In 1947, Black psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark conducted The Doll Test. They used it to demonstrate the negative effects of segregation on Black children. During the test, Black kids were shown four dolls, identical except their color; two were Black and two were white. Drs.Clark asked these children a series of questions: Which one of these dolls is the mean doll? The bad doll? The ugly doll? After each question, the kids all pointed to the Black doll. During one particularly poignant moment, a young boy pointed to the Black doll and said, “That’s a n*****. I’m a n*****.”¹Legal Defenses Fund, “Brown v Board and ‘The Doll Test,’” https://www.naacpldf.org/brown-vs-board/significance-doll-test.

After hearing the arguments during Brown v Board of Education, the Supreme Court alluded to the Clarks’ research:

“To separate [African-American children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.”²Ibid.

Contemporary iterations of this test are still given, and even today Black and Brown children overwhelmingly prefer the light-colored dolls, also believing that adults also prefer the lighter dolls.³Dixon Fuller, “Doll Test” YouTube, February 8, 2012.

These results made sense in the 1940s. Black kids were told directly and indirectly by the wider culture that they were too dirty, diseased, unintelligent, and immoral to occupy the same space as white kids. How could your self-esteem not plummet when you’re treated like a pariah?

But why are the results often the same today, over 80 years later? The answer is what Dr. Beverly Tatum calls cultural racism, defined as “the cultural images and messages that affirm the assumed superiority of Whites and the assumed inferiority of people of color.”⁴Beverly Tatum, PhD, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in The Cafeteria? 86. She writes that cultural racism is like smog in the air; you breathe it in without even knowing it. 

We see cultural racism in Hollywood and the media. In most television shows and movies, the good guys are white and the bad guys are Black or Brown. I remember watching a police series with one of my sons. After seeing about six or seven episodes, I asked him, 

Hey, what color are the bad guys – usually?

He responded, Um, Black or Hispanic.

Yes, and what crime are they usually committing?

Um, they’re usually drug dealers.

When I told him that the an equal percentage of illegal drug users and dealers in America are white, he looked at me in astonishment. Really?! It saddened me that my son subconsciously believed that people who looked like him were mostly responsible for the drug trade in America.

Cultural racism is like smog in the air; you breathe it in without even knowing it. Share on X

Similarly, white or light-skinned women usually get caste as the beautiful love interest in movies. It is rare to see dark women portrayed as glamorous and worthy of pursuit. In the media, Black men are over-represented as perpetrators of crime, and Black suspects are presented as more threatening. Black mug shots are shown more often than white, and the perpetrator’s color is more often mentioned on the radio if he is Black.⁵Elizabeth Sun, “The Dangerous Racialization of Crime in US News Media,” The Center for American Progress, CAP 20, August 29, 2018, Accessed via https://www.americanprogress.org/article/dangerous-racialization-crime-u-s-news-media.

We can also see cultural racism in school curricula. I can count on one hand, and still have fingers left, the number of books by Black authors my children have read and the number of non-white heroes they have studied. The subliminal message kids receive at schools all over the nation is, “White people write the important books and do the important things.” Our culture is still telling Black kids, “There’s something wrong with you.” And it is still telling white kids, “You are better.”

Much has been written about the effects of racism on kids of color, but what happens to those who even subconsciously harbor racist views?

After Brown, Dr. Kenneth Clark was dismayed that the court failed to cite two other conclusions he and his wife had reached: that racism was an inherently American institution and that school segregation inhibited the development of white children, too.⁶Legal Defenses Fund, “Brown v Board and ‘The Doll Test,’” https://www.naacpldf.org/brown-vs-board/significance-doll-test.

Racism is an inherently American institution. School segregation inhibited the development of white children, too. Share on X

Legal segregation is over, but how does cultural racism affect the spiritual development of white children? 

