"Positive Images For Black Girls"

Today I want to talk about the self esteem of our children. We live in the age of technology, fashion, iPhones, selfies etc., image is everything. Our children grow up watching television and while this is occurring, they begin to form their own image of what they believe to be beautiful. My focus today is strictly on young black girls. Young black girls of today are even more self conscience of their appearance. Back in the sixties, black doctors Kenneth and Mamie Clark, used dolls to conduct a study group involving black girls ranging in ages 4 to 12 years old. The doctors placed two baby dolls one white, and one black on a coach. He then called the girls into the room one by one. The girls were individually asked which doll was the good doll. Immediately they each selected the white doll versus the black doll. The girls were then asked which of the black or white dolls were the prettiest. Again, the black girls immediately chose the white doll, over the black doll. In 2005, Kiri Davis, a black filmmaker conducted a updated doll study test and had similar results. Why do you think this is so? Why is it that so many of our young female babies don't see themselves as beautiful? Image is a very powerful thing. The media, commercials, videos and religion may influence a person's self concept positively, or negatively. Unfortunately some of our children really don't see or have positive self images.

I don't mean to offend anyone with what I'm about to say but even religion can be a factor that impact our young people's self image. Often our young children will go to church and while listening to the preacher teach about the gospel of Jesus, they see pictures or statues of a white Jesus on display in the church. They then mentally picture Jesus as being white. Now I can speak from experience although I am a black male, I myself went through the wonderment of seeing Jesus portrayed as being white, and not seeing a image of a man like myself. That is until one Sunday morning when I was about six years old my grandmother took me to Sunday school. We kids were playing around prior to Sunday school starting, when we all stopped suddenly in our tracks, as we came upon the statute of Jesus. We couldn't believe what we were witnessing. This very same statue of a white Jesus on display in our church for many years was now black! Someone had painted him black! A church elder ca