How Racial Prejudice Develops Through Adolescence And What to Do About It
How Children Become Prejudiced
Many people think of racist attitudes as learned rather than developed. “People aren’t naturally racist; you have to be taught to be racist.” But this begs the question: if you have to be taught to be racist, where does racism come from? There must be an original source, but where did this theoretical “first teacher” learn racism from? The truth is that racism can develop from within. As people use their limited evidence and reasoning to understand the world, some of the conclusions they reach will be flawed.
Naïve Theory
We see this with children who develop their own “naive theories” about the world. Most of us should be able to recall a time when we were younger, when we didn’t understand the world as we do now, and cobbled together our own theory as to why it rains, where babies come from, or some other facet of our lives. The same process that leads us to develop these naive theories on physics and biology can lead to developing a theory on race.
Current research shows that children do indeed develop their own theories of race, independent of the racial beliefs of those around them. They do this not because they are explicitly taught to favor one race over the other, but because they are aware of different racial categories, notice patterns in the world around them, and associate traits with races based on these patterns as a mental short cut
Awareness to Prejudice
Children notice differences in the people around them, even at a very young age. A study by Katz and Kofkin[1] shows that even infants are aware of when someone looks different than their race, taking longer to look at pictures of people from other races than at those of their own. In addition, while they may not explicitly be taught to favor one racial category over another, they are taught what those categories are. They don’t need to be told that one race is better to understand that race is a significant category, and once they think that, they start to look for reasons why race is important.
Since children are aware of race and its importance, they start to look for distinguishing features. These may be coincidental, but often they reveal the prejudices in society as a whole. Children may notice that those in minority groups live in less adequate housing, are less wealthy, and hold fewer important positions in society. These problems are a result of systemic injustices, but the limited view of the child doesn’t allow them to see that. They only see that people in the minority are worse off than the majority, and so they reach the conclusion that seems reasonable to them: that this is natural. They see the minority as underprivileged and assume that the reason for this is because they aren’t as good as everyone else. Once the child reaches this racist conclusion, their behavior starts to reflect it.
[1] Katz, P. A., & Kofkin, J. A. (1997). Race, gender, and young children. In S. S. Luthar & J. A. Burack (Eds.), Developmental psychopathology: Perspectives on adjustment, risk, and disorder (pp. 51–74). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Behavioral Bias and Development
Racial prejudice is evident in the behavior of children: whom they choose to play with, exclude, and even bully. A study by Van Ausdale and Feagin[2] shows that even 3-5 year olds were forming racial hierarchies. This prejudice peaks when children are around 5-7 years old, after which it diminishes, reaching its lowest point at the 14-16 age range, followed by a small increase by the start of adulthood.
[2] Van Ausdale, D., & Feagin, J. R. (2001). The first R: How children learn race and racism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
How to Talk With Children About Race
Children will become aware of race either by forming their own categories or learning explicit terms at some point through their environment. Talking with your children is important to their development of racial understanding. Because these prejudices originate from internal processes, these same processes must be improved so they can get at the truth.
The same way that you can question a child’s naive understanding of biology, physics, etc. so that they realize what they believe is flawed and come upon more accurate conclusions to answer these questions, you can ask what they think about race to draw out their misguided beliefs and stimulate more critical thinking. The main issues for the child when coming to an understanding about race are limited evidence and reasoning skills. Asking questions allows you to discover where the child is lacking so you can provide them with new evidence and skills with which to challenge prejudice.