Playing the role

Ebony, June, 1995 by Laura B. Randolph

The whole thing might have fit Norman Rockwell's idyllic picture of America. If, that is, Rockwell had done us. Black folks. But for my friend Robert, it wasn't such a pretty picture at all.

It was the recent revelation by Chloe, his 8-year-old daughter, of the role she wanted to play at her school's annual career day. It sent shockwaves through this single father. Career day at Chloes school is a big deal because it is the one day the kids get to ditch their drab black and gray uniforms and wear the outfit of their choice.

On this day, for this end-of-the-school-year party, the concept isn't come as you are. It's come as you wannabe. Years from now. Down the road. In life. When you're all grown up and on your own.

For Robert, his daughter's choice was unsettling. Not because it was a non-traditional job, but because it came so naturally to his third grader. For Career Day, Chloe wanted to be a bride.

The first time Chloe mentioned the bride thing to Robert, he was cool. Without a trace of concern in his voice, he gently suggested she consider going as something -- anything -- more, well, secure and well-paying.

He didn't start getting nervous, he said, until several weeks later. That's when, in anticipation of the big day, Chloe asked him to take her to the bridal salon at Bloomingdale's to pick out her gown. Nervous crossed the line into deep distress (and a grudging admiration) when, after he nixed the Bloomingdale's trip, Chloe went upstairs, got herself a pair of scissors and a white king-size sheet and proceeded to turn it into what I can only say sounded like a cross between a Casper The Friendly Ghost Halloween costume and Princess Di's wedding gown.

"Maybe I'm overreacting," Robert said later.

"Maybe you are," I answered. "What does your son want to be?" "He hasn't made a final decision yet. But it's between a policeman, an astronaut and a rodeo clown."

"In other words," I said as gently as I could, "your son's goal in life is to be kids own man and your daughter's goal in life is to get a man."

Long pause. "Oh, no," Robert moaned miserably. "How could this have happened?"

Easily. Children are impressionable. They internalize the messages -- healthy or unhealthy, intended or not -- that we, and the world in which they live, send them.

Remember the landmark 1940s study by Kenneth Clark that was later used to argue Brown v. Board of Education? Little girls were shown a Black doll and a White doll and asked which one was the good doll, which one was the pretty doll, which doll was "the right" color. In overwhelming numbers, the little girls chose the White doll.

As sad as those results were, they shouldn't have been surprising. It was before The Movement. Before The Revolution. Before Black was beautiful. Or at least before America acknowledged or celebrated it.

Those little Black girls chose the White dolls because they had internalized the message society had sent them every day of their lives in a thousand different ways about who they were and who they were not. They were Black, and Black was not beautiful. At least not then.

White women, however, were beautiful. Every movie they watched, every magazine they read, every Miss America pageant they saw told them so.

Before the '60s, even if a little Black girl wanted to play with a doll that looked like her, chances were she couldn't. When the study was conducted, we had the same number of mass market culturally affirming toys as we had Black Barbies: zero. (Christie, Barbie's Black friend, wasn't created until 1968 and it took another dozen years before Black Barbie was introduced.)

What, you ask, does the Black doll thing have to do with Chloe's bride thing? Everything. As I told Robert, that study is the most compelling illustration I know of how deeply and completely the things to which we expose our children shape their hopes and dreams and, most importantly, their sense of themselves and their possibilities.

There is no other explanation for why the results of The Doll Study reversed when, in the late '80s, Dr. Darlene Powell-Hopson replicated it with one critical difference: before the little girls were asked to choose between the dolls, they were told stories about the Black ones, stories of their great beauty and power and splendor.

In the months preceding career day, Robert told Chloe stories too. At bedtime, he read her Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, to name a few. Beloved and timeless stories all, they send impressionable little girls like Chloe the same message: find the handsome prince and you will find your life's purpose; marry him and you will live happily ever after.

"So what you're telling me," Robert sighed wearily, "is if I want Chloe to grow into a strong Black woman, I can't read her Cinderella."

"Sure you can," I said. "As long as you also read her the stories of Black women who are strong and powerful, who are real, not fiction, who are changing the world, who control their own life and destiny."

"Any suggestions?" he asked.

"Just one," I answered. "Each time you read her a fairy tale, read her Maya Angelou's "Phenomenal Woman." Get her to memorize it and recite it. Over and over. Every morning and every night. And then watch as, right before your eyes, she grows up to be one."