Suzan Damas & Omar Syed

Proposal

Date: 03/05/2010

To: UHCL Student Conference for Research and Creative Arts

From: Suzan Damas and Omar Syed

            dial_tone1@yahoo.com, damass0183@uhcl.edu

           University Of Houston-Clear Lake

Projecting Ethnic Identity onto Inanimate Objects

            What kind of dolls would you play with? This is one of the questions asked to 3-7 year old African American children in “the doll test” conducted by psychologists, Kenneth and Mamie Clark. To many this question may seem simple, but we find it very interesting because the children who were presented with a black doll and a white doll actually had answers that had nothing to do with the dolls’ price but with the children’s own identity. Many of the children in the survey saw themselves in the black dolls, but associated beauty and attractiveness with the white doll.  The fact that they were able to identify with one doll but not the other suggests that the issue of identity is very important since identity is something that they take to adulthood.

            The purpose of the paper is to show the long-term effects of Jim Crow laws on several generations of African American children. We will show that not much has changed from the time when African Americans in general wanted to emulate the dominant white culture’s views on beauty. Some scholars such as Julia Hare argue that over time there have been some changes in the way that African American children view themselves, they have more positive feelings regarding their race because they have come to see positive African American role models like Oprah, Jesse Jackson and Tyra Banks. Hare adds that the only thing that has not changed is the fact that children view messages everywhere, from television to the choices in the toy store that preference is given to the white image, which explains why researchers continue to get the same results. Using Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970) and Sandra Cisneros’ Barbie-Q (from Imagining America: Stories from the Promised Land) (2003), we will show that racial sensitivity is deeply rooted in minority children.

It is our hope that upon completion of this research, African Americans will gain an understanding of the importance of being critical of research data and see why the results of the Jim Crow laws are still unfortunately living with us. We also hope that this project will serve as a wakeup call for parents and motivate them to instill racial pride in their children as early as possible.

Conference Paper

Projecting Ethnic Identity Onto Inanimate Objects

Omar Syed & Suzan Damas

University of Houston Clear Lake

Overview

In 1954, Dr. Kenneth Clark, a professor at New York City College, and Associate Director of the North Side School for Child Development, and his wife, Mamie Phipps Clark, showed the world that the Jim Crow segregation laws, which are exampled in the Color Code, had detrimental effects on children as young as three years of age. However, their findings and data from over fifty years ago have not changed even in this modern day and age. Children’s views about themselves are projected into the toys they play with, as seen in a recent recreation of Clark’s famous test, in literature from Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisneros.

Objective 1d

            Objective 1d in Dr White’s LITR 5439 Minority Literature class states that “The Color Code” is when literature indifferently represents the values that western civilization transfers on skin color, associated with “light and dark” to people of light or dark complexions, with huge implications for power, validity, sexuality, etc. We can see that the color code directly plays into the results of Dr Clark’s doll test, the Kiri Davis test and other literature as children, be they real children interviewed or fictional children written about, all share the characteristics of being adversely affected by The Color Code.

Personal Experience

As a boy, I had wanted a Ken doll, but my mother gave me a 12-inch Jordan Knight doll from the band New Kids On The Block. I immediately saw him as Indian, as the figure had black hair and brown eyes and vicariously lived out adventures through him. Jordan was something tangible that shared my ethnicity, which could not be said of the blonde haired Ken, with his painted blue eyes. Most children want toys that reflect their heritage or ethnicity. When children sense that their ethnicity is a source of debasement or scorn, they come to view their skin color or ethnic features as unattractive, which relates back to Objective 1d as the values that western civilization places on dark skinned individuals are those of being wrong or bad; hence, children project this view onto toys that share their own ethnic characteristics.

Clark’s Doll Test

According to an interview with Dr. Kenneth Clark, compiled from the Washington University Libraries, Henry Hampton Collection, Clark and Mamie K. Phipps Clark, had been administering the “doll tests” since 1939 as a way to find data on how African American children felt about themselves. (Kenneth Clark’s Doll Test, n.d) According to information from Kenneth B. Clark's "Doll Test" Notebook”, Clark and his wife compiled data on the results of the test and realized that the then current Jim Crow laws were causing African American children to “develop a sense of inferiority and self hatred” (Notebook, 2004).

