what were you doing when you were 16?

I just ran across a fantastic film made by Kiri Davis, when she was 16. Davis is from New York city and her film is called 'A Girl Like Me' (2006). In the film, she interviews her peers about the experiences of black girls. She also recreates a study from the 1940s called "the doll test". This experiment was initially conducted by Drs. Kenneth & Mamie Clark to study how segregation effects black students. In the test, they gave black children two dolls, one white and one black and asked them a variety of questions like which they preferred and which was good or bad. The majority of the children preferred the white dolls.

"The Clarks concluded [from their study] that 'prejudice, discrimination, and segregation' caused black children to develop a sense of inferiority and self-hatred."

Their results were cited in Brown vs. Board of Education, the case that declared school segregation violated the fourteenth amendment. The Clarks were the first two black students to receive PhDs from Columbia University.

In her film, Kiri Davis recreates this study in today's Harlem (one of the many places in the US that school segregation still exists... oh but de facto instead of de jure, as if that makes it ok, eh?). In her experiment, 15 out of the 21 children preferred the white doll. These 15 children defined the white doll as good and pretty and the black doll as bad. What does this say about the progress made since the 1940s? A lot.

Watch this film if you have the opportunity - it's less than 8 minutes long. It was part of the 6th Annual Media That Matters film festival. Watch the other films in the festival too, that is what I would be doing right now if I didn't have to get ready for work. That's ok though, now I have something to look forward to. Maybe I'll watch one each day... and maybe you'll hear about them all here. Vamos a ver.