Abstract
The question of whether prejudice and discrimination have damaged the self-esteem of blacks has engaged theorists and researchers for over a generation (e.g., Clark and Clark, 1952; Lewin, 1948), and has served as the subject of literally hundreds of publications (for literature reviews, see Baldwin, 1979; Cross, 1978, 1985; Epps, 1981; Gordon, 1977; Miller, 1981, 1983; Porter and Washington, 1979; Wylie, 1979). One of the most tantalizing features of this literature has been the fact that persuasive theory has supported one conclusion whereas compelling methodology has supported the other. Prior to the sixties virtually all of the research on the subject was based on studies of dolls, pictures, or puppets (Gordon, 1977). In this body of research—of which the Clark and Clark study was the prototype and chief exemplar—young black children were usually presented with black and white dolls, pictures, or puppets and were asked such questions as which is the nice doll, which is the pretty doll, which doll would you like to play with, which doll looks like you, etc. Many black children, it turned out, showed a preference for the white doll or said the white doll looked like them, a finding widely interpreted as reflecting low self-esteem among black children. These findings were consequential for the fate of desegregation, for they were entered as evidence in the plaintiff’s brief in Brown vs. the Board of Education and were used as support for the Supreme Court’s conclusion that segregated education was damaging to the black child’s self-esteem.
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Rosenberg, M. (1986). Self-Esteem Research. In: Prager, J., Seeman, M., Longshore, D. (eds) School Desegregation Research. Critical Issues in Social Justice. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2135-4_7
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