Black Doll, White Doll, Which one is the nice doll?

We are all aware of the history of racism in America. However when it comes to present day racism, there is whole a different narrative. The following video is a study about race that will make your jaw drop:

Doll test originally by psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark:

 In the 21st century US, white skin is associated with a myriad of positive characteristics and adjectives. The halo effect of light skin tone is so bright and blatant that children as young as age four have internalized the connections. The halo effect is a kind of cognitive bias, where our overall impression, or what we perceive as the sum up of this impression (attractive / smart / agreeable / unintelligent) of a person influences how we judge their character. If we perceive a person to be attractive, ironically, we also assume them to be intelligent, kind and generally likable. When definitions of physical attractiveness are altered, consequently the definitions of the good, the bad and the ugly change as well. It is naturally impossible to clearly define the point at which the Western society decided that white is beautiful, as the issue is better understood as a long historical process of all encompassing politics of domination and persistent hierarchies. In the modern and past US, power, physical attractiveness and intelligence have always gone hand in hand and continue to do so. One need only possess one or two of the attributes, to be all three. While it may appear obvious that intelligent people can be unattractive and powerful people are not always intelligent, however, our social reality and the definitions of its aspects need not have anything to do with reality yet everything to do with our constructed social realities. 

It is heartbreaking to consider that even children believe this social reality to be unchangeable and take it for granted. What is crucial  here is to be aware of the halo effect and to understand that it comes from our primitive emotional brain. Moreover, beauty, among other positive traits which create a halo, is nothing but what the general public believes it to be. 

“Standing still is never an option so long as inequities remain embedded in the very fabric of the culture.” 
-Tim Wise

Our Century's Greatest Injustice

In the last half century more girls were discriminated to death than all the people killed in all the battle fields in the 20th century.

The issue that rarely makes the front page is gender inequality. The single most essential and linear way to lift up entire communities out of poverty is by educating women, a fact that is over and over again ignored. This TEDtalk held by Sheryl WuDunn, the author of "Half the Sky" raises some painful statistics about women's oppression across the globe and demonstrates the magnificent difference educating women particularly in developing countries makes. Only when women are educated and brought into the formal labor system, will we be using all of our human resources to defeat the intimate social and physical violence that marks female bodies, and to overcome global challenges regarding poverty and politics of oppression.

Sheryl WuDunn: Our century's greatest injustice: