No Pride in Prejudice: Teaching Children the Value of Diversity

No Pride in Prejudice:
Teaching Children the Value of Diversity
By Sugandha Jain
Article Published in February 2008 issue of Parent:Wise Austin magazine
Ruthie Robinson and her family bought a home in the Canyon
Creek development of Round Rock specifically to take advantage of
the excellent school district. But when she visited the local school, she
was somewhat surprised: it was nearly all white.
“Our neighborhood is not very diverse,” she admits. “There is a
smattering of African Americans. The public school reflected that.”
This may have been a bonus for some parents, who move to
suburban areas to escape the racial diversity of the city. But Ms.
Robinson, who is African American, wanted her children to attend
school with all kinds of kids, including those who looked like them.
Her experience at the public school sent her in search of a private
school that could provide what the public school could not: diversity.
She ended-up settling upon St. Francis School, 14-miles away in
Austin, chiefly because of the school’s motto: “Excellence without
exclusivity.”
“It’s a real reflection of the world,” she says of the private school.
“My children know that people are different in the way they learn, in
how they look, in how they believe in God or no God and they have
come to accept that. It is normal for them.”
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Despite its reputation as a progressive city, Austin is actually very racially
segregated, says Dr. Rebecca Bigler, a psychology professor at UT-Austin whose
nationally recognized research focuses on children’s racial stereotyping. “Whites, blacks,
Asians and Latinos live in separate neighborhoods,” she says.
For that very reason, she sent her own children to a private school so that they’d
be exposed to a diverse student population (her children also attend St. Francis School).
“I took my children out of the public school because [the schools] were too
racially segregated,” she says. “I didn’t want my children to be in an environment where
all around they had others who looked like them”.
Segregated Schools, Prejudiced Kids?
Public schools in Texas have fairly high levels of segregation, says Dr. Gary
Orfield, a UCLA professor of education and director of The Civil Rights Project. Dr.
Orfield has monitored trends in racial segregation since the 1970s. He says segregation in
schools has been rising significantly in the past few years, with Latino students more
segregated than black students in Texas.
“It’s really hard to teach people to manage race relations well in a segregated
setting,” he says.
The problem is, Austin tends to be residentially segregated, which leads to ethic
segregation in public schools, says Dr. Alfred McAlister, professor of behavioral sciences
at the University of Texas-Houston School of Public Health and the director of the World
Health Organization Collaborating Center.
To push for diversity in its schools, the Austin Independent School District has
strict rules about transferring into or out of racially imbalanced schools. To some, such
monitoring of race in schools may seem like political correctness run amok. But those
who study the issue say maintaining diversity in schools is one way to avoid prejudice.
“One of the big predictors of reduction in children’s prejudice is cross-race
friendships,” says Dr. Melanie Killen, associate director for the Center for Children,
Relationships, and Culture at the University of Maryland.
Dr. Killen’s research with young children suggests that children do not have racial
bias in schools where they have an opportunity to make friends with children of different
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ackgrounds. However, in schools where children do not have contact with other ethnic
races, kids believe it is acceptable to exclude others on the basis of race.
“It’s important,” Dr. Killen says, “for children to be in schools with
heterogeneity.”
Back in 1954, the Supreme Court agreed. In the landmark Brown v. Board of
Education, the Court declared unconstitutional state laws that segregated schools based
on race. Last summer, however, the Supreme Court ruled that most of the voluntary
efforts by school districts to desegregate schools were unconstitutional.
“So, now children won’t have a chance to be friends with cross-race people,” Dr.
Bigler says.
Prejudice in Children: Learned or Innate?
No matter where Dr. Michele Borba has traveled—North, South, urban ghettos or
sleek suburbs—children in third through 12 th grades tell her they have one thing they’re
most concerned about: prejudice. Sometimes, it is prejudice against children who don’t
have a lot of money. Other times, it is prejudice against children of a different religion,
such as Muslims or Jews. A lot of times, it’s about the color of their skin. Our parents
don’t have a clue about this, the children confide in Dr. Borba, author of the book
Building Moral Intelligence: The seven essential virtues that teach kids to do the right
thing.
“As children get older, there is a rise in their bullying behavior. Any child who is
different gets picked on,” says Dr. Borba, who works as an international character
education consultant. ‘Different’ can mean a child wears braces or glasses, or is involved
in gifted or special education classes, or is thin or fat, or who has different colored skin
from the other kids. Children feel tremendous pain in being excluded, especially in the
cafeteria, where it’s often one child sitting by himself, says Dr. Borba.
How do children develop these prejudices? Opinions are divided.
“Children are not born with prejudice. It’s something they learn along the way,”
says Dr. Marguerite Wright, author of the book I’m Chocolate, You’re vanilla: Raising
healthy black and bi-racial children in a race conscious world. “They pick up cues from
the way their parents behave towards others.”
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“When children come into the world, they are natural allies or friends to each
other,” agrees Cherry Steinwender, co-executive director of the Center for the Healing of
Racism in Houston. “Little children have big ears. They simply act on stuff they hear
from adults.”
