Recently, I watched the documentary A Girl like Me by Kiri Davis. This is an amazing video about the standards of beauty which discusses light skin vs. dark skin. One of the interesting bits of the video was the doll demonstration with the kids in which the black kids were to choose what doll they preferred between the black and white dolls. Most of the kids choose the white doll as the prettier doll and the black doll as the bad one. They were asked why the black doll was the bad doll and the little girl replied because it’s black.
That moment was a breaking point for me which made me cry. I cried because it was so sad that a little black girl will pick a doll which looks like her and believe that it is bad just because it is black. I also cried because I remember when I was a child, my mother bought a black doll for me. I disliked it so much. I broke its legs and pulled the hair out. I cried because I wonder how come as a child I felt that way. What made me hate something so much that looked liked me? Why do some black kids at a young age feel inferior and hate things that look just like them? Why do they feel that the black doll is bad just because it is black? This breaks my heart so much.
I spoke to a friend about this, she told me she believes one of the reasons (more…)
