Jeremy Stangroom, over at the Talking Philosophy blog, links to, and discusses, the short film A Girl Like Me. The recreation of the famous doll experiment of Kenneth and Mamie Clark breaks my heart. Have we really not moved on at all?
Playing With Dolls
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One response to “Playing With Dolls”
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Darn. This was strangely topical. Today we took some kids to visit the nursery children here, and while I was there a little white girl asked me to get her a doll from the cupboard. I said, ‘there is a doll there, look, by the chair’ (it was a black doll, one of the natural featured and haired ones) but she screwed her face up and said, ‘I don’t like THAT one’. I asked her why not, but she just shook her head. Then I come across this post of yours.
I suggested on the site that, maybe the preference merely reflected the commonality of what the kids see around them (not knowing the ethnic percentage make up where the film was made), and had nothing to do with black and white being ‘better’ or whatever. I wanted to make this assessment first. Then I watched the film, and that was hard, then when it came to the doll experiment part, it made me tear up – its so damn sad. The children’s responses made specific reference to ‘the nicest’ because ‘it’s white’ and so on. I’m not sure how to respond now, but I don’t think now that my initial perhaps over hopeful idea is right. Something insidious is going on.
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