Only white girls can be princesses

Today of course there are black faces who transcend race and are held up as role models for all peoples; Condoleezza Rice and Barrack Obama (politics), Halle Berry and Will Smith (movies), Beyonce Knowles and Snoop Dog (music), Opera Winfrey and Tyra Banks (media), Tiger Woods and Serena Williams (sports).

However, for those negative self-image thoughts to occur there must be external psychological influences, not apparent to viewers of the documentary, which has left a lasting impression on the fragile minds of children in this experiment. One can only presume that those 15 children who said the white doll was the good doll must have negative personal experiences to draw upon when answering the questions. Experiences such as witnessing domestic violence, drug related or anti-social behaviour from black perpetrators could be possible contributing factors to their state of mind.

Then again perhaps a succession of racist white teachers or fellow white students over time have made disparaging remarks that belittled their race. For some, as young as the study group mentioned above, regular racial abuse could possibly have the affect of tearing down pride and self-esteem that have built up over the years from positive parental nurturing.

But, then again, maybe I’ve read it wrong and the children have in fact been conned by effective marketing strategies of big corporations who make maximum use of television and billboards that only show attractive, fit, healthy white people endorsing popular products.

Could it happen in Australia?

I believe it could - as it almost became a significant issue in my immediate family before I became proactive with my wife Rhonda and restored the status quo of cultural pride.

We had an unsavoury experience when our son returned home after several weeks in grade one at a private school. He was the only Indigenous student at the school at the time and after a testing day he came home and demanded from us not to use traditional language words to identify basic food items over dinner. He then said he didn’t like the Aboriginal paintings deliberately placed throughout the house, nor did he want to learn how to blow the didgeridoo at home or throw the boomerang in the park with me on weekends.

To say Rhonda and I were shocked is an understatement - you could’ve knocked us over with a feather duster.

The following day I went to the school and sought a meeting for Rhonda and myself with the principal. He listened calmly to our concerns and said he would make inquiries and get back to us. To his credit he called us both to his office two days later to report that he had located two year 4 students who were bullying our son and using racial slurs against him. He also said he met with their parents and warned them that if the boys were caught abusing our son again they would need to find them another school to go to.

Our son never experienced such malice again at that school and I’m glad to report he hasn’t reported any comparable abuse at the new private secondary school he now attends. At the first interview with the high school principal, several years ago, I posed the question of what he would do if my son was bullied or racially vilified - to which he responded he would give one warning to the offender(s) and their parents and if repeated they would be summarily expelled. Needless to say I was impressed and with the support of Rhonda enrolled him the same day.

On a more upbeat note - two years ago my daughter was sharing with me a couple of her school projects she had just completed in year 5. One project that caught my attention was the exercise that required her to draw a picture of her closest friends and to write down the two things that she thought they liked most about themselves, for example, being good at skipping, reading, playing tennis and so on. The other part of the exercise was to do a self evaluation of the things that she liked doing and what she liked most about herself.

In respect to the second part of the exercise, and the item that appealed to me the most, was a sketch my daughter drew of herself and the words she inserted beside the sketch. She drew a dark image of herself with long brown hair and with a tennis racket in her hand and wrote in her best hand writing that she was “proud to be an Aborigine first and loved playing tennis second”.

To say my chest puffed out would be an understatement as I never really expected my young daughter to be so unswerving with such emphatic words of pride when all her class mates, from my subtle inquiries with other parents, didn’t make any reference to their race, colour or religion. They all shared snippets of information about the sport, stamp collection, dolls, toys or favourite singers and authors.

As the Right Reverend Jesse Jackson once said, “Today's students can put dope in their veins or hope in their brains. If they can conceive it and believe it, they can achieve it. They must know it is not their aptitude but their attitude that will determine their altitude.”