Are Babies Racist?

This is interesting. You know, we found this summer, when we went home to the US, that our son (18 mo) was more eager to interact with people of color, especially Asians, than he was with white people (even his grandparents and uncles!) We are white, and he obviously sees us all the time, but most of our friends are Asian, as are most of the kids he plays with. Especially the white men, who tended to be quite tall and large, he didn't want anything to do with (both my husband and I are short).
 
No Problem. In HK we are lucky to be exposed to so many people of different nationalities and race that kids learn from early age to play and interact with each other
 
I remember my sister embarrassing me when I was about 18 and she was about 2 - she saw one of my friends who is from Ghana and said "Why is that person brown?" - hers was more a natural curiosity rather than a prejudice though. We didn't have a TV at the time and I think probably she'd never even really seen an African person.

The media really does play into stereotypes though. If you look at Hollywood, you often have black gangsters, the Chinese are generally laundromats or martial artists (or both)... Italians and Greeks will speak loud and with their hands - and they have 10 kids each and have huge family get togethers... how can we change prejudices when we're exposed to so many stereotypes everywhere we look? It's not surprising that our children are picking them up young...
 
Thousands of years of evolution have deeply ingrained the "us and them" decision-making process. You were always safer choosing "us" than "them". And it goes deeper than skin color. Facial characteristics common amongst extended family play part of it. A long time ago you probably never saw someone with a different skin color, so you had to be more exacting in your evaluation of potential danger.
 
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