For more than four decades, the notion that racism and physical prejudice don’t fully develop in humans until the teen or adult years has been at the root of research into racism. Popular scientific belief had been that children, who only develop the ability to express racial preferences at around age 3, gradually develop those preferences over time and only cement them well into their teen years.
But new research not yet published by Mahzarin Banaji, a renowned Harvard University psychologist, brain researcher, and racism and physical prejudice expert, and colleagues suggests that even though they may not understand the “why’’ of their feelings, children exposed to racism tend to accept and embrace it as young as age 3, and in just a matter of days.
Comments
"You've got to be taught before it's too late, Before you are six or seven or eight, To hate all the people your relatives hate. You've got to be carefully taught." (South Pacific) This is news???
I grew up in the South many decades ago. I went to white-only schools through high school, and my college years were similar, with only a token number of blacks. My parents weren't liberal. They accepted segregation just like most everyone else in the South. They never expressed any racial hatred, but race baiting was always a minority activity. In any case at some point around 19 or 20 I rejected segregation and racism entirely. In fact, I think the one thing I can't tolerate is racism and bigotry of any type. I don't seem to fit any of the examples discussed in the article, so why did I change? My experience makes me question much of the article's reasoning.
I should add that I remember exactly when my views changed. Blacks were holding a sit-in at the lunch counter of the Woolworth's in my college town. There were a lot of intimidating whites, some carrying clubs. The police arrested the blacks and charged them with trespassing. That was my watershed, even though I wasn't there and only read about it in the college paper.