Is White Bias Racist?

by rabbifink on June 7, 2010 · 6 comments

This summer I am taking two classes at Law School that explore many of the issues and themes of racism. I am extremely fascinated by racism, and ethnic hatred. I am still sorting out my feelings on a lot of the issues and I am really happy that I am being exposes to the everything that we are discussing in class.

In Hate Speech Seminar we read a (poorly written, but very interesting) book about the White Supremacy Movement in California through the 80′s and 90′s. (It’s called Skinhead Confessions and you can buy it on Amazon: Skinhead Confessions: From Hate To Hope. Again, not very well written but very enlightening and an important book.)

The question we have been probing is: Where does racism come from? Why do people hate?

Of course, I welcome your suggestions in the comments.

CNN did a series on the famous Doll Test. (I wrote about the Doll Test in Simple Justice | The Story of Brown v. Board of Education: The End of Separate But Equal in Schools.) Anderson Cooper and a team at CNN performed a similar test to try and learn about how early racism can begin and whether we are effectively teaching our children the important lessons of non-discrimination.

I have included some of the video at the bottom of this post. To read more about their study go to the links at the bottom of the video.

In summary, there is a conclusive and scientific (link) “White Bias” among white and black students aged 4-5 years old and less so, but still present in white and black students 9-10 years old. Cooper and his team think this is a result of racist parents and preaching diversity and tolerance but not practicing it at home. This explains why so many children have a white bias.

I have a different theory.

Children, especially young children automatically gravitate to things that look like the things they are accustomed to being around. Young children associate with other children who share their most obvious characteristics. Whether it is height, body size, shirt color, lunchbox or skin color. When young children make choices it is often an indicator of things with which they are comfortable. Of course a white child, with white parents and white siblings is going to prefer things that are white. In fact I am surprised the numbers were not even higher and more in favor of white bias.

The troubling thing is white bias among black children. But this too has a very reasonable explanation. If a black child is a minority and feels like they are different, they will want to join the majority. If the majority is white, then a black child will gravitate to white. It is not racist. It is a white bias. But white bias does not equal racist. A young child with white bias does not portend a future with the skinheads.

I am certain that some of children come from bigoted homes and learned gross stereotypes from their parents. But I am also fairly certain that most of the white children just selected the things that were most familiar to them. Conversely, black children who are a minority want to fit in with the majority and selected the answers that they thought would help them fit in.

CNN, your study is great. But I don’t buy it.

Further, the guilt they made some of the parents feel over their children’s selections is plain sensationalist, irresponsible journalism. To take a few isolated questions asked of a 5 year old and show them to parents and then insinuate that the child is racist and the parents must also be racist is cruel, probably incorrect and a ratings grab. (Yes, believe it or not CNN pulled this shtick. You can find it somewhere on their impossible to navigate website.)

Is racism a problem? Yes.

To label 5 innocent 5 year olds racist because of their white bias? Come on, we are better than that.

Related posts:

  1. No White Running Backs Allowed?
  2. Mad Men Era Lives On in the White House
  3. Simple Justice | The Story of Brown v. Board of Education: The End of Separate But Equal in Schools

Tagged as: CNN, law, law school, Loyola Law School, racism, Skinheads, video, white bias

  • leslie friedman

    The Victor Frankl quote says it all. There are two races, the decent and the indecent. As for children, I do not believe they gravitate to those who resemble themselves. When one of my kids was in pre-school there was an extremely obese classmate. My child never noticed. Unfortunately in certain religious communities, children are taught that those of another group do not merit the same respect. Why do people hate? Perhaps children left to their own endeavors, judge playmates individually, but when parents impose their biases, it seems likely they impart their values upon their progeny.

  • Kelsey Liber

    We refer to so many things with the words black and white, including good and bad, or clean and dirty. it is a normal extension for kids to see skin colors that way too, but it is learned. My dad has often told about the first time my sister and i heard a person referred to as black and we started looking for him because the only people we saw were pink and brown.

    • JG

      R’ Fink:

      I didn’t click on the link, but here are a couple thoughts. I think that on the one hand you’re very correct about the general sources of bias in young children; they like what they are familiar with. So, in very young children, you find preferences for the language they hear spoken most often. It’s not because they are little nationalists, but rather because it’s what they are used to.

