People are Screwed Up Creatures

Yesterday’s Oprah Winfrey was so very important because it was a peek into the world of children and young people and the devastation of a negative self-image on their psyche. Initially, the show started out with excerpts of the short film by then teenager Kiri Davis, “A Girl Like Me” [2005]. You may have seen the video as it has been in heavy circulation throughout the internet.

Kiri’s film reconstructed the famous test by Dr. Kenneth Clark in which young Black children were asked several questions while being shown a Black doll and a white doll. Astonishingly, the answers were very much the same as 50 years ago. As a Black person, watching that film was really painful.

Overwhelmingly, the children preferred the white doll over the Black doll. Names such as bad and ugly were attached to the Black doll while the white doll was nice and pretty. It was painfully clear that we haven’t instilled a positive self-image in Black children so we really haven't overcome in the last fifty years.

When the topic is race, I often think that White people sigh and think, “Here we go again.” I know that some do because race has been the topic of many conversations with Caucasian friends. I’ve found that some whites are pained and ashamed by slavery also. To know that their relatives committed atrocities against people strictly because of their skin color can be devastating to some whites but racism continues.

When Dr. Robin Smith talked about the pain young people feel today being inflicted, not by whites, but by the African-American community, most often the child’s own family, I thought I would scream. So true. It's happened and still does in my family. Finally, someone actually held Blacks accountable for contributing to the cycle of self-hatred. I'm a believer of knowing better and doing better. Someone has to break the cycle.

Every time Blacks refer to straight hair as good hair and kinky hair as bad hair, we continue the cycle of pain. The same holds true for light skin and dark skin or light-colored eyes and dark eyes.

When you are white and represent the majority race, you just don’t get it. You don’t understand the pain a little Black child feels and carries with him or her to inflict upon their own children and the cycle continues.

To understand the breadth of the devastation of a negative self-image was to listen to the conversation of MTV’s SuChin Pak. Okay, who knew about Asian people and this thing of no crease in their eyelid? I was and am still amazed by that. Many Asians want to look European (white) so eyelid surgery is big business. SuChin spoke of trying to fit in with her white friends as a child. People are screwed up creatures.

Oprah Winfrey is trying to do something about negative self-image of teenage girls. Hopefully, this initiative will have a positive effect. Next, we have to deal with the media that fails to promote the beauty in all of us.

As I watched Oprah’s Show, you know what I thought? Oprah really could be president of the United States in 2016. She’s tapping into a potential voting base (today’s teenage girls) that could make that possibility a reality.