A Girl Like Me – Media That Matters Film Festival
This excellent video was produced by a young woman named Kiri Davis. It was the winner of the Diversity Award Sponsored by Third Millennium Foundation. It is a great tool for prompting discussions on issues of race in America.
From the Media That Matters website:
A Girl Like Me
7:08 min
Youth Documentary
Kiri Davis, Director, Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, Producer
Winner of the Diversity Award
Sponsored by Third Millennium FoundationABOUT THE FILM
More About A Girl Like Me from Director Kiri Davis
For my high-school literature class I was constructing an anthology with a wide range of different stories that I believed reflected the black girl’s experience. For the different chapters, I conducted interviews with a variety of black girls in my high school, and a number of issues surfaced concerning the standards of beauty imposed on today’s black girls and how this affects their self-image. I thought this topic would make an interesting film and so when I was accepted into the Reel Works Teen Filmmaking program, I set out to explore these issues. I also decided to would reconduct the “doll test” initially conducted by Dr. Kenneth Clark, which was used in the historic desegregation case, Brown vs. Board of Education. I thought that by including this experiment in my film, I would shed new light on how society affects black children today and how little has actually changed.
With help from my mentor, Shola Lynch, and thanks to the honesty and openness of the girls I interviewed, I was able to complete my first documentary in the fall of 2005. I learned that giving the girls an opportunity to talk about these issues and their experiences helped us all to look deeper and examine the many things in society that affect us and shape who we are.
Please rate this resource:
(2 votes, average: 9.50 out of 10)
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This is the second time I’ve seen this video. The first time was at the One event on OSU campus. I am floored by the way black women see themselves, at least according to this video. I wonder what would happen if someone made a video documenting how white people feel about black people? I think there would be a lot of black people that might be surprised to find out how a lot of us really feel. I can’t speak for my entire race, but I know how I feel, and how my parents and many of my friends and relatives feel. I was raised in Pickerington during the 70’s, when it was still considered ‘out in the country’. In high school, there were only two black kids in our entire school! They were actually some of the most popular kids in the school, because everybody wanted to be able to say they were friends with the black guy, or the black girl, because everybody thought they were cool because they were black, and thereby different than everybody else. Pickerington was certainly a lot different back then! I grew up being fascinated by black people. If I were to utter a racial slur, I got smacked in the mouth. My mom lived in Norfolk Virginia during the Civil Rights Movement in the 60’s, and she could write a book about her experiences (and she probably should!) Growing up, she told me again and again that there are good and bad people of all colors, and that we’re all the same on the inside, and that’s what I believe to this day. Although I lived in Pickerington, I went to church on Beechwood in Whitehall, with a lot of black kids. When I was little, in Sunday School, I had to be told to keep my hands to myself because I would grab their hands and turn them over, fascinated with the different colors, or touch their braids and tell them I wanted my mommy to give me all those braids, too! One time my mom gave me I think ten or twelve braids to wear to church, just for fun and partially to shut me up about wanting a million zillion braids like my friends. I have always found anybody who wasn’t white to be fascinating and beautiful no matter how dark their skin is. I think natural hair is beautiful on anybody, and my husband and I think it’s especially cool when black guys grow their hair long! It has been interesting to live in Columbus instead of Pickerington for half my life now. It has been an eye opening experience and has helped me to better understand a variety of people – blacks, latinos, asians and many more. It may come as a shock to find out that many white children also consider blonde hair and blue eyes to be the ideal. Could that be a leftover Aryan thing? Hardly any of us naturally have those traits. Also not knowing which country you’re from would be hard. I’ve always taken that for granted. I know I’m Irish, German, English/Welsh/Scottish and American Indian. I have worked with a lot of Africans for some time now, and sometimes you can tell by their facial attributes, skin shade and the shape of their head, which country they’re from, but not always. It’s been fun because I’m gradually learning a little bit of Fulani which is from West Africa.