Science does not disagree with me at all. I suggest you read the entire dissertation (you do know what a dissertation is, right?) An excerpt: "Children who reported having Black friends showed slightly more positive evaluations of Blacks. However, neighborhood diversity was positively correlated with childrenâs negative evaluations of Blacks. Results revealed that parents in general were very reluctant to discuss the topic of race with their children. Only 33% of mothers and 20% of fathers reported having significant race related discussions. Many parents chosenot to have such discussions because they did not want to make a âbig dealâ out of it, they did not think it was important to talk about, or they did not know how to approach the topic in conversation. Parentsâ and childrenâs racial attitudes were uncorrelated, indicating that children do not automatically adopt their parentsâ attitudes. However, childrenâs perceptions of their parentsâ racial attitudes were significantly correlated with their own positive and negative attitudes towards Blacks. It appeared that parents were equally reluctant to talk about race even when specifically instructed to do so. Close to half of parents in the two discussion groups admitted that they only briefly mentioned some of the topics. Only 10% of the parents reported having more in-depth discussions with their children. This likely affected the effectiveness of the intervention, and the children in the experimental groups did not show statistically significant improvements of their racial attitudes following the intervention. Prior to the intervention, many children reported that they did not know if their parents liked Black people or if their parents would approve of them having Black friends. Children who were aware of their parentsâ interracial friendships showed more positive and less negative evaluations of Blacks. Furthermore, children in the discussion groups expressed more awareness of their parentsâ racial attitudes following the intervention." Conclusion: "CONCLUSION Prejudice continues to be a problem in our society, and in order to eliminate, or at least decrease its occurrence, it is important to intervene with children when they are young. As children get older, their racial attitudes and behaviors are likely to become more negative and harder to change (Stephan & Vogt, 2004). Children who adopt more egalitarian views will display less racial bias, and this in turn may lead to less racial tension in our society. As this study has documented, many parents choose not to discuss the topic of race with their children. For some parents, television programs promoting positive interracial interactions may be useful as a way to approach the subject, because they can use the television content to initiate conversations with their children about race. Although it appears that a number of parents are uncomfortable in discussing with their children the topic of race and discrimination, this study sheds some initial light on the role parent-child conversations may play in enlightening children about their parentsâ racial attitudes. It is hoped that this study can be a springboard to future investigations into the impact parents and educational television can have on improving childrenâs racial attitudes. Dissertation here: http://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/...d=1E4945BB9E2FD747324CD609106175AB?sequence=2
Exactly my point: "Children who reported having Black friends showed slightly more positive evaluations of Blacks. However, neighborhood diversity was positively correlated with childrenâs negative evaluations of Blacks. " In other words, the white children who had the worst impressions of black people, are the children who lived amongst black people. The white children who had the best or most neutral impressions of black people, are the ones who didn't live around black people. Yes, I read the entire article, and I have read other, similar studies. They all have similar conclusions: That children generally have a natural, innate preference for people of their own racial group. Society reflects this. It has nothing to do with "hate". Speaking of hate, I'm genuinely sorry that you and RCG hate your own ethnic identity so much that you want to pretend that it doesn't exist. Just a humanitarian tip for you guys: Racial Identity Tied to Happiness, Study Finds MSU News, March 4, 2011 Black people who identify more strongly with their racial identity are generally happier, according to a study led by psychology researchers at Michigan State University. The study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, appears in the current issue of Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, a research journal published by the American Psychological Association. âThis is the first empirical study we know of that shows a relationship between racial identity and happiness,â said Stevie C.Y. Yap, doctoral candidate in psychology at MSU and lead researcher on the project. Previous research has found a relationship between racial identity and favorable outcomes such as self-esteem, Yap said, but none has made the link with happiness. For the study, the researchers surveyed black adults in Michigan. The results suggest the more the participants identified with being blackâor the more being black was an important part of who they areâthe more happy they were with life as a whole, Yap said. The study also explored the reasons behind the connection. Yap said it may be fueled by a sense of belongingnessâthat is, blacks with a strong sense of racial identity may feel more connected to their racial group, which in turn makes them happy. This sense of belongingness is especially important for happiness in women, Yap said. âFor men, the potential factors relating identity to happiness is still an open question,â he said. http://news.msu.edu/story/9018/
LOL!! So funny that the study's conclusion is that racial preference for one's own group is natural to humans, even amongst babies, to the contrary of what Optional claimed... Yes the "suggestion" which is called a "conclusion", is that we should start young, and work hard and consistently to brainwash our children!! Brainwash them away from their natural instincts, against their natural affinity towards their own racial group... In other words we should teach white children to hate themselves... LOL!!!
