Black Ghanaian Students Say: Black is Beautiful, But Blonde is Ideal

A Connecticut Psychologist looking at students in Ghana found that western preferences for lighter skin tones may be universal.

Mackey distributed questionnaires to more than 200 students from two schools in Accra, the Ghanaian capital. One school was public, while the other was private. They were given a series of questions related to attractiveness, familiarity, wealth, nurturance, academic ability and social acceptance. The first study asked students to relate certain qualities to one of the five dolls – who were placed on a continuum from very light skinned to very dark skinned and were presented to the students. Generally, the lightest skin doll was associated most often with various positive characteristics.

The second study asked the same questions and gave the students a choice between only two dolls – the lightest-skinned doll and the darkest-skinned doll. Again, the students associated the lighter doll with the positive characteristics. The results of the second study were similar to those from studies designed by Kenneth and Mamie Clark during the 1940s in the United States. The Clarks were called upon as expert witnesses during the landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education case, which led to the banning of segregation laws across the nation. Mackey said the Clarks’ studies helped to show that the previous legal standard of “separate but equal” was, in effect, a contradiction because of the low self-esteem demonstrated by the African-American students at that time.

Mackey said that before the studies, she thought the darker-skinned dolls would have scored higher in the areas of nurturance, academic performance and familiarity, but that the lighter-skinned dolls would have scored higher in questions related to opportunity and economics. But almost across the board, the lighter-skinned dolls scored more highly. Source.

There is a lot of evidence to suggest that lighter skin tone in women are preferred across broad cultural and ethnic populations. Such a preference toward lighter skinned males has not been studied as thoroughly, and would probably yield somewhat different results. This gender difference may be due to the fact that within the same ethnic groups, males tend to have darker skin pigment than women.

Nevertheless, it is clear that there is currently a perceived dominant ethnic group in world affairs, primarily of European origin. Such economic, cultural, and military dominance is likely to translate to subconscious perceptions of power and success.

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