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IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
Race attitudesBEFORE
1929 German-born writer and
social worker Bruno Lasker
publishes Race Attitudes in
Children, setting up methods
for the psychological study of
children’s views on race.Early 1930s Canadian
psychologist Otto Klineberg
works with lawyers fighting
for equal salaries for black
public-school teachers.AFTER
1954 The US Supreme Court
rules that racial segregation in
schools is unconstitutional,
in the Brown v. Board of
Education of Topeka hearings.1978 Elliot Aronson devises
the “jigsaw method” of
teaching—where mixed-race
groups of students work
interdependently—to help
reduce racial prejudice in
integrated classrooms.D
uring the late 1930s,
Kenneth Clark and his
wife, Mamie Phipps Clark,
studied the psychological effects of
segregation on African-American
schoolchildren, particularly on their
self-image. They designed a “doll
test” that would indicate children’s
awareness of racial differences and
their underlying attitudes about
race. Working with children
between the ages of three and
seven, they used four dolls, each
identical in appearance except for
the color of their skin, which ranged
from shades of white to dark brown.
The children showed an undeniable
awareness of race by correctly
identifying the dolls on the basis of
their skin color, as well as
identifying themselves in racial
terms by choosing the doll that
looked most like them.
In order to explore the children’s
attitudes about race, the Clarks
asked each of them to point out the
doll they liked best or most wanted
to play with; the doll that had a nice
color; and the doll that looked bad.
Distressingly, black children
showed a clear preference for the
white dolls and a rejection of the
black dolls, which can be interpreted
as indirect self-rejection. Convincedthat this reflected the children’s
tendency to absorb racial prejudices
that exist in society and then to
turn this hatred inward, the Clarks
asked a very important question:
“Who teaches a child to hate and
fear a member of another race?”Passing on prejudice
The Clarks sought to understand
the influences shaping prejudice
in America, and decided that as
children learn to evaluate racial
differences, according to the
standards of society, they areClark’s doll experiments of the late
1930s and early 1940s showed that black
children in segregated schools often
preferred white dolls, a sign that they
had absorbed prevailing prejudices.WHO TEACHES A CHILD
T O HATE AND FEAR
A M E M B E R O F
A N O T H E R R A C E?
K E N N E T H C L A R K ( 1 9 1 4 – 2 0 0 5 )