Weird News: Does Avoiding Race Issues Make Kids Racist?
At one time or another, most people have avoided talking about race issues, but is avoiding the issues making our next generation racist? Apparently, according to two studies done by researchers from Tufts University and Harvard Business School. According to this weird news, children as young as 10 are avoiding talking about race, and, as the studies show, avoidance makes the problem worse.
In one of the social science studies, 101 white children between the ages of 8 and 11 were paired with other children to play a game much like the classic Guess Who? game. The children were given photos of people of different races. They were then told to find out whose picture was in their teammate’s hand by asking as few questions as possible. The children ended up doing poorly at the game because they consistently avoided asking the race of the person in the picture. “The findings of this study were nothing short of striking,” says Evan P. Apfelbaum, the studies’ lead author. We had no idea that the transition in children’s behavior would be so dramatic, even when such behavior came at a clear cost.”For years, colorblindness has been thought of as the pinnacle of race tolerance and tactful behavior. In another study done by the team, though, research found that white, college-aged participants who avoided describing people by race were found to be racist in the eyes of the participants of color. “These results were particularly interesting,” says Apfelbaum, “since those individuals who worked so hard to avoid talking about race in the experimental task were ironically engaging in the very behavior that led them to appear more prejudiced in the eyes of black interaction partners.”Samuel R. Sommers, co-author of the studies, points out that the way parents teach children about race can lead to the colorblind behavior which was found to be racist in the study. “When a 3-year-old points at a man at the grocery store and says, ‘Mommy, look, his face is brown,’ most white mommies and daddies get embarrassed, try to change the subject, or speed away as if fleeing the scene of a crime,” says Sommers.
Melanie Montenora, MSEd, PD and mother of two agrees, “My daughter is raised to know both sides of her heritage (Hispanic and Italian) and so far I don’t feel that she’s underwent any internal racial conflicts. However, her perception of other cultures, especially those whose members are of a darker complexion, is still developing. She refers to people of color as ‘the one with the brown face’ or ‘the one that is a little brown’. Initially, my husband and myself found these comments to be quite inappropriate regardless of her innocent approach. We were dumbfounded in finding a way to correct her without making her feel as though she had said something wrong.”
So, in light of this news, parents wanting to raise politically correct children should focus on acknowledging color in a tactful way that their children can understand to avoid unintentional racism.