In the "doll test," psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark had four plastic baby dolls, identical except for their tone of skin color. The Clarks showed the dolls to African American children between three to seven years old and determined their racial perception and preference by asking them questions. The results showed that almost all of the children could easily identify the race of the dolls. However, when asked which doll they preferred, the majority of the children chose the Caucasian doll and stated that the Caucasian doll was “the nice doll” or the doll they would like to play with, rather than the darker skinned dolls. The children were also given outline drawings of a figure and asked them to color the figure the same color as themselves. Many of the children with dark complexions colored the figure with a white or yellow crayon.  (Notebook, 2004) Clark (89) blamed the Jim Crow laws, stating that the racial hierarchy was so embedded in the minds of children that regardless of their own color, they would rather represent themselves as Caucasian instead of the alternative. In terms of the Color Code, these children had imbibed the Color Code and viewed themselves as wrong or bad simply for the color of their skin, and so represented themselves as Caucasian instead of the alternative

Briggs vs. Elliot

In the Briggs vs. Elliot court case, Clark attempted to, but was unsuccessful in overturning the ideology that African Americans were mentally inferior to Caucasians. According to Liza R. Rognas’s Masters thesis, Clark and other NAACP witnesses, together with the judges, easily recalled the test that were done ten years prior to the Briggs vs. Elliot case. (2) These flawed examinations along with the well-rooted beliefs of southern Caucasians who had been taught relentlessly that they were superior to African Americans. According to Clark’s book, Prejudice and Your Child, he had been the main examiner on the effects of prejudice on American children for the “Mid-Century White House Conference on Children and Youth”, held in 1950. According to  "An Investigation of the Development of Consciousness of Distinctive Self in Pre-School Children," written by Mamie Phipps Clark, states that even before the Briggs vs. Elliot, case, the Doll Test was used in a series of “projective tests with elementary school children attending segregated public schools in New York and New England.”(Clark, 2) In his book, Prejudice and Your Child, Clark wrote that by asking African America and Caucasian children questions about the dolls, the Clarks hypothesized a method for determining "sensitivity" to racial prejudice in children. Before the Briggs trial, Dr. Clark interviewed sixteen Clarendon County African-American elementary school children aged six to nine. According to the Briggs vs. Elliot transcript, he noted that when asked to denote the dark skinned doll, the Caucasian doll or neither, ten of the sixteen children picked the Caucasian doll as the one that they felt was nice. Eleven children of the sixteen picked the dark skinned doll as being bad. However the children had shown that they could tell the difference between the light and dark skinned dolls and when asked to pick the doll that resembled them, seven of the sixteen children picked the white doll. (88-89).

The transcript of the case also noted that the Scott's Branch elementary school students responded in much the same way as other children the Clarks had studied, and just as other African American children, several of those interviewed chose to depict themselves as Caucasian. Clark stated that this happened because the pressures of the Jim Crow laws had made being brown skinned so painful that these children tried to evade the truth of reality in order to relieve their sense of pain at being African American. Clark testified that his research showed the harmful effects of prejudice, segregation, and discrimination on the development of personality. He argued that even Caucasian children experienced harmful consequences in the form of guilt and moral confusion. (89) We can see how the Color Code directly fits here, as the children in the Briggs case, the Scott’s Branch case and the children in the 1954 doll test all imbibed the Jim Crow laws and viewed themselves as bad for being dark skinned, just as the Color Code states that “western civilization transfers the values it associates with “light and dark” to people of light or dark complexions, with huge implications for power, validity, sexuality, etc” (White). These children’s views of themselves have been tarnished by the negative values that western civilization has associated with being dark skinned.

