Kids, Race and Stereotypes
 

After reading this, I think I will have a conversation with my kids, see what they think, and take corrective action if needed.

I am one of those negligent parents in not talking about this with my kids (11 and 8), never occured to me.

Kids' test answers on race brings mother to tears - CNN.com

Any parents here have had these discussions?

I'm not saying this is not a problem, nor that it should not be corrected, but, IIRC, this sort of study has been done numerous times, and always shows these results.

Generally speaking people ALWAYS think people who are different from themselves are 'bad' .... this can be color, race, sexual preference etc. - unfortunately its somewhat natural and especially prevalent in people with limited education and life experience.

Simply put we find it easier to relate to people similar to ourselves - people we aren't similar to appear less predictable and thus 'scary' ...

One thing which is interesting though if that the answers show the child has a positive self-image, if they had felt they were stupid for instance then it'd be far less likely they'd pick the image they associate with themselves as being 'bright' for instance .... yet strangely if they had done so I'm sure the mother would have been happier ...

Is there really a correct answer to "which of these children is the mean one?"? I mean, a 5 year old probably isnt going to even consider saying "i cant know who is mean just based on the color of their skin", they naturally assume they have to give some sort of answer.

Edited to add: Like Marc said, i would actually be very concerned if the kid pointed at the one she felt looked like her and said "shes the mean one".

I'd like to know what the black five year old says in reference to the same questions. Like someone said, young kids, especially at five years old, are going to identify "good" with "like" and "bad" with "different". Doing this with 5 year olds means nothing.

Why ignore the massive pink elephant in the room??? Wouldn't the answers to these be based on the child's experiences? These are kindergarten-aged children, all in public schools, according to the CNN article. If the children are in schools where there are a higher percentage of smart white kids and a higher percentage of mean black kids (and let's be honest, that probably describes, oh, 80-100% of the public schools in Georgia), then of course they'd answer this way, without any parental influence whatsoever. I don't think this reveals anything besides the existing socioeconomic issues in our country. (I'm guessing that the black kids' lesser bias toward whites is because black parents are far more likely to talk with their kids about being proud of their own race than white kids' parents.)

The top post references this. Black kids show bias toward whites, too.

(I am in this thread to protect JIMGA from getting accused of being a racist just for stating what should be painfully obvious to anyone with a brain.)

This would be where I bow my head perceptably in your direction in appreciation.

It would also be where I figure I'll be cited for it somewhere in the thread anyway, even if I don't comment on the study or the article at all.

To be clear on my position, stick a five-year-old in one of the tiny handful of affluent predominately black elementary schools for a few months, then stick him out in a low-performing predominately white school in the sticks for a few months, and I'll guarantee his answers would be reversed. ("Black kids are smart! White kids are mean!")

The sad-but-true fact (at least in Georgia) is that it's just more likely that a white kid is going to be raised in an environment conducive to performing well in school, and it's just more likely that a black kid is going to be raised in an environment conducive to being "mean."

Saw a report on this when I was at the gym on Monday night and was convinced I went back in time.

it's nature. i forget the bio term for it but it's been pretty well established. put bl & wh. rats in a box and they'll sort by color. animals look to align themselves along similar traits. diversity means mutation means the possible end of your species. it's in your atomic makeup.

as for the kid, she's 5. she chose the one most similar as good and the one most different as bad. well, no shit.

i swear this study pops up in different forms every few years during slow news cycles.

Take your head out of the sand. We don't live in some utopian bubble where black kids and white kids have the exact same odds to be perceived as "smart" or "mean." We didn't 100 years ago. We didn't 50 years ago. We didn't 25 years ago. And we don't today. I'll say it again. Black kids are more likely to grow up in an environment that will instill in them characteristics where they will be perceived as "mean." White kids are more likely to grow up in an environment that will instill in them characteristics where they will be perceived as "smart."Is this somehow a foreign concept?

Then why do black kids also choose the white kids?

Then I guess the question is - how do we change that, Ben?

I ain't Ben, but I still got a question for your question.

Change what exactly? The perception of 5 y/o's? Or the experiences had by 5 y/o's that contribute to those perceptions? Because those are two incredibly different things.

See, me & SD don't always agree on some stuff, but I'm still awfully confident in saying this: If SD were raising the majority of black kids that the surveyed 5 y/o's had encountered in their lifetimes, you'd see a shift in the numbers. The aforementioned color-sorting mice effect would still very likely skew the numbers toward like/like but nothing as high as what the studies always seem to show.

