Plessy, Brown, the Clark doll study and MY SCINTILLATING RAGE

[raven]

I am having an immensely frustrating morning. Immensely. Aaargh. Okay, this week's reading: Plessy v Ferguson, the infamous 1896 Supreme Court case that decrees that "separate" can be "equal", and there is nothing unconstitutional about making black people ride in separate railway carriages. The opinion contains such gems as:

"...underlying fallacy... the enforced separation of the two races stamps the coloured race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found but soletely because the coloured race chooses to put that construction upon it."

and

"If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane."

Then comes Brown v. Topeka Board of Education (1954), possibly the most famous case in American jurisprudence, which decides that separate is not equal and thus segregation in schools is unconstitutional. I apologise for the Legal History 101 going on here. Anyway, the point of it for my purposes at the moment is that it made the use of social science evidence in courtrooms mainstream. The study in question, the Clark doll study, involved two groups of black children - about 200 of them from the segregated South, and another group from somewhere in Massachusetts, where schools were integrated. Each child was given two dolls - one white, with yellow hair, and one brown with dark hair. They were asked which doll they wanted to play with, which doll has a nice colour, and which doll was "bad", etc., and were told to hand the relevant doll to the experimenter.

Of course, a significant percentage of the children in both groups picked the white doll - the white doll is "nice", the white doll is the one I want to play with, etc.

Then came a cute study, done by some high school students. Here it is - it's quick and telling. Same idea, same methodology, same results, only now it is not 1954. Small children are socialised, at an early age, into believing white is good and anything else is bad. Hi, I could have told you that. I wasn't a playing-with-dolls kind of child, but I do remember the only brown doll I ever had. It was wearing a sari - do I, or the brown people I know, wear saris every day? - and was probably called Exoticism Barbie or some such thing.

But the class were very impressed. Oh, the things that you learn! Isn't it surprising, and interesting that small children should think that even now! I mean, it's not like anything in their culture might make them thing that being brown was bad, for heaven's sake! It's not like everyone on TV is white and everyone in authority is white and brown people are exotic, angry, foreign, strange and ugly, or anything like that, is it!

You know, it's amazing how often I find myself moved to quote from Angels in America, but, seriously, I am trapped in a world of white people.

What do you even do, though? If you jump up and down and shout, "hi, you are all WRONG, about EVERYTHING", you come across as the freakish foreign brown girl, again.

Oh waaaaaaail. I want a muffin and a chocolate bar and for everyone to just GO AWAY.

Comments

[silverhare]

*offer muffin* Every time I walk into town I go past the BBC shop which has a cardboard cut-out of Amy Pond in the window, and it makes me think of you.

[soupytwist]

My god, that video is depressing.

Um, not that I expect this to make anything better at all, but I think it settles for once and for all that on this issue at an absolute minimum, you are very definitely not the freakish foreign brown girl.

*offers cup of tea and a biscuit?*

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

That video is horrifying, especially the little girl who explained the black doll was bad because she was black and the white doll was nice because she was white, and then her hesitation when she had to pick up the doll that looked like her.

I hope I would have chosen differently when I was little, but who knows? I do remember that my dark haired Sindys were nicer than the blonde one who could be spiteful, and the one with short dark curly hair was a mechanic and in a relationship with the one with long dark hair, which is a whole 'nother set of stereotypes I suppose... My darker skinned doll was a Jem character (Shana?) and was larger than the Sindys so only wore her own (very sparkly) clothes, which I thought very inappropriate for daytime. Based on these I decided that she was a nightclub singer and on different shifts from the others, so she didn't interact much. People could probably read fathoms into that, which is a rather horrible thought.

[sriti.livejournal.com]

Bangladesh is still a country where everyone reveres the white-skinned foreigners. Maybe that's because they bring in cash and tourism, but seriously, when I go on holiday, I pay the same for rooms as they do! Recently, my colleagues and I went to a really nice resort (Mermaid Eco Resort) in Cox's Bazaar, and was treated differently than the foreigners who came in. First, it was the little stuff, like they got coconuts and flowers on arrival and we didn't, but then they started messing with our rooms and tried to give us a cottage with a veranda, though we had asked for one with two separate bedrooms! They did have empty cottages like the one we asked for, but I guess they were trying to reserve it for the foreigners. We had a word with the management, and explained, very politely, that we were all Barristers and had spent time abroad, and while we expected racism in other countries because of our skin, we didn't expect it in our own.