In Clark’s Own Words          

According to the article, "Novel Expert evidence in federal civil rights litigation," by Gordon Beggs (printed in the The American University Law Review), Clark talked explicitly about his use of “novel forms of scientific proof as evidence”(45). In his own words, Clark gives a description of how he administered the doll test below:

I made these tests … and I presented it to children in the Scott's Branch Elementary School, concentrating particularly on the elementary group. I used …the Negro and White dolls--which were identical in every respect save skin color. And, I presented them with a sheet of paper on which there were these drawings of dolls, and … I presented these dolls to them and I asked them the following questions in the following order: "Show me the doll that you like best or that you'd like to play with," "Show me the doll that is the 'nice' doll," "Show me the doll that looks 'bad',"… "Give me the doll that looks like a white child," "Give me the doll that looks like a colored child," "Give me the doll that looks like a Negro child," and "Give me the doll that looks like you." … "Like you." That was the final question, and you can see why. I wanted to get the child's free expression of his opinions and feelings before I had him identified with one of these two dolls. I found that of the children between the ages of six and nine whom I tested, which were a total of sixteen in number, that ten of those children chose the white doll as their preference; the doll which they liked best. Ten of them also considered the white doll a "Nice" doll. And, I think you have to keep in mind that these two dolls are absolutely identical in every respect except skin color. Eleven of these sixteen children chose the brown doll as the doll that looked "bad." This is consistent with previous results that we have obtained testing over three hundred children, and we interpret it to mean that the Negro child accepts as early as six, seven or eight the negative stereotypes about his own group. ... The conclusion which I was forced to reach was that these children … like other human beings who are subjected to an obviously inferior status in the society in which they live, have been definitely harmed in the development of their personalities; that the signs of instability in their personalities are clear, and I think that every psychologist would accept and interpret these signs as such. … I think it is the kind of injury, which would be as enduring or lasting as the situation endured, changing only in its form, and in the way it manifests itself (45).

Modern Doll Test

After Clark’s legendary procedure, others wondered if the world has changed in the half century since the first doll tests were administered. Hazel Trice Edney writes on a website called Final Call, in an article about Kiri Davis, a 17 -year-old film student from the Urban Academy in Manhattan. Davis’s video was part the Reel Works Teen Filmmaking program, a free after-school program supported by cable network HBO.

 The new doll test, much like Clark’s 1954 version, deals with asking preschool age children whether they prefer an African American doll or a Caucasian doll and asking why is the doll in question perceived as good or bad. The results are virtually the same; the “bad” doll is the African American doll, and it is considered the “bad” doll because it is “black.” Davis conducted the doll study with children from a Harlem Day Care Center. Fifteen of the twenty-one children surveyed preferred the Caucasian doll to the African American one. Aaccording to the excerpt of one preschool African American girl’s results of the Davis test, it would seem that children are more likely to correctly identify the doll that resembles them more than the children of Scott’s Branch Elementary School. This is explicitly shown in the following except from the Davis test:

“Can you show me the doll that looks bad?”

The child, a preschool-aged Black girl, quickly picks up and shows the Black doll over a White one that is identical in every respect except complexion.

“And why does that look bad?”

“Because she’s Black,” the little girl answers emphatically.

“And why is this the nice doll?” the voice continues.

“Because she’s White.”(Edney 2005)

            Davis had compiled writings on issues of importance to Black girls in her high school, which acted as the impetus for the video. She saw that the girls’ writing showed that society’s standard of beauty was unchanged; that white is considered to be right. This echoes the Color Code, right down to the negative values that western civilization associates with “light and dark” to people of light or dark complexions. (White). Davis told the NNPA News Service,  “So many girls with dark complexions have been told that light skin is more beautiful.” (Edney 2005)  In response to this, Davis conducted the doll study. She showed that the “white is right” mentality has not changed at all.

“I’m really not shocked, I am sad to say,” says Julia Hare, a San Francisco psychologist. “If you keep doing what you have always done, you’re going to keep getting what you have always had. Our children are bombarded with images every day that they see on television screens and on coffee tables—either the light-skinned female that everybody is pushing or they give preference to the closest to White images.” (Edney 2005)

Gail Wyatt, a professor of Clinical psychiatry at the University of California at Los Angeles, states that all parents should instill racial pride into their children much earlier than pre-school, “Youngsters [make] disparaging remarks about being brown or African-descended or about [having] nappy hair,” says Wyatt. “We want to know how our children can grow up in their own skin. We can’t leave that part of a child’s development to the school system or the neighborhood…. Children should be socialized between the ages of 2-4 to understand culture and skin color, Wyatt says. “They should be taught a concept of beauty and a context of ancestry.” (Edney 2005)