1. First, those who even subliminally believe in white supremacy, cannot fully love their neighbor. They are unable to grasp the fundamental causal of our faith, “For God so loved the world…” (John 3:16a). For God so loved Black people, Asian people, Latinx people – This truth can only go so deep when deep inside you feel superior. The Apostle Paul writes that the law can be summed up simply by the injunction, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Gal 5:14 NKJV). Racism renders that impossible.
2. Second, those who believe that they are superior, won’t fully value repentance and transformation. They won’t work out their salvation with fear and trembling because they believe that they are not really that bad. A spiritual mediocrity settles into their souls and their hearing becomes dull. They won’t walk with Jacob’s limp, and they will too often sit in judgement of others, always seeing the speck, completely unaware of the plank.
3. Third, their discernment will be skewed. For them, the white person is right and the person of color is wrong. White nations are benevolent and Black and Brown nations malevolent. White kids are struggling; Black kids are reprobate. White people deserve mercy and Black and Brown people punishment. They cannot see past their partiality to make fair judgements.

Those who believe that they are superior, won’t fully value repentance and transformation. They won’t work out their salvation with fear and trembling because they believe that they are not really that bad. (1/2) Share on X

A spiritual mediocrity settles into the souls of those who believe they are superior. They won’t walk with Jacob’s limp, too often siting in judgement of others, always seeing the speck, completely unaware of the plank. (2/2) Share on X

So what do we do? How can white parents, grandparents, pastors, and teachers counteract this racism that hobbles spiritual formation? I’ll offer four suggestions:

1. First, teach your kids that all people were intentionally created by a loving God – just the way they are. When he knit them together in their mother’s womb, God chose everyone’s skin, hair texture, eye shape – and he delights in all of it. They are his workmanship, bought with a price and accepted in the beloved. People come in every size, shape and color, and we are equally beautiful and equally loved.
2. Second, teach your kids that God created the nations (the ethnos), and with the nations, diverse skin tones (“From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth,”Acts 17:26 NLT, my own emphasis added in italics). God created Africa and to protect Africans from the sun’s rays he provided them with a lot of melanin and when he created Europe, he knew that Europeans wouldn’t need as much melanin. It is preposterous and unnecessary to attempt to be colorblind. Ethnicity is part of God’s creation and skin color is part of ethnicity. But deciding that those with lighter skin are superior to those with darker skin is baseless, random, and wicked.
3. Third, don’t dodge hard questions. Disparities exist and the older kids get, the more they will see them. Why are the poverty and incarceration rates for Black people higher than white people? I don’t read in the Bible that sin dwells in one people group more than another, that white people are inherently harder working and less criminally minded than nonwhite people. Teach your kids that that is ridiculous! Why do theses disparities exist? Find out and explain it to your kids.
4. Fourth, teach your kids about the excellence of Black and Brown people. They established empires and survived bondage, reservations, and internment camps. They sang through their sorrow, taught themselves to read and refused despair. Despite so much hardship, people of color have produced some of the most impressive minds this country and this world have known.  Your white kids should read books written by people of color about people of color.

When God knit people together in their mother’s womb, God chose everyone’s skin, hair texture, eye shape – and he delights in all of it. They are his workmanship, bought with a price and accepted in the beloved. Share on X

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Years ago, I saw a grainy black and white photo of a lynching. It was horrible to see a human being hanging from a tree after having been tortured. But equally horrifying was the audience. There in the front row was a cute little white girl, probably about 10 years old, with long pigtails staring impassively at the macabre scene. She didn’t hide behind her mother’s skirt or wince; she merely sat watching as a man’s life was brutally extinguished. I was struck by how much racism deforms the soul. This little girl would have wept to see a dog treated this way, yet she could witness a man treated this way and feel no sorrow. How did she raise her children? What values did she pass on to her grandchildren? If she purported to be a Christian, how did she reconcile that violence with her faith?

Thankfully, white children don’t attend lynchings anymore, but they still do breathe the smog of cultural racism. As Christians, it is our duty to provide the clean air of truth, that the Jesus whom they worship is the same Jesus who sat with a Samaritan woman and modeled the way of impartial love.

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Teach your kids about the excellence of Black and Brown people. They established empires and survived bondage, reservations, and internment camps. They sang through their sorrow, taught themselves to read and refused despair. Share on X