By Guest Author, positiveexperience.org/blog, 7/21/20
From the recent murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless other Black Americans throughout history, whose lives were taken by police brutality and systemic racism, we have seen how dismantling all forms of racism is critical to the central mission of HOPE: ensuring healthy, equitable child development for all, regardless of race. Systemic solutions, structures of accountability, and addressing individual biases are all necessary steps toward this goal. In this post, we ask how parents can educate their children on racism, and how those conversations contribute to child development and community engagement.
To answer these questions, we turn to Dr. Sarah Gaither, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience and a faculty affiliate at the Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. Dr. Gaither is Principal Investigator of the Duke Identity and Diversity Lab, and she can be found on Twitter @sarahegaither. She is a Tufts alum, PhD class of 2014.
Many parents want to help their children understand race and racism and wonder when to start the conversation. How old are children when they first become aware of race? Why is it essential to speak candidly to children about race instead of promoting “colorblindness” or shying away from the topic?
By three months of age, infants growing up in racially homogeneous environments (in other words, less diverse environments) already distinguish faces from their own racial group better than other racial groups. By preschool, children may have already learned strong in-group biases, meaning they think people who look like them are better than people who look differently. Additionally, the classic Clark and Clark doll study has been replicated since its original findings from the 1940’s, highlighting that both White and Black children show a pro-White bias with White dolls being seen as smarter, prettier, and better than Black dolls. However, children who are exposed to more diversity also tend to be less fixed in how they think about different social groups, suggesting the power that exposure to people who are different in positive ways can have over our social perceptions. Therefore, we must talk to children about race because children see race. Without allowing children to learn about the histories of different racial and ethnic groups in our society, only the stereotypes they learn will be what they use in forming those social category judgments. Therefore, promoting a colorblindness approach will only further promote the wrongful applications of stereotypes.
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