The baby doll test-circa 2010

Being the great auntie I am I decided to take my nieces along with my brother in laws niece and nephews to the Lawrence Hall of Science this weekend. I had never been and they had a new exhibit up entitled “Race: are we so different”, being an African American Studies major I jumped at the opportunity to expose my nieces to something that I thought would benefit me as well as them. As we entered the exhibit the first thing I noticed was a huge banner with one face made up of many faces with a huge sign across the bottom, it read: “does skin color make race?” I asked my nieces to read it out loud so they could hear it for themselves, kind of like an affirmation thing. The whole exhibit was made up of different posts with several controversial topics, I feared these would go over my nieces heads, how wrong was I. My nieces and I traveled to every post including the “voice test”, in which you had a screen in front of you with several different faces and you had to choose who was speaking, we also went to the “personality screen” where you had to decide whether or not someone was mean or nice just by looking at their face-but in the middle if the exhibit laid a play area with several baby dolls. I took my nieces to the area to unknowingly to perform the “baby doll test” on them. The results were unforgettable. My older nieces Tiajayne 9, Turmeisha 7 were busy looking at Barak Obama, when my youngest niece Taliah 5 sat down with me to play with the dolls. Right next to my niece was a little white girl (name unknown), she was sitting rather close to my niece and eyeing us very carefully as her father watched her watch us. I asked my niece in my auntie-like tone “which one is the pretty one?” She held up the white doll. I asked “which one is the smart one”? Same result. I asked "which one is the boss and which one works for the boss?” She held up the black doll to indicate that one was the one who was the worker. As I continued to ask my niece several questions about why she thought the black doll was ugly and did she think she was ugly, the little white girl moved closer the hear what we were saying more clearly. Then I decided to drop the bomb ,“which one has the pretty hair?” My niece looked at me as if she didn't want to hurt my feeling, but spoke her mind anyway. “This doll has the pretty hair auntie” she said holding up the white doll. I was shocked. I was shocked because the dolls had the same exact hair! Both were made with yarn in the same exact style-except one had red hair (the white doll) and one had black hair (the black doll). My niece looked at the little white girl sitting next to us then looked down. We continued to talk and I asked her “what’s pretty hair?” She pointed to the black doll and said “not that one”. The black doll as well as the white one’s hair was very similar to mines and her. My nieces and I both have synthetic single braids in our head. My older niece Tiajayne said “sister is your hair ugly”? She said “umm, no...but..I...Kinda…mean...that…” SHE MEANS PRETTY LIKE MINES” shouted the little white girl. Immediately her father picked her up and whisked her away. Me and nieces sat there for another 15 minutes discussing beauty, hair and what it means to be beautiful-we didn’t see the little white girl and her father again. I pride myself on be being afrocentric and passing it to nieces, hoping that they embrace their natural beauty and hair. I promised myself that from that day on I would make it my mission to inform my nieces of their greatness and by leading by example next time hopefully the baby doll test will come out differently.