Dark Ghetto

Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power (1965) is Kenneth Bancroft Clark's seminal sociological and psychological treatise, in which he likened the American ghetto, with Harlem as the prototype, to an urban colony in which the almost exclusively black inhabitants are emotionally and psychologically damaged and scarred as a result of the perpetual racism, greed, insensitivity, discrimination, and fear of a white ruling class that rationalizes racial segregation on the basis of the alleged inherent inferiority, subhumanity, and brutality of the “Negro.” Written in the wake of two 1964 events—the Harlem riot and the passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, Dark Ghetto was Clark's self-proclaimed “anguished cry.”

Although born in the Panama Canal Zone, Clark was raised by his mother in Harlem. Thus, he approached his boyhood home as an “involved observer.” Eschewing the notion of objectivity as unrealistic and unattainable, he sought the truth behind the Harlem “pathology”: the staggering rates of juvenile delinquency, family instability, drug addiction, infant mortality, and homicide. What he found was a “devouring” ghetto filled with bars, churches, and fortune-tellers—and funeral homes. The only constant he reported is inadequacy, with its ever-present attendants: fantasy, decay, abandonment, and defeat.

Perhaps the most widely reported finding in Dark Ghetto is that of the “doll tests,” which consisted of showing four identical dolls, two black and two white, to black children across the country, some as young as 3 years old. These children, when given a choice, tended to reject the dark-skinned dolls as “dirty” or “bad.” Further, when asked which doll resembled them, many of the children ran away in tears. Ironically, Clark exhibited a similar aversion to his own ancestry by declaring that the American Negro is no more African that he is Danish, Indian, or Irish.

What these tests revealed is that by the age of 7, most black children are painfully aware of the negative connotations associated with their dark skin. Society, primarily through the mass media, has taught them the unavoidable lesson of their so-called inferiority. This sets in motion a cycle of self-hatred and group-hatred that is intergenerational and generally lifelong. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) used the doll-test findings as a major part of the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, which ruled that school segregation is unconstitutional.

Clark identified several strategies that have historically been used by blacks in America to effect social change: prayer, isolation, accommodation, despair, alienation, law and maneuver, direct encounter, and truth. He also named two racial fantasies employed in America by blacks and whites alike—accommodation and acceptance, as well as a third fantasy used exclusively by blacks—militancy. Ultimately, he posited that the ghetto is, in simplest terms, the result of a struggle for power between the victims, who want change, and the victors, who resist change. Clark asserted that any real change in the American racial quagmire will require a joint effort of blacks and whites, who share a common destiny.