A study was done in 1940 called the Clark Doll
experiment was done in the 1940’s to test children’s views relative to race.
They can two different groups, a black segregated primary school in Washington
D.C and an integrated school in New York. The dolls were identical except of
skin color one was brown with black curly hair and one was white with blonde
hair. The children were then asked
which one is the doll they would play with, which one is the nice doll, which
one looks bad, which one has the nicer color, etc. The white doll was clearly
preference in the integrated school among white and African American children, and
was more acute in the segregated school. Then they were asked what doll they
were and they answered to their respective race.
In 2006 this experiment was
recreated and some of the internalized discrimination was still evident. When
this experiment was repeated the experiment 15 out of 21 children who were all
black also choose the white dolls over the black, giving similar reasons as the
original subjects, associating white with being beautiful and nice and black
with ugly or bad. The dolls used in the documentary were identical except for
skin color. This shows that that a lot of the discrimination was
retained mentally, still feeling inferior to whites.
