girls see black dolls as “bad” and white dolls as “good.”
You can read some notes by Davis and view the film at Google Video.
People aren’t sure what causes the girls to see black dolls as less desirable or less valuable than white dolls. Marketing of white dolls? Low self-esteem about black girls? A combination of the two, or something else entirely? What are your thoughts?
im going to do this for my science fair project.
nobody take my idea.
One of the main reasons black girls may show a preference to white dolls is simple, black dolls were rarely promoted or never promoted a tall. Like images of black children were seldom seen on posters anywhere, not on book covers or in children readers, not in daycare or places where a stage would be set to promote the self esteem of the black child.
The pictures painted of black people have not been good so it became easy for the average black child to want what they see the most around them being accepted.
It has to do with the message sent to the minds of young children, if taught to accept themselves they will understand their values. Black dolls are the most beautiful when created to reflect the black in the true sense.
People who do not like blacks will not promote black dolls, neither will they do of a good job making black dolls; recently heads begin to turn in the direction of the black doll market since more parents are becoming civilize to the fact that they need to instill these values in their children with the toys the introdce to them, they need to embrace their true identity for who they are in oppose to a mith of someone elses identy.