Some psychologists disagree. One of them is Dr. Frances Aboud, a professor of
developmental psychology at McGill University in Quebec, Canada who studies how
children develop racism. Through her research, she has discovered that North American
children seem to have an innate, negative response to people who look different.
Her research is supported by that of other psychologists, such as Dr. Mahzarin
Banaji at Harvard University. “The roots of prejudice —in the form of preference for
what’s familiar, one’s own group, and for what’s socially dominant — are in us from the
start,” Dr. Banaji says. “If you are interested in the question of a simple preference, such
as eye gaze, we see that even infants show a preference for their own group. We suspect
this preference is based in familiarity.”
New research being conducted by Harvard graduate student Katie Kinzler even
suggests that infants show something we might call a “real preference”: they are more
likely to take a toy offered by somebody who speaks their language as opposed to a
foreign language.
“There appears to be a natural, possibly biologically-based, inborn bias toward
preference for those who appear to be similar to us,” says Dr. Cindy Carlson, the program
director of the school psychology program at UT-Austin.
Despite this innate tendency toward racial bias, researchers say parents can —and
should— help their children overcome it. Much of children’s development is learning to
think and behave in ways that are appropriate and useful to society, says Dr. Carlson,
which is why it’s not surprising that the message of most religious is to treat others
equally.
The Persistence of Prejudice
Dr. Aboud’s research seems to suggest that prejudice begins to decline in children
about the time they become cognitively mature and are able to process a person’s
individual qualities—typically around seven years of age.
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Despite this, prejudice continues into adulthood. Dr. Banaji says all human beings
reveal some form of prejudice: on age bias tests, close to 90% of subjects favor young
people; on race bias tests, 80% of white and Asian subjects demonstrate a favoritism for
whites; and on the gender-career tests, 75% of male subjects, and an even larger
percentage of female subjects, associate females with family rather than career.
These findings may seem at odds with the conventional wisdom that prejudice has
dramatically declined since the repeal of the Jim Crow laws 40 years ago. It’s true, says
Dr. Killen of the University of Maryland, that explicit prejudice in terms of calling people
names or passing laws based on skin color has decreased. However, people’s implicit
prejudices have not diminished, she says.
“Today, people don’t care whom they sit next to on a bus [or] train,” she says.
“But who their child is friends with or gets married to is a big deal.”
Cherry Steinwender, of the Center for the Healing of Racism in Houston, points
out that, while adults may work in diverse companies, their behavior mirrors that of the
playground: they often associate with colleagues who look like them.
“Many of us cling to our stereotypes because it seems to make life easier,” she
says. “It means we don’t have to think.”
Raising Children Free Of Prejudice
So how do parents raise children free of prejudice? By talking to them about it,
says Dr. Bigler.
Not talking to kids about prejudice can lead to some startling assumptions on their
part. For instance, in a recent study, Dr. Bigler queried children about U.S. presidents.
Children who had never discussed why all of the presidents were white men developed
their own rather shocking reasons for the gender disparity. For example, roughly onethird
of African American children said the reason all U.S. presidents were white is
because it’s against the law for a black person to be president.
Dr. Bigler says the results of the study suggest that parents have to talk with their
children openly and explicitly about what race means if they want their children not to be
racist.
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“[Parents] have to show their kids that they actively seek out interactions with
people of other races,” which includes attending parties and cultural events with people
of other races, she says.
As well, parents must be aware of their own biases and baggage when it comes to
race.
“Just like parents control their anger [and] the secrets of their married life,
likewise they should control their prejudices in front of the children,” says Dr. Aboud.
A good way to discuss race with your kids is to watch the news with them, says
Dr. Borba. Newscasts offer a host of learning opportunities when it comes to race
relations, especially in terms of stereotypes. Pay attention to what newscasters say, and
point out to your kids when race is mentioned. It’s a good way of helping your kids
recognize common stereotypes.
“Broaden the experiences young children have,” says Dr. Banaji. “People,
countries, culture, media, food — these are all domains that can provide children with
experiences that can shape preferences and beliefs to be less limited than they might
otherwise be.”
That was exactly what Ruth Robinson wanted for her children. She had hoped
they could get it at a public school, but quickly realized that the local school in Round
Rock was segregated in favor of whites. Moving her children to St. Francis, a private
school miles away, might have seemed like an odd decision—since private schools tend
to be seen as bastions of exclusivity—but it ended-up exposing her children to the
diversity the local public school lacked. Indeed, when her daughter got into an argument
with a child of a different race, the teacher sat down with both kids and discussed the
issue with them. The situation demonstrated to Ms. Robinson that she made the right
decision to send her children to a different school.
“Parents should get involved with other races at an early age so that their children
get comfortable with people of different races and faiths,” she says. “They become
accustomed to that.”
Sugandha Jain is an internationally published journalist and a pat of the management team at
Kids ‘R’ Kids in Avery Ranch, Austin.. She holds a Masters Degree in Developmental Psychology
from the University of Texas at Dallas. She and her family live in Austin.
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