Kenneth Clark

Kenneth Bancroft Clark (July 14, 1914 – May 1, 2005) and Mamie Phipps Clark (April 18, 1917 – August 11, 1983) were Black psychologists who as a married team conducted research among children and were active in the American Civil Rights Movement.

Kenneth Clark was the first Black president of the American Psychological Association.

"Research by black psychologist, Kenneth Clark, fit perfectly into this thinking. He had found that many black children who attended segregated schools preferred white dolls to black ones when given a choice. This, he argued, proved that segregation lowered the self-image of black children, and was an important cause of black failure. [...] Kenneth Clark’s famous doll studies, which the justices cited in their decision, were presented in a deliberately deceptive way. By 1954, Clark had already discovered that Massachusetts blacks attending integrated schools chose a white doll over a black doll more often than did southern blacks attending segregated schools. He refrained from telling the Supreme Court about this because if his doll studies showed anything at all, it was that segregation was good for blacks. Needless to say, Clark’s dishonesty is rarely pointed out, and the illusions he helped promote have remained largely unshaken." Furthermroe, "First, it appears that segregation did not stunt black self-esteem. Blacks generally show higher self-esteem than whites and, if anything, integration lowers it. Second, careful comparisons by region showed that by the early 1960s black schools were not being slighted. Facilities, staff, and textbooks were largely equal, and the small differences to be found could favor blacks as often as whites. Third, integration does not improve race relations, as the sociologists swore it would."

See also

• Civil Rights Movement
• Other race differences: Self-esteem and narcissism

References

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