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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><SPAN class=TopStory>Black people hating themselves from cradle to grave</SPAN>
<SPAN class=Subheadline>Wignall's World</SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>Mark Wignall
Sunday, February 11, 2007
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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=330 align=center border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description></SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>"It is argued that detachment and objectivity are required for the discovery of truth. But what is the value of a soulless truth? Does not truth require meaning? And does not meaning require a context of values? Is there any meaning or relevant truth without commitment?<P class=StoryText align=justify>How is it possible to study a slum objectively? What kind of human being can remain detached as he watches the dehumanisation of other human beings? Why would one want to study a sick child except to make him well?" - Kenneth Bancroft Clark, PhD.<P class=StoryText align=justify>In attempting to make the case for desegregation in American public schools in the famous Supreme Court case, Brown vs the Topeka, KS Board of Education in 1954, the lawyers utilised the services of eminent psychologist and educator Dr Kenneth Clark in one very important part of its background research.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The quote at the beginning of the column may not have much bearing on the subject to be outlined in this article, but I have used it to give readers a snippet of the mind of the great black US psychologist who died in May 2005 at the age of 90. In the research conducted at the request of attorney Thurgood Marshall, Clark and his PhD wife showed black children dolls that were identical except for the colour of their skins.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The children tended towards labelling the black dolls as 'bad' and the white doll as 'good.' He also asked the children which doll looked most like them. Some children said the white doll looked like them, others refused to answer and others cried, probably in some form of recognition of the confusion in their young, well conditioned minds.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The research conducted by the Clarks provided that needed push to overturn the 'separate but equal' reality which had existed before. In 1954 the overwhelming majority of black children found themselves in a skin shade which American society had decreed was shameful to wear. Years of conditioning in apartheid America had given its black children white eyes to see through.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Fifty-three years later, another more crucial reality with much of the same screenplay has surfaced, and in its declaration, American children of colour and, indeed, all persons of colour worldwide need to reassess their worth in a fast, unkind world where white-skinned people control information, communication and the responses of black people as they look in the mirror and declare, 'I don't like the face I see looking at me.'<P class=StoryText align=justify>Seventeen-year-old Kiri Davis is an African American schoolgirl who wants to be a filmmaker. She has just completed an eight-minute film titled A girl like me and it has been kicking up a storm all across America. Young Davis pretty much mimicked the work of the great psychologists, the Clarks, and conducted the same tests among 21 black children. To say the least, the results were disturbing.<P class=StoryText align=justify>She asked various questions such as 'Which doll do you like to play with? Which is the good doll?' The results?
Fifteen of the children (71%) said they preferred the white doll. Kiri Davis is just a young 'schooler' going about her life by questioning where many of us would not dare go. Indeed' after the Clarks had added tr
<SPAN class=Subheadline>Wignall's World</SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>Mark Wignall
Sunday, February 11, 2007
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=330 align=center border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description></SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>"It is argued that detachment and objectivity are required for the discovery of truth. But what is the value of a soulless truth? Does not truth require meaning? And does not meaning require a context of values? Is there any meaning or relevant truth without commitment?<P class=StoryText align=justify>How is it possible to study a slum objectively? What kind of human being can remain detached as he watches the dehumanisation of other human beings? Why would one want to study a sick child except to make him well?" - Kenneth Bancroft Clark, PhD.<P class=StoryText align=justify>In attempting to make the case for desegregation in American public schools in the famous Supreme Court case, Brown vs the Topeka, KS Board of Education in 1954, the lawyers utilised the services of eminent psychologist and educator Dr Kenneth Clark in one very important part of its background research.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The quote at the beginning of the column may not have much bearing on the subject to be outlined in this article, but I have used it to give readers a snippet of the mind of the great black US psychologist who died in May 2005 at the age of 90. In the research conducted at the request of attorney Thurgood Marshall, Clark and his PhD wife showed black children dolls that were identical except for the colour of their skins.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The children tended towards labelling the black dolls as 'bad' and the white doll as 'good.' He also asked the children which doll looked most like them. Some children said the white doll looked like them, others refused to answer and others cried, probably in some form of recognition of the confusion in their young, well conditioned minds.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The research conducted by the Clarks provided that needed push to overturn the 'separate but equal' reality which had existed before. In 1954 the overwhelming majority of black children found themselves in a skin shade which American society had decreed was shameful to wear. Years of conditioning in apartheid America had given its black children white eyes to see through.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Fifty-three years later, another more crucial reality with much of the same screenplay has surfaced, and in its declaration, American children of colour and, indeed, all persons of colour worldwide need to reassess their worth in a fast, unkind world where white-skinned people control information, communication and the responses of black people as they look in the mirror and declare, 'I don't like the face I see looking at me.'<P class=StoryText align=justify>Seventeen-year-old Kiri Davis is an African American schoolgirl who wants to be a filmmaker. She has just completed an eight-minute film titled A girl like me and it has been kicking up a storm all across America. Young Davis pretty much mimicked the work of the great psychologists, the Clarks, and conducted the same tests among 21 black children. To say the least, the results were disturbing.<P class=StoryText align=justify>She asked various questions such as 'Which doll do you like to play with? Which is the good doll?' The results?Fifteen of the children (71%) said they preferred the white doll. Kiri Davis is just a young 'schooler' going about her life by questioning where many of us would not dare go. Indeed' after the Clarks had added tr
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