Playing with Perception

Back in the 1950s, in the days of government-enforced school segregation when Black students were forced to use hand-me-down books in unheated classrooms, perhaps it wasn’t surprising that they preferred to play with White dolls.

But today, in an award-winning amateur video called “A Girl Like Me” (www.
reelworks.org/watch.php), New York City public high school student Kiri Davis asks, “How have we progressed since then?” The startling answer? Not much. 

Davis replicated a well-known experiment, used as evidence in the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case, that asks Black preschoolers whether they prefer to play with White or Black dolls. Decades later, 15 of 21 Black children still prefer the White doll—clear evidence that parents and teachers must continue to work on internalized racism and stigmatization.

“Can you show me the doll that looks bad? Why does she look bad?” Davis asks. “Because she’s Black,” one pony-tailed girl says matter-of-factly.