Talk:Kenneth and Mamie Clark

Split

This article should be split, into Kenneth Clark, and Mamie Clark. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.40.48.184 (talk) 16:50, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Agree. Girona7 (talk) 23:37, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree too Gnilhtrae (talk) 14:38, 18 February 2016 (UTC)gnilhtrae

I agree with this also and the doll experiments and colouring test should be a third article Empirical evidence in Brown vs. Board of Education.Seraphim System ^(talk) 03:59, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Premise of Doll Experiments

The article seems to say that that black children shown the two dolls strongly preferred the white doll, whether they attended a segregated school in the South or an integrated school in New York. Since the results were the same, how does that prove that segregation made the black child feel inferior? Maybe they just thought the white doll, for whatever reason, was more attractive. We do not know whether Clark went out of his way to make the black doll look ugly, do we? At best, further information needs to be provided.John Paul Parks (talk) 03:37, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Addition

Since most of Mamie Phipps Clark's research projects were done with her husband I thought it was reasonable for them to share a Wikipedia page, however, I found the section on Mamie Phipps Clark was too general and lacked details and important information about her life. I edited the section on Mamie Phipps Clark by first adding information about her childhood. I then added information about the end of her undergraduate career and working in Charles Houston's law office. I added more about how she became interested in developmental psychology while she was getting her masters. I noted the historical importance of her receiving a doctoral degree from Columbia and then the jobs she had after graduating. I also noted the historical importance of the Northside Center and then added some information about her other contributions to the community.

Aahempfling (talk) 18:44, 12 December 2012 (UTC)aahempfling

• I think it's very awkward to combine the two names. Kenneth Clark is immensely more well known than Mamie and it's confusing to be redirected to a page containing two names. And it's hard to wade through the article, which starts out with a long section on Mamie, to pick out the parts that apply to Kenneth Clark (my interest) which seems to be interposed with "filler" text about Mamie. The result minimizes the contributions of Kenneth Clark, as I see it. Star767 13:48, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree and I think this page needs to be split. It is not simply awkward; it is dehumanizing. There can easily be two articles that link to each other and to anything else relevant. --Lizzard (talk) 05:16, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree with the previous commenters that there should be more detail about Mamie Clark just as they did for Kenneth Clark. There is not even a picture of Mamie on the page, in which I was able to quickly view when I looked it up on google. That task took me all of ten seconds. Why didn’t the people who made this page take the same initiative they used looking for Kenneth Clark’s picture looking for one for Mamie Clark? Also, the Doll Experiment that they are known for was Mamie Clark’s master degree thesis. Under the Legacy and honors section on the page, why wasn’t she recognized for it? All of the recognitions were to Kenneth Clark or both of them. Kenneth received awards by himself for the experiment and she did not. Why is that? Throughout the article the name “Clark” was repeated and immediately after that was the pronoun him. For example, in the family section “Clark... moved to Westchester County in 1850 because of his concern...,” why is the last name used to reference him and why isn’t she included because she was included in the move? I feel that Mamie should be able to have her own page, seeing how there is a lot of information about her on the internet. Maybe someone can include where the Doll experiment originated from, since it was her idea. I just feel the same effort should be put into finding information about Mamie Clark as was put in finding information about Kenneth Clark. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Admakkar (talk • contribs) 23:50, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Having spent several hours studying this article and having made a number of edits, I independently asked the same questions and drew similar conclusions to Admakkar. While Wikipedia has a format and isn't the place to correct the recognition inequities of equally degreed husband and wives, my reading outside Wikipedia leaves me believing Mamie Phipps Clark did the hands on work while Kenneth got most of the credit. I've known female's with doctorates who relocated for university positions in the 1950s only to be told the job wasn't available after all because a male had been found. Lacking first hand observations and more quality sources, it's difficult to imagine separating the articles wouldn't do a huge disservice to Dr. Mamie Phipps (Clark), undervalued as a female married to an equally educated male in a field (like so many) that rarely recognized, funded or published women. It's not difficult to imagine them formally called Dr. and Mrs. Kenneth B. Clark rather than Drs. Mamie and Kenneth Phipps Clark (even in 2023 a formal system finds me offending people to list her first or even place her birth name beside Kenneth -- rather than asking why not Clark Phipps?). I arrived here to learn more about the chain smoking man who interviewed James Baldwin for WGBH in early summer 1963. I was familiar with the Doll experiments but lacking any memory of a name was certain a woman had conceived of the study. This article at least redeems my first impressions of Baldwin's interviewer who seemed uncomfortable with his "I can't be a pessimist..." answers. To use Kenneth Clark's fame or "awkward" feelings to justify separating his equally qualified, accomplished and unrewarded wife Dr. Mamie Phipps makes less sense when you look at how husband and wives lived in their time. Segregating them in death serves to undervalue her because her world placed less value on wives and females. History demonstrates she had little chance of teaching doctorate level studies, certainly not with tenure. Without those credentials, you weren't likely to see her interviewed as an authority in her field. Rather than dwelling on whether this must be one article or two, ask ourselves whether Kenneth's sister Beulah had educational opportunities at places like George Washington High School and Howard. Hearing a man talk about "his children" should remind us in that time, public discourse came from men talking to other men and only included women if and how men were willing to share. I value this article for information about sister Beulah, mom Miriam and wife Mamie Clarks Phips, none of which lessen contributions of Dr. Mr. Clark. Wclaytong (talk) 10:49, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

