Many people avoid talking about race with young children. Why bring it up? Won’t that make kids race-conscious?
The trouble is, little kids already know about race.
It starts early. In experiments, 3-month-old infants have shown preferences for looking at members of their own race–perhaps because these faces were the most similar to the faces they see at home.
And when researchers have shown 9-month-olds the faces of different individuals, babies could distinguish members of their own race but had trouble telling apart individuals of another race.
So babies notice racial differences. Do babies harbor negative attitudes towards other races?
It doesn’t seem likely. In several interesting experiments, Katherine Kinzler and Elizabeth Spelke have tested the social preferences of American babies and toddlers. One study presented 10-month-old babies with unfamiliar adults who offered toys. The babies seemed happy to take the toys regardless of the adult’s race.
Another study gave 2.5-year-old children opportunities to give toys to someone else. Again, race wasn’t an issue. The kids gave toys to people of different races and showed no preferences.
But at some point, kids do show racial and ethnic social preferences.
When researchers tested 5-year-olds, they were more likely to give their toys to members of their own race. And there are signs of social preferences in preschool. For example, take the recent study conducted in Quebec by researchers at Concordia University and the University of Montreal.
Nadine Girouard and colleagues watched 60 preschoolers interact at school. Half of the kids were French-Canadian. The other half were Asian-Canadian.
The kids weren’t having racial conflicts. They played together across ethnic lines.
But they interacted more with members of their own group. And they behaved a little differently: The Asian-Canadian kids took more liberties with each other–taking away each other’s toys. When paired with French-Canadian kids, the Asian-Canadians showed more reserve.
Other research suggests that young children pick up on cues of privilege and power. They may notice which groups are linked with the most prestige or affluence, and show favoritism for those groups.
So it’s not as if little children are seething with racist animosity. But we’ve got plenty of evidence suggesting that kids notice race or ethnicity and show social biases. By the time they reach elementary school–if not before–kids have become aware of negative attitudes and stereotypes about race.
What should we do about it? Most researchers recommend that we talk to our kids about race and racism. Acknowledge human diversity. Send the message that we don’t pre-judge people on the basis of race.
But it’s more complicated than that. For instance, experiments suggest that little kids pick up on nonverbal cues about race. Not just talk. So if your child observes adults who are polite but uncomfortable around people of other races, he may learn distrust.
And is it a good idea to tell little kids about negative stereotypes concerning their own ethnicity or race?
That worries me a lot, because just thinking about a negative stereotype can interfere with a child’s achievement. In an upcoming post, I’ll talk about stereotype threat and how we might handle it.
For an evidence-based look at stereotype threat, see my article for Parenting Science. For more information about what babies know about people, see my article about the social world of newborns. And for more information about children’s abilities to distinguish different faces, see my post “Face recognition isn’t easy for kids.”