this makes me very sad...

A 17 year-old high school student, Kiri Davis, found a study done by Dr. Kenneth Clark used in the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case ending school segregation legally. The original study was shocking. Ms. Davis decided to see how things had progress over the years and produced a video entitled A Girl Like Me. Her video is more disturbing.



It makes me very sad. I can only imagine how it would make an African-American feel.

I work predominantly with African-American children. After all of these years I have come to love and cherish them. I see them as no different than any other children with whom I have ever worked. They have all of the same hopes, fears, dreams and cares as everyone else. The one thing that they don't have is the proverbial break that other children have because of the color of their skin.

I was lucky growing up in that I never heard my parents ever use a derogatory name or word. While other members of my family would from time to time display racist behaviour and remarks, my parents, to the best of my memory, never did.

I remember my father saying something to me when I was quite young. He said that his parents and my mother's parents chose to come to this country as a means of breaking the cycle of poverty and class that was found in the old country. The Black people, he said, weren't given a choice. They were stolen from their homes and brought over here against their will. They were put to work and not paid.

That has stayed with me my entire life. I know it made a big difference in the way I think. I have literally been part of the Black culture through working in the community for the last 14 years.

One day I was at my desk and a little girl came in looking for the social worker who sometimes used a little room I have in my office. She couldn't find her and asked me where the lady was who was in my little room. I wasn't sure about whom she was talking and asked the girl who she meant. Her response was very simple and innocent and made all of the people at work smile. She said, "She's light-skinned like you." I felt very proud of the fact that I was somehow just a "person" with whom the girl shared her life in some small way.

The video at the start of this post makes me sad because I have been connect to the Black culture through my work. The culture is vibrant, colorful, historical, alive, caring, family-oriented, and generous. To watch the little kids choose the white doll over the black one is disheartening. The most shocking to me was the little girl who picked the black doll as being bad.

Bad and evil have no color. They are actions that people take who are small-minded and bigoted. That the children have been so ingrained for centuries with the propaganda of groups like the KKK and others who have kept them and their culture in a backwash of hate and prejudice is a shame, not to mention a crime.

more of Love thy neighbor?

just asking...