New �doll test� produces ugly results

I just find this to be absolutely.......disgusting. Even now in this day and age, black kids hate themselves.... It makes me want to just cry....

Mr January Happy New Year!!!

The doll test studies are really sad. As for people who can't see beauty beyond some made up standard, I have no words for them.

̴ We are Siamese if you please! We are Siamese if you DON'T please!! ̴

Very sad indeed. All I can say is that racism is alive and well.

Just last week, two things happened that brought me some distress. As some of you may know, my wife runs her own daycare out of the house. My son goes to kindergarten every other day for a full day, so on the alternate days, he stays at home. A couple of kids come to the daycare as part of an after-school program. One is Asian (mainland China) and the other is Black (Haiti). I have noticed that my son does not play with the Black girl that much. Well, last week, I asked him why, and he responded, much to my chagrin, "because she has dark skin".

I was floored. I can tell you in all honesty, my wife and I have never taught him anything like this - and if you have seen my postings on the Blasian thread, not to mention other threads I've penned, you know my stand on these things anyway). He has to be picking this up from school. Sure enough, there are a couple of twins in his class (Greek background - I only mention this for context as many of my son's classmates are Asian) who have been making remarks about minorities, as well as overweight people, and so forth. I suppose I expected this 25 years ago at a mostly Caucasian school that I attended, but at a minority-dominated elementary school (remember, these kids are in kindergarten). So I had a long chat with the teacher, who talked with the parents (one of whom is a minister, who has expressed his disgust at how his kids are acting this way).

I was sharing this experience with one of my friends at our church, who is Black (her husband is White, and they have a daughter), and she said that just that same week, her daughter came home and told her, after dance class, that she wants to be White. My friend was like, "what?" And she said that a kid in her dance class said that she will never be a beautiful dancer because she is black." We're talking about a 5-year-old here. She came home asking her daddy how she can be more White like him. Doesn't this just break your heart to hear this? My friend was pretty distraught. I mentioned to her that she really should find out who said this to her and take appropriate (or inappropriate) action.

If parents aren't teaching these views, these kids must be getting it from somewhere. In my son's case, I found out that he was exposed to this at school, from a couple of kids who I still wonder where they learned this from. Needless to say, I had a long chat with my little guy upstairs, and he ended up apologizing to the Black girl in the daycare. I told my son about the many times where I was hurt (both mentally and physically) by racial epithets and being attacked because I was Asian - I told him that he will not respond this way and besides, if these kids are talking about Black folks in a negative light, what are they saying about *you* behind your back? I reminded him that he is a visible minority member and can easily be the target of such taunts. I debated whether I should spank him (I am very pro-spanking, as some of you may know), but decided against it for this instance. Needless to say, he got the message, and avoided the other kids like the plague this week. I think those kids' dad must have (pardon the language upcoming) "opened a can of whoop-ass" on these kids, since they were quite subdued this week.

I do think that some things are changing though. On the kids' programming on the public TV stations (I don't have cable), there is a much more noticeable infusion of visible minorities on the shows. That is not to say that I agree with token minority representation - I don't - but the shows should reflect the ethnic nature of its viewership and in Canada, it's fairly ethnically diverse.

A bit off-topic but not quite:

In American girl stores girls can get a doll that looks like them

See the front page of the site:

American Girl Stores

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moomin

Honey-bunnyyyy...

Jerms, I had a similar experience with my own daughter recently...

One of my two daughters is extremely, incredibly girly-girlish...Her tomboy big sis and I sometimes just roll our eyes and giggle. She's appointed herself the family fashion advisor, is obsessed with tweener shows, and started talking about "boyfriends" in preschool. She's also very pretty in a conventional, blonde-haired, blue-eyed dollface kinda way, so she's used to getting compliments from strangers, teachers, family, etc.

Well about a year ago, before Troy Bolton came along and stole her tiny heart, she was BIG into the Disney Princesses (don't get me started on that bullshit, but I try to let my kids make their own choices in toys and movies, within reason--they just have to hear my liberal, feminist rant before they can watch...and sometimes during. :P).

Anyway, she was huge into Disney Princesses and I noticed it had been quite a number of years since the last fully-animated Princess feature. I Googled to try to figure out what the next one would be and to my great pleasure, I discovered that Disney FINALLY had a movie featuring an African-American princess in the works: The Princess and the Frog - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia .

I called my daughter over to the computer and brought up some of the concept images to show her. She got this odd look on her face. "What's wrong, honey?" I asked, "I thought you'd be excited to see these pictures." And she responded, "But that princess isn't beautiful." I still didn't get it. I'm like, "What do you mean? Look at her beautiful dress and hair!" And my kid goes, "But she has dark skin."

I cannot express how shocked and saddened I was. (We have people of all races in our extended family, for one thing; had she been thinking they weren't beautiful, either?) We had a nice little chat about how silly it is to think that whiteness equals beauty, supported with images of beautiful women of color. It was a rude awakening to say the least. Like a lot of people, I had grossly underestimated the effect of the mainstream media on my kids. I became a hell of a lot more aware after that. (And her Disney-princess themed room was swapped out posthaste.)

Hey, the world is what it is, but if you can take someone under your wing and make a difference in that one person's perception of themselves, I think that's huge. Imagine the difference that one person could make in another person's life and so on. I used to only lend my advice to close friends, but then I saw the difference they made in other people's lives by passing it on. Now I help whoever with much hope that by helping them control their issues and love themselves, they can spread the same influence to the people they care about.

Nope, not surprised at all. I'm not much different from the girls in this study. I never once wished I was white, but for a long time I felt deep down that I wasn't as beautiful as women with lighter skin. Hell, let's be honest. There are times right now in the present that I feel that my own beauty is lacking because people obsess so much over lighter skin. All of that plays into why I no longer participate as much as I used to on AL - too many Asian men don't find beauty in dark skin. I have enough self-esteem issues as it is than to subject myself to more nonsense.

Thankfully, however, I'm starting to recognize that I am beautiful (getting hit on and complimented by several guys at the work place helps too). That's a good feeling.

On a side note, this ideology that light skin is better than dark skin is kind of why I'm not excited about Barack Obama. So many people are praising him as the first African American President. Well, he's not dark like most Blacks because he's half white. I can't help but think that plays into his favor.

"I am American mentally with Japanese tendencies." - Lupe Fiasco