      At the same time, stereotypes exist, and just the awareness of and internalization of stereotypes can affect one’s attitudes in subtle ways. It’s a pretty interesting question in modern social cognition: people have implicit attitudes (that are not consciously held) that may bias them nonetheless. It is incorrect and unfair to call this racism, but it’s a great question how this should be handled in the law.

      I’d be happy to send you a nice review of this kind of social cognition and its implications for law. Here’s the citation: Kristin A. Lane, Jerry Kang, and Mahzarin R. Banaji . (2007.) Implicit Social Cognition and Law. The Annual Review of Law and Social Science.

      You can access it online at: http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.lawsocsci.3.081806.112748

      If you can’t get access to the site, I can email it to you if you would like.

  • Rabbi Messing

    A couple of quick off-the-top-of-my-head comments:

    1. In America we read from left to right, and when we first look at a page we look generally from left to right. Would the results of the CNN study have been different if the illustrations were presented in reverse order? What if they were presented in a circle, or not from lightest to darkest but randomly?

    2. What results would one get for children in the Congo, or China? What results would you get with white American children given choices of skin color that did not inlude white, or with black children …etc.?

    3. I agree with your irresponsible journalism conclusion – but even more important, perhaps it is revealing a liberal media bias towards concluding that such racism exists that they did not consider 1 and 2 above, and that they labeled certain views as “racist” without considering other possible explanations for the results of their study.

  • kelly b

    Eli, it’s not an issue of whether white bias is racist. It’s the effect of white bias regardless of it’s intent. And more importantly, why white bias even exists.

    When you say, “Cooper and his team think this is a result of racist parents and preaching diversity and tolerance but not practicing it at home” you are absolutely misconstruing the results. And I’ve heard you say before, “racism doesn’t exist.”

    Both of these statements are absolutely false. Nowhere does Cooper insinuate that any of the parents are racists nor that they are hypocrites preaching one thing and doing another. Instead, I believe he’s pointing to much larger and problematic issue, namely, that we’ve all been taught to “tolerate” each other and be “color-blind” and try to ignore the idea of race altogether. When parents don’t step up and make race an issue to be discussed with their children, when they just pretend it’s not there even though, as you pointed out, it’s clearly there, we let children create their own notions of race. This might be ok if we weren’t all bombarded with notions of “white is right” every single day. Once parents allow the media & society to mold their children’s notion of race — that’s where we get white bias.

    And you brush this off as though it’s perfectly ok, that “oh, of course children like white things because their parents are white and white means safe” — but that’s the problem! When your teacher is white, and your soccer coach is white, and your doctor is white, your barbie is white, and everyone on TV is white and every pretty model in magazines is white, children automatically associate whiteness with power, respect, beauty and goodness.

    We’re BOMBARDED with white is right and it’s irresponsible for white parents to ignore it and not talk about it with their children — that’s the problem with white bias. And yes, that’s what makes it racist.

    • http://finkorswim.com rabbifink

      > Read the post. I said “Is racism a problem? Yes.” And it is a problem. I am not saying it is not a problem.

      > Bias exists. No person can think the exact same way another person does. It is just as important to realize that as much as a bias can lead to racism, it is natural for children to feel comfortable in their own environments. Isolated environments are what cause white bias, but even if a white family lives in a very diverse neighborhood, their whole family is white, their cousins, grandparents and siblings are white. Can’t you see there is nothing invidious about a barely coherent child gravitating to people that look like the people he knows best??!!

      > Cooper most certainly was preaching without saying it explicitly. The whole show the parents the video scene was purely concocted to make the parents feel guilty. Kids are not adults. They don’t make choices like adults. And presenting the material the way he did was unfair.

      > There are societal issues that need to be dealt with. But this study is not indicative of those issues. Your point about seeing white power everywhere is CORRECT. And that is something that should be addressed but this study does not contribute to the discussion.

      > Parents should talk about it with their children. But a 5 year old may not even “get” what the parents are talking about. That’s why this study is dumb.

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