Over the last couple of days beginning on May 17 and continuing to now through May 19, I have watched with anger at some points, dismay at others, but ultimately with deep disappointment, and near resignation, as Anderson Cooper of CNN reported a segment of the show entitled “Children and Race in America". As a person that prides himself on staying abreast of matters that affect African Americans as a people, I found myself nonetheless surprised, even stunned by the persistence of racial bias, and stereotyping, in children as young as four and as old as ten, in what many of us hope had become a post racial society.

In a study that began before Brown v. The Board of Education, and in fact laid the groundwork in some regards for that landmark decision, two prominent Black psychologist, Kenneth Bancroft Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark, in what has become to known as the "Doll Study " reach the alarming conclusion that Black children when offered the opportunity to play with dolls that looked like themselves as opposed for dolls that were meant to look like white children, overwhelming choose the white doll.

Nearly sixty years later, even as this country celebrates it's first African American president, and many people both Black and White speak of a post racial America, the racial bias and stereotyping that many thought had been nearly buried with the Brown decision, shows in a new study using children of both races and conducted along similar lines, that the perniciousness of racial bias, even in the very young remains deeply entrenched in our country's culture. In a persistent pattern that should have stunned even the most jaded observer, children both Black and White identified the Black childlike images that they were shown, with feelings of negativity, anger and unattractiveness, while in the very next breathe giving the reverse view of images that were identified as White children.

In one question after another, young Black children most between the ages of 4to 6 consistently identified the images that look like themselves as being bad, unattractive or the color that most adults disliked. What for me was perhaps the dismaying and on some level confounding, is that these children, Black children are the grandchildren of those of us that shouted "Say it loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud" or "To be Young Gifted and Black!"  Moreover, and perhaps even more troubling, these are children of the hip hop generation. The generation that didn't merely shout “Young Gifted and Black" but lived it.
Somewhere along the line, there has been a profound disconnect.  Somewhere, somehow, something was left unsaid, unlearned, untaught. There is a nagging sense both visceral and cerebral, that there is something seriously wrong with this picture.

Here we are now 2010. One hundred and forty five years after physical slavery. Yet, we find the pernicious tentacles of racial superiority embedded not simply in White children, but deeply embedded in our own children.  The subliminal message of White superiority and of Black negativity is so entrenched that even the entrepreneurs of the hip hop industry, rappers and choreographers alike have become unwitting participants in this cancer of racial bias.

One need only look at whom or what colors African American woman are that appeared almost exclusively in today’s videos, to see the persistent presence of colorism.  If, your Black stay back, if, your Brown stick around. if, you’re Yellow you’re my fellow, and if, you’re White you’re alright."

It is alive and well, even amongst the supposed enlightened. White, light, suggests wholesomeness, pretty, good and favored. Dark Brown and Black continue to imply, angry, aggressive, and not attractive.

How many times have you heard a fellow African American say "She's nice looking to be so dark.” How many times have you said it, or thought it yourself?

This is the same type of racial bias, racial profiling and stereotyping that undergirds the pre-textual stops of Latin and African Americans far in excess to their respective numerical representation.  For that reason amongst others, is there any wonder that The Center for Constitutional Rights noted that Blacks and Latinos in New York were nine times more likely to be stopped and frisked by police than their White counterparts in New York during 2009. It therefore takes no great leap of faith to see the connective tissue between the answer given by otherwise innocent children and their negative depiction of Blacks and the behavior of White officers zealous and disproportionate and targeted stopping of Blacks and Latinos.
 
In closing, is this, the aforementioned an incurable malady? No, it is not. However, it is a cancer, that like most cancers, we ignore at our own peril.
                                                                                                             Akbar Pray
comments and discourse are encouraged!