I added some information about the coloring test, which I did because it is not a very well known test but it was important for the decision for Brown v. Board of Education. Throughout this page, I added statements that emphasis how certain aspects of her life influenced her research, especially those that seemed insignificant tat the time. I added information about Francis C. Summer, who was the head of the Psychology department at Howard. I did this because he was very influential on her getting her psychology degree. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joebrummett300 (talk • contribs) 00:38, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Change 'kids' to 'children'?

It may be better to change the word kids to children in the section on the doll experiments:

[The Supreme Court declared that separate but equal in education was unconstitutional because it resulted in African American kids having “a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community".]

The word kid(s) is only used once in the entire article whereas children is used 43 times. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.132.228.1 (talk) 07:24, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Mamie place of death

Hasting-on-Hudson [1] or New York City (our source). --P64 (talk) 20:23, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

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Another award that Kenneth B. Clark received

Kenneth B. Clark was the first recipient of the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest in 1978.

Source: http://www.apa.org/about/awards/public-interest.aspx?tab=3

47.184.71.165 (talk) 00:57, 29 August 2018 (UTC)AmateurPsychologyHistorian

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Kenneth-b-clark.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 08:09, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Proposed split

I propose that this article, Kenneth and Mamie Clark, should be split into three articles:

• Mamie Phipps Clark, a biographical article for Mamie (which already exists as a separate article)
• Kenneth B. Clark, a biographical article for Kenneth
• Clark experiments, covering the doll and colouring experiments. I'm not tied to this name.

Mamie and Kenneth are both frequently discussed alone - see the citations on this article. They are obviously strongly tied together, but they both have notability separate from each other.

The two experiments are both notable, primarily for their impact outside of academia in the Brown case but also for their impact within psychological science and academic opinion about race. It's also less of a mess than trying to cover the experiments properly in all of the Mamie article, the Kenneth article, and the Brown and the Briggs v Elliott case articles.

In terms of how to undertake the split, content about Mamie would be split to her pre-existing article, content about Kenneth would be split out to a new article, and the remainder would be renamed/moved to Clark experiments. Any links to this article would need to be checked to make sure they point to the right place.

A split was previously proposed and had consensus, however as it was so long ago, consensus one way or the other should be re-established. Please ping me if you respond. --Xurizuri (talk) 08:50, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

@Xurizuri: I think the first split was unnecessary. The careers and biographies of both people are tightly interconnected, and where they differ is relatively trivial and incidental to their primary notability (differing birth dates and early life experiences do not get people into encyclopedias, and are not why they are notable). Separate biographies would likely over-emphasize the lesser, human-interest, aspects, and either gloss over their shared primary notability, or else be largely redundant to each other in these respects. Why force readers to navigate three or four articles to get the same content this one can provide? Splitting up well known duos just for the sake of splitting is ill-advised: much, much more famous duos like Bonnie and Clyde, the Wright brothers, and Siegfried & Roy are adroitly covered in single joint biographies. This article is rather bloated and cumbersome, but that can be better addressed by rigorous editing (consolidation, conciseness, trimming the fluff) than by chopping it up, in my view. --Animalparty! (talk) 08:16, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

"Kenneth Clark (psychologist" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Kenneth Clark (psychologist and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 October 27#Kenneth Clark (psychologist until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Steel1943 (talk) 19:39, 27 October 2022 (UTC)