Morrison

            Toni Morrison turns on the Color Code on its head when she writes The Bluest Eye, Claudia, the narrator, explains why she detests the Caucasian baby doll given to her by well-meaning family members,

The big, the special, the loving gift was always a big, blue-eyed Baby Doll. From the clucking sounds of adults I knew that the doll represented what they thought was my fondest wish. … What was I supposed to do with it? Pretend I was its mother? I had no interest in babies or the concept of motherhood. …Motherhood was old age, and other remote possibilities. I learned quickly, however, what I was expected to do with the doll: rock it, fabricate storied situations around it, even sleep with it … other dolls, which were supposed to bring me great pleasure, succeeded in doing quite the opposite. When I took it to bed, its hard unyielding limbs resisted my flesh—the tapered fingertips on those dimpled hands scratched. If, in sleep, I turned, the bone-cold head collided with my own. It was a most uncomfortable, patently aggressive sleeping companion. … I had only one desire: to dismember it. To … discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me. …all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasures.   

“Here,” they said, “this is beautiful, and if you are on this day ‘worthy’ you may have it.” I fingered the face, wondering at the single-stroke eyebrows; picked at the pearly teeth stuck like two piano keys between red bowline lips. Traced the turned-up nose, poked the glassy blue eyeballs, twisted the yellow hair. I could not love it. But I could examine it to see what it was that al the world said was lovable. Break off  the tiny fingers, bend the flat feet, loosen the hair, twist the head around, and the thing made one sound--a sound they said was the sweet and plaintive cry “Mama,” but which sounded to me like the bleat of a dying lamb, or, more precisely, our icebox door opening on rusty hinges in July. Remove the cold and stupid eyeball, it would bleat still, “Ahhhhhh,” take off the head, shake out the sawdust, crack the back against the brass bed rail, it would bleat still. The gauze back would split, and I could see the disk with six holes, the secret of the sound. A mere metal roundness. (91-21)

We can see that when Morrison says that adults told Claudia, “Here, this is beautiful, and if you are on this day ‘worthy’ you may have it.” they are essentially telling her that to be Caucasian, to emulate this doll’s skin color, is to be beautiful. However, young Claudia doesn’t listen to the adult’s words, nor to her sister or her sister’s friends, when they preen over Shirley Temple. While Claudia feels one against the world, she may have had a better view of her place in the world if she had a positive role model who looked like her. 

Cisneros

            Sandra Cisneros shows how young Hispanic girls have been so inundated by the Color Code that they gladly enact their play scenarios with Caucasian dolls, while only grazing the surface of the matter that the only reason they find a windfall of dolls is because the toys are smoke, fire, and water damaged, and therefore are dolls which the Dominant Culture would never touch.

Yours is the one with mean eyes and a ponytail. … Mine is the one with bubble hair. Red swimsuit, stilettos, pearl earings, and a wire strand. But that’s all we can afford, besides one extra outfit apiece. … .and a dress invented from an old sock when we cut holes here and here and here, the cuff rolled over for the glamorous, fancy-free, off-the shoulder look.

Every time the same story… Only Ken’s invisible, right? Because we don’t have money for a stupid-looking boy doll when we’d both rather ask for a new Barbie outfit next Christmas. We have to make do with your mean-eyed Barbie and my bubblehead Barbie and our one outfit apiece not including the sock dress.

Until next Sunday when we are walking through the flea market on Maxwell Street and there! Lying on the street next to some tool bits… Two Mattel boxes. One with the “Career Gal” ensemble… The other, “Sweet Dreams,” …How much? Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, until they say okay.

On the outside you and me skipping and humming but inside we are doing l            oopity-loops and pirouetting…Everybody today selling toys all of them damaged with water and smelling of smoke. Because a big toy warehouse on Halsted Street burned down yesterday… now there is a big fire sale at Maxwell Street, today only.

