PSYCHOLOGISTS KENNETH and Mamie Clark conducted a very powerful experiment in the 1940s that impacted the exploration of self concept and cultural phenomena for decades. This compelling experiment introduced me to the profound effects that negative stereotypes have on our children. The experiment consisted of a group of black and white children who were asked to choose the preferred doll based on specific words chosen by the experimenter. ie: ugly, nice, naughty, good? etc.

The results were shocking. One hundred per cent of the children, both black and white, only associated negative words with the black doll and 100 per cent of the children, both black and white, only associated positive words with the white doll. This was a powerful indication that there seemed to be a form of indirect prejudice within the white children. It also revealed that there was low self esteem and a deprived sense of self-worth within the black children. The results were repeated in 2010 with similar findings.

What kind of system creates a framework that indirectly teaches you to hate who you are?

What kind of system creates a framework that indirectly teaches you to hate yourself? It is a system that is broken. When you become a parent you naturally want to love and protect your children from anything that may cause them harm but how can you protect them against unconscious bias?

Every aspect of life seems to look at the black man and the black woman through a negative lens and we often digest them without even realising how much they are shaping our belief systems.

Negative stereotypes

The media has had a profound effect on the way images have been formed over the centuries. Subtle stereotypes that feed into our lives categorise and play on our attribution processes. They teach limitation, promote low expectation and marginalise and oppress our potential. These negative stereotypes interfere with job prospects, economic status, educational development and they are powerful distractions affecting our children’s true academic performances.

Our children suffer greatly from stereotypical connotations and become self conscious of these prejudices causing them to under perform, exhibit anxiety, feel less motivated and adopt the negative labels assigned to them.

This is why, in the heat of what could potentially be a fashionable corporate attempt to try to diversify institutions, representation has always mattered to us. We have had to find solutions to encourage ourselves when the world was telling us the opposite.

As a mother, books are so important to me and I use them as powerful tools to help my children believe that anything is possible. We fell in love with reading and it was my mission as their mother to find stereotype-defying role models in their lives.

Reading books that are diverse encourages our children to believe they are a part of a world that describes them as intelligent, confident, beautiful, good and valid. These books empower and encourage them to believe they can achieve their dreams. But despite the realisation of the need to give our children these positive messages, the challenge of finding these books can be difficult.

I remember significant moments when I would spend long periods of time in our local library, trying to add to our piles of tigers and cute little girls with pigtails, with no hope of finding a curly, brown haired little girl, who looked like my daughters. I would struggle to find books in high street shops and there was always a sense of multicultural books being some kind of “niche” purchase.

Our children are being held hostage by a system that doesn’t want them to win. Mainstream publishers don’t sign enough books with diverse stories. They invalidate our experiences to mere splashes of cultural moments and those rare success, when our books become bestsellers, often seem like tokenistic beacons giving us a false sense of cultural security.

I ended up setting up my own Publishing Company, Woke Kidz Books, which led to me writing a children’s book called Lily and the Magic Comb.

Representation Matters. It teaches white children to see the world through a bigger lens motivating cultural intelligence and it empowers black children to feel they have the same possibilities as their white counterparts.

Inclusivity is a human right and we need multicultural books more than ever to shatter the broken system into a millions pieces. We need it not only because it’s important but because it is normal. I really hope that the shift we are feeling will translate to the way the world shapes little minds and their futures.

Lily and the Magic Comb by VV Brown is out now