Progression? No....
 

This is shocking to me:
A Girl Like Me

I'm actually pretty speechless. As an aide, I was called "Mommy Reeves" and I called the girls 'my daughters'. Now I wonder, what was I showing them? I never considered them of color; I played with their hair, I dried their tears, I listened to their problems and praised them when they did well, admonished them when they didn't. They hugged me, held my hand as we walked and talked....
This film brought tears to my eyes....

It is sad, but what can you do? Start with your family, your friends, and your children and try and change the world?

Such a shame. And commercials and movies just prolong these attitudes. Here in Oklahoma, it think that you see some of the same things among the native american people.

Interesting that they pick up the doll thing so early. Some of that has to come from home.

Unfortunately it's both an external and an internal problem. They learn it from the outside culture and they learn it from their own subculture.

ngdawg, if you were kind and helpful with your kids, you showed them that race shouldn't matter. You did no harm.

Gilda

I had a conversation one time with another aide, Ken regarding the lack of black educators in our district. Ken was a black man (heh, think he still is, actually) working on his masters in education. We came to a consensus that the disparity was because those of color who go into teaching do it altruistically-they seek out the more depressed systems to teach, become 'role models', to help the deprived. But they get mired in the politcal atmospheres, get held back in their goals by the lack of cooperation on both sides; hence, nothing moves forward and kids like the ones we dealt with get ignored because they're in a so-called middle class district.
I agree that the notions these kids held start at home, but just parenting? I think media should take a chunk of blame as well.

I certainly agree Gilda.

I really don't know what to say to this situation it's something that cannot be fixed immediately.

This cuts a little bit across what is discussed here:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=7107

It really looks that Americans as a whole seem to be really tied up in the "where did my family come from" thing. I'm an Aussie - while I have scottish heritage it is a few generations back (my great-grandparents were born here). *MY* life is defined by Australian culture (we are actually a nation of similar age to USA, so this whole "where did I come from" idea seems a little weird to me.

People should be proud of their country, not be driven by a "culture" from a country they haven't visited and might never visit.

I think the doll test is actually more deeply ingrained in the country psyche. By and large there is a perception that black is bad and white is good. This is *obviously* a false perception but it is a very difficult one to change. I guess everyone needs to take off their "bigotry glasses", but this is easier said than done.

Maybe not a majority, but a helluva large chunk. But how do you force them to change something that's making them that much money?

I dont wanna jack this thread, but did anyone watch the first one "Slip Of The Tongue"

It was totally amazing and beautifull, all I can say is WOW, I thought it was truly progressive.

I'm not sure if the media is really to blame.

Look at TV, try to find negative black role models these days. You rarely see a black man as the villian/thief/murderer unless he has a white partner, there are plenty of black male heros in movies (not any females I can easily recall but thats pretty much true across the board for all races), adds show the happy black upper middle class family almost exclusively, even in the news they shy away from pointing out race, which is absurdly comical on the radio when they give a at large suspect description without race.

So where is the negative self image coming from? Part of it is the dominant culture which is white, helps define what is 'good' by default. One of the subjects I had to study was facial beauty, as it applies directly to my work. A study was done showing US Hispanics and Mexicans line drawn profiles. There was no indication of race outside of the profile itself. Some profiles were the classic 'Caucasian' profile, the others were more Hispanic (there are differences). The US Hispanics thought the Caucasian profiles were more attractive than the Hispanic ones, the Mexicans were more prone to take a Hispanic profile as the more attractive.

What does this mean? I'm not sure tbh, but I think its something of a 'pack' mentality. If a majority of people start to think something is good, better, more attractive, others will start to agree.

Edit:One thing that would have to be looked at is where those kids grew up in that video. Was it a predominantly black neighborhood, or white. If they were surrounded by mostly blacks and picked the white dolls it would say something different than if they were surrounded by whites and picked the white dolls.

I agree for most of the main stream media. I wonder what effect music videos and the Hip-Hop culture has in regards to this. Lots of black women with big butts and lyrics containing negative images like ho's and bitches.

I read somewhere that most people consider faces attractive that are the most average. Average size nose and eyes, average distance between eyes, etc... I wonder how racial differences factor into this? Also I wonder if any white kids would pick black dolls?

It was filmed in Harlem. Quite honestly, I thought every one of those girls was beautiful.

The most important thing is symmetry and the relation to the golden proportion. There is of course a lot of mystical mumbojumbo about the golden ratio etc, but it seems to be true in testing.

There is a lot of unanswered questions in the video, but the one that really would be good to study in depth is the 'baby' part. What they showed was not a good experimental design. Frist just having black children and second only white or black babies wasn't a good way to do it. Perhaps the real experiment had more depth. I'd have had non-standard skintone choices as well, and even a 'pure' white doll. Perhaps the problem with the black babies isn't that they looked black but they looked dirty to the children (I'm not saying its the case, I'm saying it needs to be tested for). Given the choice of a red baby or a black baby which would they pick? Given the choice of a white skin toned baby to a totally white baby which would they pick? I think without such additions the conclusion of the study is questionable.