The Color of Beauty

A few of my friends have had to endure rants and ramblings about the intersection of race and perceptions of beauty and I'm sure they think I'm crazy. But every so often a study or report comes out about black girls and their perceptions of themselves and how society perceives them. I am always saddened by the results.

Nearly 70 years ago sociologists Mamie and Kenneth Clark did an experiment to determine how black children perceived themselves by using white and black dolls and asking them questions about which ones they thought were "nice" and which ones they'd rather play with. Those children are senior citizens now and grew up in an anti-black segregated society. Overwhelmingly, the children identified the white doll as the nice one and said they preferred to play with the white doll.

Every few years someone has tried to replicate this study but this week Good Morning America added a new question. They asked 19 black elementary students which doll was prettier. Nearly half of the girls identified the white doll as prettier, despite the fact that the dolls are identical except for color. The black boys said both dolls were pretty or said the black doll was prettiest.

I'm not really surprised by the results, just saddened. As a black female I am very aware of the mainstream perceptions of beauty and how they can be harmful to the self-esteem of black girls and women. Black women face all the same self-confidence issues that white women do but also face issues about skin shade and hair texture. Imagine this, the first time I went to purchase makeup in a pharmacy, the darkest shade of foundation was still too light for me. Also consider the images black girls and teenagers are bombarded with in magazines...White girls/women are always featured prominently and black girls/women are rarely featured at all and when they are featured on the cover of a women's magazine they are typically light in complexion with long relaxed hair and "European features."

While this experiment is not exactly empirical data, it is an indication that something is wrong with the ways black little girls see themselves. It is clear, the girls interviewed by Good Morning America associate whiteness with beauty. So I think it's important for us to ask why. And to have a dialogue about modern perceptions of beauty that is race-sensitive.

Goodbye, newspapers. You'll be missed.

Print is dying a slow, cruel death. I'm quite upset about it, but I understand why. Newspapers, magazines and even broadcast news (which is still doing relatively well), have seriously failed at advancing public debate.

There was a time, believe it or not, that newspapers informed public opinion, reported on local, national and international happenings and also were...dare I type it...Interesting. The writing was better, the editing was better and reporters were less likely to be disgruntled-types working for the man and more likely to innovative.

I've been thinking a lot about how I get my news and whether or not I've contributed to the problem and I'm sorry to admit that I have. And this is why, I don't have time to read the New York Times daily and it takes me a week to get through the Sunday Times. Instead, I scan the headlines of several newspapers every day (NYTimes, WaPo, Newsday and the Daily News). I get most of my national news from CNN.com, Politico and local news from neighborhood blogs.

While, I hate the idea of losing the elite newspapers like the Times, WaPo and other broadsheets, I think it's time they make changes to reflect American life and modern attitudes.

And aren't these papers and their management teams largely to blame for their own demise? We just survived (although the jury is still out on whether or not we'll recover) one of the least transparent and borderline corrupt presidential administrations in recent history and yet, I don't recall seeing many enterprising pieces in the Times or the other elite papers about the effects of the administration. Everyone loves writing about expert opinions and speculating, but there are so few stories in the news about what happens when policies are implemented. It's called spin for a reason. And the Bush administration out-witted the press by spinning nearly everything and the Obama adminstration will likely do the same. It's the nature of politics and has sadly become the nature of journalism.

When I decided to become a journalist at age 15, I thought I would be writing about topics like race, poverty, gender, education and public policy. I didn't realize I would be spending time writing stories that satisfied readers, rather than provoked them. And most of the reporters and editors I know want to do just this. They want to write thought-provoking pieces that inform, excite, anger and engage the masses, but instead we have been reduced to ambulance chasers. Newspapers do very little to inspire or enrage and a lot to feed the existing narratives.

I'm sad to see newspapers go and I'd like to see them survive, but I don't think that will happen without some serious reflection on why so many are failing.