Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Black and White again


CNN did a story last week on the results of a study about race with young kids. The kids were asked after looking a series of drawings of dolls where they only differed by skin tone. All kids had a favorable bias toward the white dolls, with white kids having a much stronger bias toward white dolls. I wrote about a filmmaker who depicted the famous doll study done by researchers in the 1940's. It doesn't look like much has changed since that study. This study differed that the previous ones in that white kids were surveyed as well as black kids. I think that this story should open some compelling questions. After almost 60 years post-Brown vs the Board of Education, where blacks have made some of the greatest advances in human history, why is this negative impression on blacks still prevalent? What are we doing as parents, brothers, sisters, consciously and unconsciously to promote this attitude? What aspects of American society and culture maintain and spread this viewpoint? If going to school, work, and living in the same neighborhoods do not mitigate this attitude, what can be successful? These are questions we must answer in the coming years as the country gets browner and browner.