DANIEL MCCLOUD

As of 1951, segregation in this country was practiced in schools in 17 states, including Washington D.C. This resulted from the 1896 Supreme Court case of “Plessy v. Ferguson,” which laid the foundation for the separate but equal doctrine. As with many battles for change, the inequity in resources remained blatant, rendering the “Plessy v. Ferguson” decision of little consequence in the fight for equality in education.

Ultimately, this led to the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision in “Brown v. The Board of Education,” which, in theory, ended segregation in America. However, Thurgood Marshall and his team had previously litigated against segregation on Dec. 22, 1950. Marshall filed a lawsuit on behalf of Harold Briggs and other Black residents of Clarendon County, S.C., who demanded that their children be able to attend White schools. The “Briggs v. Elliot” case would eventually make it to the Supreme Court, but what is unique in this case, beyond the fact that Blacks sought to end segregation for the first time, was the introduction of the results of social experiments conducted by Dr. Kenneth and Mamie Clark in New York City in the 1930s.

These experiments were later called the “Doll Tests.” The Clarks presented Black children with four dolls. The dolls were the same, except some were Black and some were White. The Clarks asked the children questions such as which dolls were “bad” and which were “good” and “Which doll is most like you?” The results showed that the Black children preferred the White dolls to the Black dolls. The children would say the Black dolls were “bad” and the White dolls looked most like them. To the Clarks, these tests proved segregation gave African-American children a sense of inferiority.

In both “Briggs v. Elliot” and “Brown v. Board of Education,“ Marshall and his team would argue that segregation caused long-lasting, reprehensible damage to Black children, causing them to develop an inferiority complex that can be passed down to future generations. In the Court’s opinion, Chief Justice Warren noted that the results of the doll tests indirectly showed that segregation, the legal separation of Black children, caused “a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.”

While this was a landmark decision, as with “Plessey vs. Ferguson” and so many laws since America can be slow to change, the long-term effects of segregation and the continuous perpetuation of deficit-based ideologies continued. As a result, Steele and Aronson (1995) were the first to coin racial stereotype threats related to this ideology of inferiority found within the walls of higher education. Based on several experiments, it was determined that Black first- and second-year college students underperformed on standardized tests compared with the performance of White students when race was emphasized. However, the same was not true when race was not noted, and Black students performed better and equivalently with White students (Steele & Aronson, 1995). The results of these experiments showed that performance in academic contexts can be harmed by the awareness that one’s behavior might be viewed through the lens of racial stereotypes.

It is beyond disheartening to think that the same harmful environments that led to the results of the Doll Test led to the findings of the experiments conducted by Steele and Aronson. It is vital to know that the components of these harmful environments can be found at every level of society, and within the most basic self-concepts of image and worth remain as crucial as ever. We are often reminded of this in the most simplistic ways by the most vulnerable and innocent: our children.