So what if we didn’t get our new Bendable Legs Barbie and Midge and Ken and Skipper and Tutti and Todd and Scooter and Ricky and Alan and Francie in nice clean boxes and had to buy them on Maxwell Street, all water-soaked and sooty. So what if our Barbies smell like smoke when you hold them up to your nose even after you wash and wash and wash them. And if the prettiest doll, Barbie’s MOD’ern cousin Francie … has a left foot that’s melted a little—so? If you dress in her new “Prom Pinks” outfit…so long as you don’t lift her dress, right?--who’s to know.   (252-253)

While the children in Cisneros’ piece are aware that they are part of the minority subculture and are not part of the Dominant culture, they still enact their stories with Caucasian Barbie dolls because African American fashion dolls (let alone Hispanic fashion dolls) were not available during the time period that the story is set in. The dolls the children speak of were available from 1961 through 1965, whereas African American and Hispanic versions of the dolls would not be available for two to five years later.

Projected Identity

            Children’s self concept and self esteem (or lack of) is often projected onto the toys with which they choose to play. For example, children use dolls as a way to live vicariously and do things that they may not be able to do in reality. John Michlig writes in his article, Friend of a Friend, that he projected his desires and feelings through his toys when, at the age of five, he was given a 12-inch G.I.Joe figure as a birthday present,

I now had a GI Joe. I had a ticket to adventure. I could be brave. I could explore. All of the choices were mine to make. … He was my friend and I would never be alone again. … GI Joe was a blank slate that needed us to make all of his decisions, from how he dressed on any particular day to what sort of mission he'd embark on. We shaped his personality in the way we expected to turn out as grown-ups: we made our friend courageous, trustworthy, loyal, strong. Certainly the traits of a good soldier, but also the qualities of an Adventurer-or parent, or neighbor, or any of a dozen roles we fill every day. (Michlig 2005)

In exploring the impact of the media on the ethnic identity of children, one solution is to have a wide range of ethnic dolls and toys available for children as they make sense of the complex world of racial relations. Multicultural and multiethnic dolls help children who are not Caucasian to view themselves in a positive light, as long as the dark skinned dolls are not stereotyped. Children who see themselves as being unattractive or less of a person will choose Caucasian dolls to play with or use their dolls to try to emulate the “White is right” mentality.

Conclusion

For the last fifty-plus years, we’ve seen how the Jim Crow laws, though abolished legally, have unfortunately lived on even unto present day as the Color Code. These misguided ideologies have shaped how a generation of children to see themselves as unattractive, unwanted and most of all unloved. This mentality is slowly working its way to the current generation of Nonwhite children.

References

Beggs, G. (1995). Novel Expert evidence in federal civil rights litigation. The American University Law Review, 45. Retrieved on October 2 2006 from http://varenne.tc.columbia.edu/class/common/dolls_in_brown_vs_board.html.

Briggs v. Elliot, Transcripts (1951). Retrieved on November 8 2006 from http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/boundvolumes/510bv.pdf.  81-96

Cisneros, Sandra. Barbie-Q. Imagining America: Stories from the Promised Land, Revised Edition. Ed. Wesley Brown, Amy Ling. Persea Books; Revised edition (March 2003). 252-253.

Clark, K. Prejudice and Your Child. Boston: Beacon Press (1955)

Clark, M. An Investigation of the Development of Consciousness of Distinctive Self in Pre-School Children. Howard University, Washington D.C. (1939)

Edney, H. (2005) New ‘doll test’ produces ugly results. Retrieved on October 2 2006 from http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_2919.shtml.

Kenneth Clark’s Doll Test. Compiled from the Washington University Libraries, Henry Hampton Collection. Retrieved on October 2 2006 from http://www.teachersdomain.org/9-12/soc/ush/civil/clark/index.html

Kenneth B. Clark's "Doll Test" Notebook. . (2004) Retrieved on October 2 2006 from http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/brown/brown-brown.html.

Michlig, J. Friend of a friend. (2005). Retrieved on November 29, 2006 from http://www.fullyarticulated.com/JoeBeckett.html.

Morrison. Toni. The Bluest Eye. Penguin; Underlined, Notations edition (January 1, 1994). 91-21

Rognas, L. Master’s Thesis. (n.d.)Retrieved on October 2 2006 from http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/resources/lessonplans/hs_lp_brownunit_briggstext.htm.