Wow talk about a jump...check what I quoted. CR referenced that this study has been done many times in the past. My "back in time" was in reference to seeing/hearing the results of this study in the past.

nature v nurture

nature: black child chooses black
nurture: television=white everything

you see precious? she envisioned herself as a typical white teen. that's what she thought was good and beautiful. where did that idea come from?

Wish I had time to respond. Maybe later today. But yeah, Jon is right. Two incredibly different things. The experiences of those kids need to change. And that's not a short-term thing by any means.

So Precious envisioned herself as a wanna-be gangsta rapper? 'Cause that seems to be the most common self-visualization I find among white teens.

Having a three year old, I can tell you that dark (or black) is always associated with evil and that light (or white) is always associated with good. You'd have the same result if you showed the same kid two pictures of white-skinned characters if one had blonde hair and the other had black hair. In many of the animated movies, the prince or princess glitters and wears light and vibrant colors, while the villian wears black clothes, has dark hair, and has missing/yellow teeth. My daughter is always scared of dark shadows and never is scared of bright light. I'm often surprised at how much they imply that race is the only reason that the kids responds in the manner they do. Perhaps the dark/light stereotype relates to race at some level, but I think the motives of these kids in their selections are far less malicious than the study would like you to believe.

really? where do you live? 1996?

to all of this i'd just say, relax. things are getting better.

if you think about how much the big 3 have changed (sex, religion, race) just in the last 20 years, it's pretty remarkable.

TV and the "good-guy vs. bad-guy" dark-light stuff have influences here, but they're minor. Five-year-olds are far more concrete than that. The much bigger influence is "Jimmy Black was mean to me today, but Jimmy White gets gold stars on all of his papers." But hey, feel free to pretend.

i think it's human nature to want to fix everything all at once. but that's not how evolution works. it's gradual changes over time.

we have a black president. i'm confident we're on the right path.

{shrug} I just refer to it as intense cultural confusion & shake my head sadly at it.

Kenneth and Mamie Clark famously did this research almost 75-years ago. Their findings indicated that black children also preferred to play with the lighter colored dolls and that they gave the lighter colored dolls positive attributes, while giving the darker colored dolls negative attributes.

There is a short documentary called "A Girl Like Me," from a few years ago, that deals with black women and their perceptions of beauty that recreates the study. I would imagine that it is available on line.

This must be a South thing (or a Georgia thing, or an Athens thing, or even just a Jon thing...), because I can guarantee you that's not the self-visualization of all but a vanishing minority of white teens at the two high schools near me.

It's not a situation of pretending. Note that I was speaking of a three year old vs. a five year old. My daughter will be attending preschool in the fall. I'm sure she'll 'learn' new things once she starts hanging out with kids outside of our friends and family (i.e. by the time she's five).

With that said, we already do emphasize to her the importance of not referencing people by the color of their skin. Just call them a boy or a girl rather than a black boy or a black girl. We have her grandparents to thank for that bit of 'learning'.

Here is a link to "A Girl Like Me:"



It is pretty interesting to watch, overall (I saw it in an education class). The doll study is discussed around 3:20.

it's not natural. it's a reaction to their environment.

Ain't just Athens, that part I'm sure of. It's less pronounced here than it was in Mayberry a few years ago but still very noticeable even among the tweens.

I think you are glossing over the tv angle Ben.

5 year olds watch tv and think it really happened, lots of times, to them. Its just as real as the rest of their day.

I was a little afraid of Barnabas Collins too...

Right. I wasn't talking to you. ;)

That would have been my guess. My perception is that sort of thing is far more common in the rural South than in most other places. Sorry to have to side with flere, but he's probably right on that one. ;)

VINDICATION!!! :D

I don't disagree with the results of the study, but I think the attitudes of younger children to race is changing for the better. One anecdote that happens to me nearly every year in mentoring elementary school boys comes in February when every one reads a Jackie Robinson biography for Black History month.

After I attempt to explain the Negro League, I get asked a version of this question:

"But I don't understand. Why wouldn't you want a good player on your team?"

Kids today simply don't buy-in to the 'because he's black' argument at all. Indeed, they don't get it, whether they are black or white.

