Sunday, October 25, 2009
Even Babies See Races
A researcher at the University of Texas has conducted a study with controversial results. Birgitte Vittrup began her study in 2006, and began testing Caucasian children to see how they judge people of other races and skin colors. She began her research on 5 to 7 year old children and asked the children how nice people of different colors are. She then broadened her testing to children as young as six months. As impossible as it may seem she gathered viable information from testing the babies. She showed the babies pictures of people's faces of different races, then monitored how long the babies stared at picture. To her surprise the babies would stare longer at the faces of people who were of a different race than the baby. Vittrup continued her study with older children by handing them a deck of cards with people's faces drawn on them, and told the children to organize them in any way they would like. Only 16% of them organized the faces by gender. But 68% of the kids organized the cards based on the color of their skin. This just shows that children at such a young age are not nearly as color-blind as most adults expect.
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Kyle that is so cool. It's amazing how we think kids don't realize the skin color of people but they do. When I was little I did it but my experience was different because I was born in a town were most of the kids were dark skinned so they always stared at me and they used to call me Guerita (whity) and girl with the green eyes. I used to look in the mirror and wonder why people called me whity if I looked just like them. As I got older I saw why because I had lighter skin and green eyes. The kids weren't mean but they always let me know of the difference in skin and eye color.
ReplyDeleteThis shows that people are nurtured into putting labels onto people. They aren't born with this mindset. It's too bad that as we get older we judge people differently than we should. Everyone does it, some more than others and it's mostly not intentionally. I feel that if each of us instill this into our children from the start, we can make a difference. Good job Kyle
ReplyDeleteKyle, this post is legit. I didn't realize we judged people racially at such a young age. But if it starts before it's taught, then how can we stop it? I always thought prejudice was learned through personal experiences or parental opinion, but i guess not entirely. Do you think there's any way we can keep children from judging so early in life? This issue really makes me wonder.
ReplyDeleteKyle, I had heard of this study done by Vittrup. I think that maybe skin color is the easiest difference for the young children to notice. By the time the children are 5-7 they have over heard adults raciest remarks and children pick up so much at this age. It definitely makes you question how young judgment begins in a child's life.
ReplyDeleteAs you are identifying in your blog, prejudice is a very complicated issue.
ReplyDeleteAre you familiar with the song "You've Got to Be Taught" from the musical South Pacific?
You might read Jesus Colon's essay called "Little Things are Big." It's about his decision not to help a white woman because he was afraid what she might think of him (a Puerto Rican man).
http://www.facinghistorycampus.org/CTP/ctp.nsf/All+Docs/CTP+Little+Things+Text?OpenDocument