Conducting The "Doll Test"
"In the "doll test," psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark used four plastic, diaper-clad dolls, identical except for color. They showed the dolls to black children between the ages of three and seven and asked them questions to determine racial perception and preference. Almost all of the children readily identified the race of the dolls. However, when asked which they preferred, the majority selected the white doll and attributed positive characteristics to it. The Clarks also gave the children outline drawings of a boy and girl and asked them to color the figures the same color as themselves. Many of the children with dark complexions colored the figures with a white or yellow crayon. The Clarks concluded that "prejudice, discrimination, and segregation caused black children to develop a sense of inferiority and self-hatred."" (http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/brown/brown-brown.html)
"If it is done on a mathematical basis, with thirty children as the maximum... you would have twenty-seven Negro children and three whites in one schoolroom. Would that make the children any happier? Would they learn any more quickly? Would their lives be more serene?
Children of that age are not the most considerate animals in the world, as we all know. Would the terrible psychological disaster being wrought, according to some of these witnesses, to the colored child be removed if he had three white children siting somewhere in the same schoolroom?
Would white children be prevented from getting a distorted idea of racial relations if they sat with twenty-seven Negro children? I have posed this question because it is the very one that cannot be denied."
-John Davis
Children of that age are not the most considerate animals in the world, as we all know. Would the terrible psychological disaster being wrought, according to some of these witnesses, to the colored child be removed if he had three white children siting somewhere in the same schoolroom?
Would white children be prevented from getting a distorted idea of racial relations if they sat with twenty-seven Negro children? I have posed this question because it is the very one that cannot be denied."
-John Davis