Don't know about the asians, they're all too smart to need a mentor. ;)

Heh, I almost cracked a similar joke up the thread, about how the other perception that both black & white kids would have agreed on is "which one is the smart one" if you had an Asian option in there ;)

I agree with this perspective on the matter as well. I suspect that the primary difference is that in the case of Robinson, it has been explained to the kids that he was a good player. In the case of the dolls, they have nothing to go on but what they look like.

I agree, TV is probably not much of a factor early-on. My kids didn't watch much live action until recently, and outside of shows like iCarly (white) and MythBusters, still don't. "Bad guys" in shows are folks like Plankton, Endive (from Chowder), Bling-Bling Boy, Mr. Crocker, Vlad Masters...cartoons that are white or not even human.

For the longest time we tried not to even bring up skin color with our kids - they go to a school that while still majority white, is fairly diverse (lots of military). Just treat kids as kids. They have friends and classmates who are black, white, Latino, Asian. Whatever.

A couple of years ago my son came home crying, saying he never wanted to ride the bus again. Kids were being mean, calling him names, pushing him, hitting him. "What kids were doing this?" His answer? The dark kids. These shouldn't be kids from a bad area or anything either; there are enough kids in just our small section of our development to fill the whole bus.

Nothing trumps life experiences, especially not at that age. With my son, he wasn't really fond of, well, fat white kids since every bully or asshole he encountered in the pre-K/K years pretty much fit that description. All three black children he spent any notable time around were all fine & dandy as far as he was concerned. Compare & contrast with my slightly younger nephew (coincidentally a fat white kid himself) who had relatively few encounters with black kids at that age group but had exclusively negative experiences with them. At this point, he makes me sound like a cross between Harriet Beecher Stowe & Malcom X.

Nothing trumps life experiences, especially not at that age. With my son, he wasn't really fond of, well, fat white kids since every bully or asshole he encountered in the pre-K/K years pretty much fit that description. All three black children he spent any notable time around were all fine & dandy as far as he was concerned. Compare & contrast with my slightly younger nephew (coincidentally a fat white kid himself) who had relatively few encounters with black kids at that age group but had exclusively negative experiences with them. At this point, he makes me sound like a cross between Harriet Beecher Stowe & Rodney King.

Sounds pretty simple and the thread pretty was over at post #9

That said, I think things are getting better. But it takes time to build up that infrastructure to change just like any sort of social change. Why aren't there many women/black/etc CEOs, executives, and figures in government? Because it's still a good ol' boys club is part of the answer. But another part is to think about the average CEO- probably 50 or older. 30-50 years ago, you're looking at very different education demographics- a lot less women and minorities in schools. In 50 years, things will be substantially different and still not "fixed" but it's heading in the right direction.

SI

Never seen the Atlanta city government nor the DeKalb County, GA government I presume.

And if you had, you wouldn't be so quick to assume that racial composition of a group has any connection to the phrase "heading in the right direction".

I am not surprised white kids or black kids think white is good, especially if they're christian.

I say this as a black person but I don't think black people are prepared to lead just yet. They do a lot of flat out stupid and embarrassing things when they get a little power. (See Detroit)

Too true. I'm not sure "crooked Senator" is on anyone's career path for their kids :D

But it is one of those things you hear brought up a lot: why is there disproportional representation in management and government

SI

How disproportional is it currently, at least in government? I mean, you have 12.4% black population in the U.S., you've got 9.8% black representatives in the US House. You have 1 black Senator in Congress, you have zero states with a majority black population. With relatively small numbers (in Congress), it doesn't take many situations of clustered populations, political boundaries, or even simply white candidates appealing to black voters more than a black candidate for some non-racial reason to throw the numbers off by a few percentage points.

I don't think this is the case. I think that the influence of culture/nature is much stronger at 5 years old, and the influence is that darkness equals evil. Nothing to do with skin color at all, and not particular to our culture. What primal story, fairy tale or fantasy does not equate the bad guys with darkness and shadow? Even without TV that fact gets put across, and I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't largely biological. I think that is having a much larger influence on a five year old than their limited life experience. Where we live there are very few people with dark skin, and so my kids probably have more exposure to blacks through things like books about Jackie Robinson or Martin Luther King and almost no exposure to any concept of black people being "scary" or "mean". Yet I wouldn't be surprised if they equated a darker person a being mean, just through this primal correlation between dark and evil.

And you are wrong. *shurg*

lol, funny I hadn't noticed you around my house, but I guess I should look harder.