A conversation about race

WILLIAMS:  We are back at Howard University.  You'll notice on the panel some new faces.  We're going to take a look at some new subjects in our conversation.  I'm joined to my left by the chief of police here in Washington, DC, Chief Cathy Lanier.  We're also joined by Kevin Powell, known to many as a writer and activist and now to the subject at hand.

Kenneth Clarke came to fame in part because of an experiment he started in the 1930s showing black children, dolls of different skin tones.  This test has been updated for the purposes of the long version of the film we saw edited for television tonight.  What you're about to see, so many people find revolting and heartbreaking.  But it's a part of this conversation that we're going to include tonight.

Again, 60 seconds of videotape.  Join us in watching it.  We'll talk about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Which doll is the black doll?  Which one is the white doll.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:  That one.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Which doll is the pretty doll?

Which doll is the nice doll?

Which doll is the bad doll?

Which doll is the nice doll?

And which doll is the bad doll?

And why is that doll pretty?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:  Because she's white and she has two eyes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Which doll is the ugly doll?  Why is that doll ugly?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:  Because he's black.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Which doll looks most like you?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:  Like me?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Yeah, which one looks like you?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:  That one.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  OK.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAMS:  Kevin Powell, there was a writer a few years back who called the doll test another example of pornography.  How did that come to happen?  How did that situation come to happen?

KEVIN POWELL, ACTIVIST:  Well, first of all, it's an honor to be here.  David Wilson's film talked about the legacy of slavery and there's no way we could talk about where we are in 2008 and that doll test without talking about the legacy of slavery, the notion that white skin, white hair, white facial feature, body types are superior and black bodies all across the board are inferior.

When I am watching that clip just now, I'm thinking about all the black children just like Sister Malaak, I live in Brooklyn, I work in Brooklyn.  So many black and brown children feel that they are inferior, that they are unattractive in 2008 because of the notion of, as Tim talked about, white supremacy.  The notion that this is a superior race of people, this is what we're taught in the school system.  Unless you actually incorporate black history, Latino history, Asian history, the contributions of all different types of people into the curriculum, you're going to continue to have children thinking that white doll is more attractive than a black doll.

Video   The controversial race-based 'doll test' April 11: The "Conversation About Race" panel talks about the controversial doll test and how society can begin to correct deep-seated self-esteem problems within the African-American community. Doc Block

It goes back to the issue of education.  When I say education, not just the public school system, what we see in the media, what we see on the cover of magazines, the kind of images we see in videos, oftentimes you don't see darker complexioned women in the music videos.

I mean, it's across the board.  So even on these college campuses, be it a black college campus college like Howard or a historically white school, even there you will see this notion of black history or Latino history being marginalized unless you have a Dyson at your school and so that's where it comes from.  This is not something that's new.  This is rooted in the founding of this country.

WILLIAMS:  Professor Dyson, how do you begin to reverse the choices those children make in that videotape?

DYSON:  Well, I think it's evident that what Mr. Powell just said is extremely important.  Legacy.  When we talk about legacy, we're talking about an accumulation of time and history that works either for or against a particular consciousness of the people.  And when we see America, when we see that, the internalized self hatred that you don't even think a doll that looks like you, that reflects your images are beautiful but beyond that, there is a moral assessment there, too.

What is the bad doll?  What is the evil doll?  And it's also associated with the darkness, the Dark Continent, the dark child, the dark person that I see in the mirror and so we begin to perform the pathology and act the self hatred.

There's a term called "soul murder" and one of the things slavery did, Orlando Patterson, a sociologist talks about social death, the walking dead, people who are physically alive but internally their spirits have murdered.  And I think what we have to do here is to revive them.  We have to bring them back to life and what you have to do is to educate at home. It's very critical that parents begin to transmit the virus of self-confidence.  That's number one.

But number two, when we look around the media, Malaak talked about the media, it's interesting to talk about a culture where we don't see high-achieving people.  We see now a Barack Obama, we see Oprah Winfrey, so we see genius, black genius articulated in the public sphere.  But children have to see people on the local level, they have to see schoolteachers.  They have to see police people.  They have firemen.  They have to see people in their lives working together.

Then, finally, this is another thing that people miss about the strength of our religious institutions, especially the black church.  When all of society was putting us down, telling us we weren't anything, the black church uplifted the virtue of black people, articulated a vision of our souls' enhancement not only by God, and we have to perform the acts of love.

As Brother Powell said, when we see dark skin, black women who are being demonized because they don't have the right noses or the right lips except when they appear on a white woman if you get collagen shots or enhancements for the behind now when you have them naturally appearing in black women, they are demonized.

So we have to learn to love to perform the acts of love.  As Brother Powell said, when we see dark skin, black women who are being demonized because they don't have the right noses or the right lips, etc. when they appear on a white woman if you get collagen shots or enhancements for the behind now, when they have them naturally appearing in black women they are demonized.

So we have to learn to love.  When you see a sister, you say that this sister is the living embodiment of God's imagination.  You've got to understand that you've got to affirm a young black child as a living embodiment of God's light.

So I think what we have to do is to fight that on all fronts and then embrace that love in a very serious way within our own homes and insist that the societies in which we live begin to acknowledge that.  Because Barack Obama becoming president doesn't mean the next day that racism will be destroyed, inequality will be destroyed, it means that we have a better chance.

Or if he can be president, then we can be a scientist, we can be a physicist, we can be an engineer, and dark-skinned black people and light-skinned black people have to overcome the hatred.  I don't know if you know about this but there are many light-skinned black people who think they are superior because they're closer in hue to white America.

And darker-skinned black people are demonized.

COMPTON-ROCK:  (Inaudible) that people within our community, the African American community, are afraid to talk about and don't want to admit.  I am an alumni of Howard University - I proud alumni of Howard University but even Howard has been touched by the light-skinned, dark-skinned thing.  There was a time when you had to submit a picture and you couldn't be darker than a paper bag.

So, you're right, when we have to bring it back to slavery because there were house slaves and there were field slaves and the house slaves tended to have children with slave masters, they had lighter skin babies and were able to work inside because they were prettier.  Then they possibly had another baby and there were getting into quadroons and octaroons and the perception that the closer you looked like a white person, the prettier you were.

And the field slaves felt that and this condition is still within the African American community today.

MORE FROM DOCUMENTARIES

Documentaries Section Front

Lockup Raw: Ever Present Danger   Lockup Raw: The Convict Code   Lockup Raw: Hell in a Cell   Caught on Camera: The Thin Blue line Valentine's Day Mystery The Mystery of the Billionaire Banker   Deadly Exchange   Treasure Hunt Predator Raw: The Unseen Tapes 5   Predator Raw: The Unseen Tapes 8 Documentaries Section Front   Add Documentaries headlines to your news reader: