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Are we BorN rAcist?

rubbing offAllison Briscoe-Smith explains how kids learn aboutraceand how their parents can foster tolerance.y e a r s b e f o r e i b e c a m e a c h i l d

psychologist, I was a swim teacher andtaught kindergarten. I remember working in the water one day with a our-year-oldwhite girl who started to rub my arm.

Does it come o ? she asked.

Does what come o ? I asked back.The black. She was rubbing her arm onmine as i to get some o my skin color onher.

Her mother, who had been sitting near us,gasped. She turned to me, pale and embarrassed. I dont know where shed come upwith such a th ing, she said. We never talk about things like that. She pulled herdaughter out o the water and ended thelesson, shushing the girl as they le t.

As a teacher, I had heard these kinds o comments rom children be ore directednot just at me but at other kids or adults

then witnessed the crest allen looks ontheir parents aces. The parents would ask,Where do kids get this stu rom? Theycant even notice race yet, right? Or, Doesthis mean my child will be a racist? Or theywould get de ensive: We dont teach themthat at home. We have plenty o riends o di erent races. We dont even talk aboutrace, so how can they know what it is?

In my work with children as a teacherand as a psychologist, Ive ound that sci

enti c research can assuage many parentsears. While theres no easy answer to the

question, How do I raise a tolerant child?research does o er some constructive suggestions or how kids learn about race, andwhen and how to discuss it with them.

Lets start rom the beginning: Do kidseven see or notice race? The answer is yes,they see and notice racial di erences roma very young age, even in in ancy. In act,several studies by psychologists Phyllis Katzand Jenni er Ko kin have ound that in antsand very young children ( rom six to 18months) will gaze at the aces o people o a di erent race longer than they look at acesrom their own racial group. A prolonged

gaze is how in ants and toddlers commonlyreact to new in ormation, and here it suggests racial di erence is visually salient tothem. This means that kids are able to notice

and pay attention to racial di erences evenbe ore they can speak about them. Katz andKo kin also ound that, by the age o three,children will start choosing to play withpeople o their own race more than peopleo a di erent race.

While they may notice racial di erencesand even pre er members o their own race,this doesnt mean that kids this young understand race in the same ways adultsdo, nor does it mean theyre burgeoning

racists. For children under the age o sevraceor, rather, physical traits like color, language, and hair texture aresigns that someone is in some way dient rom themselves, similar to gendeweight. Its not unusual or unhealthy

kids to gravitate toward the amiliar so ein li e. Kids views only become prejudwhen they start linking these physical trto faws in character or behavior. We aduare the ones who ascribe malice to simnoticing racial di erences.

So in and o itsel , recognizing rdi erence is not a cause or alarm the opposite, in act. For years, studies hound that children who recognize th

kinds o di erences rom an early age sha stronger general ability to identi y sudi erences between categories like coshape, and size which, in turn, has b

linked to higher per ormance on inligence tests. Researcher Francis Aboudound that children between the ages o o

and seven who show this advanced abilitidenti y and categorize di erences are acally less prejudiced. So parents, rest assuWhen children notice and ask about racdi erences, its a normal and healthy sto development.

Now comes the tricky part: How do yanswer those questions? In act, many

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ents have opted not to answer them. Theseparents have, o ten with good intentions,embraced the ideal o colorblindness. Theyassume that i they raise their children not torecognize racial di erences, theyll preventthem rom becoming racist.

The problem with this approach, however,is that we all do notice di erence. When weabstain rom discussing race with our kids,we may con use them and implicitly send themessage that it is bad or wrong to talk aboutracial di erences. This may a ect children o color as well as white children. For example,researchers Phillip Bowman and Cleopatra Howard ound that when A rican-Americanparents did not teach their children anything about race, those kids elt less prepared tohandle racial discrimination, and in generalelt like they had less control over their lives

and environments.Instead o trying to ignore race, research

suggests that parents should be more proactive. They can tell their kids its OK torecognize and talk about racial di erenceswhile still communicating that its wrong tohold racial prejudices. My own research with67 racially- and ethnically-diverse amilies,all o which had children under the age o seven, indicates that talking and answering kids questions about race may help themunderstand racial issues and become moretolerant. I ound that the children o parentswho talked more about race were betterable to identi y racism when they saw it, andwere also more likely to have positive viewsabout ethnic minorities. This was true or

both the white amilies and the amilies o color in my study.Other researchers have made similar

ndings. A study by Aboud and Anna BethDoyle took 9-to-11-year-old children whoheld prejudiced attitudes toward ethnicminorities and placed them with other 9to 11 year olds who held less biased belie s.

They asked the kids to talk or two minutesabout some o the race-based belie s theyhad endorsed earlier in the s tudy. The resultswere remarkable: A ter these conversations,the high-prejudice kids demonstrated lowerprejudice and more tolerance. Given this

impact o a two-minute conversation with a peer, imagine what a childhood o conversations with parents could achieve.

While there is strong evidence suggesting parents should talk about race, researchersare still studying the best ways to talk aboutit. For both white amilies and amilies o color, there is some evidence suggesting parents should avoid language that inducesear in their kids, because kids wont know

how to respond. For example, explaining to

a child, You know, people are going to bemean to you and treat you un airly becauseyou are X race, without providing coping skills, empathy or the child, or support mayactually cause more ear and bias towardothers. However, ollowing this kind o statement with, But that doesnt mean weshould be mean to others, and, But thosepeople dont really know how great you areand how special it is to be X, or, And i thathappens, you can come to me and Ill helpyou out, may actually provide the supportand coping skills children need to handlesuch discrimination.

Other research by Bowman and Howardsuggests that helping kids eel pride in theirracial or ethnic identity helps boost theirsel -esteem, with the caveat that lessonso pride shouldnt undercut other groups.In other words, the message shouldnt be,Were so much better and smarter than Ys,but rather it should support other groups,too: You know, some Ys do things that wayand thats great. We do things di erently,and thats really nice, too. Teaching childrenabout pride, and how to make sense o thedi erences around them, can actually be anact o teaching and supporting tolerance.

First and oremost, though, it seems thatthe simple act o having these conversationsabout race can help. Since research showsthat kids notice and try to make sense o raceas early as six months old, these conversa

tions can begin when theyre very young. To that end, its important to make kids eelcom ortable broaching the subject. Thatmeans parents should try to avoid making race seem like such a big or intimidatingtopic that kids believe its o limits, and theyshould try not to make kids eel awkwardor inappropriate or asking questions. Oneo the best ways or parents to do this is topractice talking about race with riendswith each other, with colleagues so theycan reduce their own anxiety be ore discussing these issues with their kids. Thereare websites, chat rooms, and organizationsout there to help parents get this kind o practice. One place to start is the blog Anti-Racist Parent (www.antiracistparent.com),where parents discuss their e orts to raiseracially-conscious kids. (To check out otherorganizations, see the Resources section onpage 29.)

So parents, next time youre on aplayground and you hear your child saysomething that seems racially con used oreven o ensive, dont be embarrassed. Dontscold or shush. And dont end the conversation with, We dont say things like that.Instead, you might want to try, Hmm, whydont we talk about that some more?

allison b iscoe-Smi , P .D. , is a psychologistand pro essor at Pacifc Graduate School oPsychology.

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Summer 2008 Greater Good 19