The More Racism Changes…
In the 1940’s, psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark conducted their famous Doll Study. In the study, Black children were presented with a choice: do they prefer a white doll over a black doll. Most of the children chose a White doll. This was interpreted as valuing whites over their own racial group. In other words, they suffered from low self-esteem. This study was an important contribution to the Brown v. Board of Ed. decision that ended the legal doctrine of “separate but equal.” Brown effectively made racial segregation illegal and was an important milestone in both the Civil Rights Movement and the evolution of the US as a nation. At the time of this writing (Oct 2025), it is still considered racist to espouse the idea of the legal separation of people by race, though sometimes I have my doubts about whether that will last.
There is a great deal of valid criticism of how the study was conducted, but perhaps more importantly, criticism of the conclusion: that racism caused low self-esteem in Black people. One of the most insightful of these critiques is that of William Cross, (who I once heard say, while speaking at a symposium: “My mother did not have low self-esteem. My SISTER did NOT have low self-esteem!” The passion of his belief made me want to meet them.)
Following his critique, Cross went on to create his Model of Black Identity, which describes a process by which Black people develop awareness of themselves as racial beings (definition of race here). Cross’s model went on to be the foundation of many models of identity development.
The current conservative critique of racial equity efforts often contends that practices like affirmative action have the effect of instilling low self-esteem in Black people. And of course, according to this critique, it is this low self-esteem that is the primary cause of statistically disparate outcomes between Blacks and Whites. Of course, the conservative fix, as we’ve all seen, is to demonize all attempts at DEI as destructive. Of course, DEI isn’t aways helpful and is often flawed and riddled with the biases of the people that create and/or implement them, but the solution seems to be “stop trying.” Many believe that they “don’t see race” and once everyone else doesn’t see race, racism will be over. According to this view, racial awareness is the cause of racism and, like our health, if we ignore it, it will go away.
What these critiques fail to consider is the existence of racist systems that are outcomes of historical racism that bequeathed inequity to the present, the ubiquity of both conscious and unconscious bias in white dominated systems, and the denial that many of us whites have regarding the reality that the onus of curing racism is upon us, just like the onus of stopping theft is on the thief. This belief, that low self-esteem is what Black people have developed due to White attempts at justice, exemplify unconscious bias. Of course, there are Black folx who report struggling with self-esteem, but if one listens, this so-called self-doubt is more often expressed as questioning one’s ability to overcome obstacles of a racist society: an external force, not an internal one.
Even conservative Judge Clarence Thomas, himself a beneficiary of affirmative action, voices his concern as being about the doubt and racism of white people, not self-doubt. “In 1980, Thomas said at a meeting of Black conservatives, ‘You had to prove yourself every day because the presumption was that you were dumb and didn’t deserve to be there on merit.’”* These are the words of a man swimming against an external tide, not self-hatred. He has explicitly credited affirmative action laws as making the way for him, saying “But for them, God only knows where I would be today.” That being the case, the gods only know where today’s generation of Black youth will be tomorrow.