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Despite some parents' assumptions that race is a non-issue for children, it turns out that kids aren't colorblind, as many of us thought. In fact, Phillys Katz, then a professor at the University of Colorado, conducted a study with children as young as 6 months old and discovered that babies do notice skin color, even if they aren't aware of its implications. When Katz tested these same kids at age 5 or 6, she asked them to sort a deck of cards into two piles using any system they liked. The cards had two people's faces on it, and 68 percent of the kids split the deck based on race with no prompting.
But another study out of the University of Texas asked a group of parents of Caucasian children aged 5 to 7 to discuss race with their kids. The six families that managed to have an open conversation about race (beyond vague statements like "we're all equal") improved their kids' attitudes about race in just one week.
Unfortunately, several families actually dropped out of the study and several more admitted that they'd never discussed race with kids because they were afraid to say the wrong thing or bring too much attention to skin color. They wanted their kids to enjoy childhood without worrying about skin color or ethnicity. But if kids are already drawing their own conclusions about skin color, what message do parents send by avoiding the subject?
How should parents communicate specific ideas about race and stereotypes to children?
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Tuesday 08 September
By Elisa
I hate how one people reach a certain age they forget what it's like to be five. They start saying stupid things like "A child's mind is such a mystery." It shouldn't be a mystery; you were a child!! Plus, kids can be a lot more racist than people think. Growing up in an all white town where my sister and I were basically the only black kids (I was the only African-American female in my graduating class) I can attest to racism in little kids. As kids get older, I've noticed from experience that they hide their racist comments. In kindergarten a kid told me that he couldn't play with me anymore because his mom said not to talk to black people. A kid once told me God sees blacks as a mistake because he accidentally burnt one. Of course there were the innocent questions of "Do I taste like chocolate?" Yet, there were also the comments using the n-word, and several others. Being 18, now I'm actually appreciative of all of these ignorant comments, because they helped me grow as a person. But, like I said at the begining, don't people remember themselves in elementary school? Were you really as innocent as you put on?
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Tuesday 08 September
By loonieflirt08
WOW. You have got to be kidding. I remember kindergarden. There were twin black girls in my class. No one ever mentioned color or even cared that they were different. We were all friends, black , white, latino or bi-racial. No one cared as long as you didnt take someones toy. Thats the way it stayed until I graduated high school... In a primarily black high school. I've seen both sides and no one cared about skin color but the adults.
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Friday 11 September
By dmd
I have to disagree with this theory. In my son's first pre-school class, one of his best friends was black. He is white. It didn't even occur to him that there were differences until he got to kindergarten when it was discussed as part of the Martin Luther King celebration. He really didn't get it before then and it was a strange concept to him that someone was *different* because they had different skin color. After all, people also had different hair color, not to mention different shades of skin color. It broke my heart - I felt as though he lost some of his innocence - and color blindness - that day.
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Saturday 12 September
By madhu
I understand what you are talking about Eliza, and don't think you are kidding at all since I went through a similar experience. I also think it might have depended on the place though. The first elementary school I went to, race didn't seem like that much of an issue since there was such a mixture of races, the second school I went to was pretty much all black, and the third one was predominately white. I had a whole different experience in the last two schools and experienced negative racism then.
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Saturday 12 September
By Courtney
I hear you Elisa I definitely had the same problem being black and the minority later on. I agree that children do know the difference between color but don't know hate yet. The hate and racism is taught as they get older most kids just see you as brown, orange, or come up with cute theories that maybe you drank chocolate milk to make yourself brown. They don't know the ignorant garbage until they're taught.
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Monday 14 September
By kim072072
When my son was 5 he came home from school talking about how much fun he'd had playing with Bobby at recess. I had volunteered in his class the week before, but couldn't remember which child was Bobby. When I asked him, he said "You know he's my brown friend". It wasn't a matter of race, it was a matter of fact, just like the fact that Jason was the boy with the red hair.
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Wednesday 16 September
By Gallant
im white and i have a black friend and we joke about race. and how stupid people act nowadays. when i was growing up as a kid i had a black friend whom i met in 1st grade and didnt take race into an account until i started seeing mean racial comments that were obvious, through television and elsewhere. and i have a problem with blacks talking about whites whenever i see it. i even hate when people call all of the asian race CHINESE. theyre not all CHINESE. Just like all whites arent CRACKERS. we're from different branches of europe and russia.
u know wat. i hate trying to convince all non white races that we coulda left them in thier own country and ruled an all white nation of america. since we founded it. africans couldve been dying with aids, asians couldve over populated, south americans coudlve became heart eaten psychopaths, and europeans couldve become to smart for thier own good.
that saying. kids suck.
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Wednesday 30 September
By Elena
Before you voice you opinion, please learn to spell properly. It is hard to treat a person's opinion with respect when he/she writes "thier". It's "their"!