Show me the dumb kid

From now on when people ask me why I study racial-ethnic identity development, I'll direct them to this and this. Yeah, America's post-racial now...

Article

The kids were sampled from NY and Georgia. They only sampled these 8 kids as part of a pilot study. The researchers hope to obtain funding to do a larger study with a more representative sample.

I fixed the second link. It surveyed Black kids, who still had a White bias but less so than the White kids.

ETA: I just wanted to add that there is tons of literature that shows that all people (at least those raised in America) have a White bias*. Adults who have a multicultural ideology can override these learned stereotypes. However, when people are tired, are multi-tasking, or are doing something that can sap their cognitive resources, stereotypes can and will influence one's behavior in subtle ways.

Harvard University has an ongoing project in which they test these implicit stereotypes. Head over HERE to take a demonstration test. They have dozens of them, but for purposes of this thread, take the "Race Test". You'll likely find out you have a White bias, too.

Only one girl was older (she had color blocks instead of cartoon kids to point to). Even so, it makes it even more disturbing that the White bias didn't diminish as one gets older.

Cool. For reals, I've seen no preferences, but I've never "met" anyone who had this result.

I mentioned it was a pilot study earlier in the thread. Hopefully they'll get funding for a more representative study. The examples are definitely extreme, but I don't think that invalidates the preliminary results. The pilot provides evidence that there is a segment of society for whom racial stereotypes influence how they think about themselves and others. Finding out how and when kids learn about these stereotypes may lead to solutions for preventing them from impacting their psyche and is a worthwhile endeavor.

I do too. I posted it as an example of a line of research interested in finding ways of measuring implicit biases. I don't think they've managed to do it though.

Madeline Heilman at NYU has a great research lab that uses survey methodology to measure subtle gender biases. Unfortunately, her work is bad news for women in that people evaluate women more negatively than men and particularly for women who display non-stereotypical behaviors. And men and women do this to the same degree, so its not like being a woman makes you immune. There are ways to overcome these biases, but it takes work by both individuals and institutions.

There's been progress in both racial and gender equity, but there's still a long ways to go.

Yup. They're padding the results by giving only one option for kids to discriminate by. But I think that's also their point. Keeping all else the same, would kids differentiate by skin color? The answer seems to be yes. And when asked why, the kids are providing answers that reflect racial stereotypes. My problem with these kinds of tests is that they may be assessing people's knowledge of the stereotypes out there, but may not reflect personal preference. We only saw one kid say that she'd rather have a different skin color than her own. So I'm not sure how much pointing to an arbitrary picture reflects internal biases. Still, if there is a chance that it does, better to find solutions than ignore the problem.