Also, there's ofcourse the concept that fairer girls are more beautiful! How ridiculous is that! But even a lot of educated people I know still think this. All of this is just....aaaaaargh!

[sophiahagia.livejournal.com]

*nods* This is true across the board. I mean, when's the last time you saw Wheelchair Barbie? (I know, skin color not the same as disability, but ableism is my own personal hate-all-the-students-ever issue.) It's incredibly frustrating, and I just want to yell "You have no clue what the world is like if you're a minority!" *hugs*

[janne.livejournal.com]

I'm waiting for 'obese barbie' myself, considering that on what little data I've seen weight gets ranked worse than color and sex when it comes to bigotry. (Though admittedly, I can't recall seeing how ability ranked in comparison.)

[mi-guida.livejournal.com]

I'm waiting for 'obese barbie' myself

Not to claim that this in any way solves the issue that Barbies are skinny (and all the other things they are/aren't) but one interesting study I came across debunked the idea that Barbies are entirely disproportionate, at least - they were never meant to have the ridiculous hourglass shape they have now, in that the doll was meant to be that shape, but originally she wore cotton clothes, made in the same way as actual clothes, and you can made clothes smaller but you can't make folded fabric at waistbands thicker. Barbie originally (I think - or early on) wore a shirt and elasticated skirt, so at least three layers of cotton and the elastic at her waist - for her to have any waist at all they had to make the naked doll waist tiny.

Obviously this doesn't explain why they haven't changed it or why she ~had~ to have a waist in the first place, but it's an interesting piece of trivia if nothing else.

[janne.livejournal.com]

That is indeed an intriguing bit of trivia, thank you.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

(Not wanting to be too derail-y, but Share-a-Smile Becky (http://www.google.co.uk/images?q=share+a+smile+becky&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1024&bih=406). My best friend is disabled and works in disability support, and she kept Share-A-Smile Becky on her desk at work, much to her [not disabled, humourless] boss's horror.)

[sophiahagia.livejournal.com]

Erm,i'm blind. So what are these pictures of?

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

Pictures of a Barbie-type doll in a pink wheelchair.

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, it seems to have been issued by mattel as a one-off limited edition collectable barbie, and I find the fact that it's not actually called wheel-chair barbie but has a different name very telling. Cos there's no way that barbie could be disabled. It must be her unimportant one time only look-a-like friend. Barbie can be a princess or an olympic athlete only some of the time, but she couldn't possibly be portrayed in a wheel-chair, because everyone knows women in wheel-chairs never get out of them. And also can't date. Or wear pretty dresses.

Ahem. Sorry for derail-y rant.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Ah, sorry. Share-a-Smile Becky is Barbie's Disabled Friend. She uses a hot-pink wheelchair. Description here (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ouch/200707/share_a_smile.html)!

[frustratedpilot]

You've got to...be careful-...-ly taught!--the Broadway musical South Pacific.

I've been living among the White Trash so long that I don't have patience for their crap anymore and I just tune them out. There aren't any non-white students in the class I'm in now; the only "minority" is a deaf student. Too many of my classmates chew tobacco and say "doo whut?" when they're confused. Somehow I know I'll cope, but I don't wish this learning environment on anybody.

[greek-jester.livejournal.com]

*offers slice of honey cake*

*hugs*

*offers Acme Social Viewing Correction HammerTM*

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*grins* Thank you for all three!

