When I was a child, we had only Black dolls in the house—a consideration that I am realizing was not universal. My mother was adamant about this decision, and she was also clear with us, as children, as to why. She based this part of her parenting on the famous “doll test” that was included as evidence in Brown v. Board of Education, the court decision that declared school segregation illegal. During the 1940s, the psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark devised a psychological experiment to attempt to trace the effects of segregation on Black children’s psyches.