[greek-jester.livejournal.com]

You're welcome :-)

And you have no idea how much of a wrench the honey cake was. A work colleague bakes. I don't like cake. I had 3 slices in 1 day. 'nuff said.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I wish you could just not read below the line in real life. At least they all nodded and said how interesting rather than getting arsey and telling you you were reading too much into things, I suppose, but still, gah.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I suspect I wouldn't have been quite so filled with frustration if the professor, who ought to know better, wasn't as bad as the rest. I suppose she doesn't have any magical immunity against being nice but dim, but I'm the world's own optimist.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

At that level, I tend to think of it as culpable ignorance. Given all the access to education and media and critical discourse you have, being surprised about the fact that race is still a huge factor in your society requires a certain amount of will.

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

That is all just deeply shit. I'm sorry.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thanks, honey.

[vikingwriter.livejournal.com]

I can't speak to the rest of the world, or to boys. But American girls? Any self-esteem we end up with that's at all related to our physical appearance is entirely accidental. I finally talked to my cousin about it once - she's pale, blond, with perfect skin - stereotypical Minnesota girl. Turns out she grew up with some of the same body hang-ups. (But not the one where I wanted to switch places with my best friend in high school because she had the most beautiful chocolate skin and I practically glow in the dark when I'm not red from heat or nerves or stress.)

So while it makes be unbearably sad, I suppose I take it as a given in this country. I will also say that while we are, obviously, still ridiculously imperfect, we are also leaps and bounds from 1856 and 1896 and 1954 and hopefully in a century there will be a group of young women shaking their heads at how close-minded and ignorant their ancestors (literal and theoretical) were.

[vikingwriter.livejournal.com]

And by while it makes be unbearably sad I mean 'while it makes me unbearably sad.'

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

Um. Not meaning to pick a fight, but when white American girls have low self esteem, that isn't a sign of racism. Body fascism is terrible, but loneraven was talking about racism. The body hang ups that your cousin grew up with are not the same as the body hang ups that a brown skinned woman might, and your comment comes accross as derailling and dismissive.

Also, food vocabulary metaphors for skin colour are not the world's most politically correct.

[wishfulaces.livejournal.com]

So maybe I need to make two t-shirts: one "EXAMINE YOUR WHITE MALE PRIVILEGE" and one that says "EXAMINE YOUR WHITE PRIVILEGE." (I've been wanting to make the first for ages. Perhaps it would be better made as a fan, so I can smack people over the head with it.)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*grins* Maybe a velcro version? So you could stick the adjective in as appropriate?

[wishfulaces.livejournal.com]

...or just velcro the message to their head(s)? In reverse lettering so they'd see it every time they looked in the mirror?

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

. . . I am going to have many happy fantasies of having, and using, a fan like that.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

...for some reason I think joyously of an electric fan like that. More painful, but more effective!

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

*ded*

[wishfulaces.livejournal.com]

I'm sure zazzle or cafepress or one of those places must offer fans. Right? Because mouse pads and magnets just don't have the same oomph when smacking people over the head.

[vampire-kitten.livejournal.com]

POssibly one of those programmable electric ones - so you could hit a button on the side and the text would suddenly appear in giant flashing letters?

[wishfulaces.livejournal.com]

Hee! With special flamey affects! (No, that might take away from the message. Or just be tacky.)

[the-acrobat.livejournal.com]

I feel like I should respond properly to this, but I just can't right now. I have a miserable sinus cold and I need to get to sleep.

But.

I have seen that video a few times before and I do reflect on it when I'm considering best practices in my chosen career. It also demonstrates, I think, one of the key issues here (http://www.thestar.com/News/article/298714). I know - and this is reinforced in my classes - that to do my job well, I need to question my privilege, and the privilege that is still built into the curriculum constantly. Working with the age group that I do, in the community that I do, it's critical.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you for that link, my dear; it's very interesting, and thank you also for the educator's perspective.

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry. There are good things about my culture, but sometimes they are rather completely overshadowed by the utter bullshit.

[annikah.livejournal.com]

Your classmates' responses makes me very sad. Sigh.

But this, I hope, might lift your spirits. Kate Elliot wrote about an experience she had when teaching her children about Rosa Parks: http://kateelliott.livejournal.com/155934.html

[kuteki.livejournal.com]

I am appalled that anyone's reaction to that video could be 'oh how interesting'! ://///