http://chealth.canoe.ca/channel_hea...s_id=30679&news_channel_id=131&channel_id=131 Study suggests racism not innate human reaction Provided by: QMI Written by: QMI Agency Apr. 26, 2010 Racism is not an innate human reaction, new research suggests, it's taught. And the proof lies deep in the neurons of the human brain. When we see an action performed by someone within our own racial group - like, say, drinking a glass of water - our brains mimic that action, even though we don't physically go through the same motions. The reflex reaction helps us to understand that motion, to empathize with people close to us and understand scenarios more effectively. But when we see the same thing performed by someone outside of our racial group, our brains practically shut down and make little effort to understand that person. The findings, the results of a new study from the University of Toronto, don't provide proof that people are inherently racist. Instead, argue researchers, it shows the exact opposite. It comes down to what lead researcher Jennifer Gutsell calls "ingroups" and "outgroups." And which group we put people in is something we're taught from the time we're very young. "I think that the distinction between ingroup and outgroup is innate," Gutsell says. "I believe that we evolved with a special sensitivity for those who are close to us. However this does not mean that we evolved to be racist - who we include in our ingroup and who is not is learned!" she said. The study found that when subjects of one race watched a video of a person of the same race drinking a glass of water, their brain mimicked that activity internally, allowing the viewer to empathize with the subject on the screen. But when viewers watched a video of someone of a different race doing the same activity, their brain showed little or no activity. "It seems that for some reason we do not feel as connected to members of other groups," Gutsell said. "It's not specifically about race. We are sure that we would find the same for other disliked social groups." Proof that the study does not show an inherent racism in humanity lies in the followup. People who scored highly on a test that measured subtle racist and prejudicial tendencies were even less likely to measure any kind of brain response to watching actions performed by people outside their racial group. But people could also be taught to like and relate to those groups, improving the brain response and promoting an empathetical reaction. Gutsell suggested that early childhood education that promoted interaction with more diverse groups of people would be one approach to combating prejudice. She cited research from collegaue Elizabeth Page-Gould who found that simple friendships crossed the barriers proposed by this study remarkably easily. "Cross-group friendships reduce prejudice and people feel more connected to the group of friends," she said. "This feeling of connectedness and more positive attitudes about the outgroup should also influence mirror neuron activity." Austin is still in Texas, last time I checked. Many liberals try not to be racist...but it often takes a generation of two to root out the racism. Many liberals were born of racist parents, and try to overcome that conditioning. Children though, pick up on the most subtle things imaginable. I suspect that many of the Texans try to think they are not racist...but lurking deep down, the racism they grew up with is still there. I would wonder at what age you became a racist...I doubt it was natural, but rather the product of your environment. Had you been raised by a black family in an all black neighborhood and taught that whites are out to get you...do you think you would still want to hang with whites?
HAHAH!! "QMI Agency" in Canada, THAT sounds credible... LOL!!! Even in diverse universities, the more "diverse" a university is, the more students "self segregate"... LOL!!! I guess they didn't get brainwashed well enough as babies... LMAO!!! I guess this "self segregation" should be illegal too!! What can we do? What can be done about all these racist babies?? LMAO!!! Start brainwashing YOUNG of course... <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Eq1PDYB1G1U" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Lawrence A. Hirschfeld, U-M associate professor of anthropology and psychology, tackles all of these questions in a book published this spring by the MIT Press: Race in the Making: Cognition, Culture and the Child's Construction of Human Kinds. The book emerged from Hirschfeld's studies in the United States and Europe of children's thinking about race. It will interest not only anthropologists, psychologists, philosophers, historians, political scientists and social workers, but parents and teachers as well. Professor Hirschfeld discussed some of his conclusions with Michigan Today's John Woodford. http://michigantoday.umich.edu/96/Jun96/mta1j96.html MT: Do you maintain, then, that racism is innate or inevitable? LH: Definitely not. But structures that give humans the capacity to gather and organize certain kinds of knowledge are innate. These structures make it easy to conclude that people have essential, inheritable natures, and these are thought to give rise to other less obvious qualitative differences. Bear in mind that these structures make certain kinds of knowledge possible; they do not in themselves provide us with that knowledge. The cultural environment in which we live is equally important. In some sense we can say that these two things---the mind and the culture in which the mind finds itself---work together and make each other up. Many people are uncomfortable with this thinking. There is great resistance to imagining that anything but learned culture---social influences---shapes beliefs like race that have political consequences. Indeed, it is widely assumed, despite the lack of evidence that it is the case, that we can go in and "redo" people's thinking simply by changing the cultural environment in which that thought occurs. But this strategy ignores what the mind as an adapted organ brings to the process of making race. Maybe it's easier to see this if we consider less politicized aspects of common sense. We now know that Euclidean geometry and Newtonian mechanics are not accurate descriptions of the world. Still, our common-sense intuitions are well captured by both Euclidean geometry and Newtonian mechanics. In short, common sense, if not the physical world, is well described by these systems of thought. To be sure, we can learn other systems for describing the physical world, for example Riemannian geometry or quantum physics. But we can't unlearn common sense. Race is like Euclidean geometry in this regard. We can learn that it is an inaccurate description of the world, but that doesn't mean that it disappears from our conceptual arsonal. This has consequences for what we teach children about race. Telling children that we're all the same inside, that race is unimportant and literally skin deep, may make us feel better about ourselves but probably doesn't do much to shape children's thinking. Nor does telling children that they shouldn't have racialist beliefs---beliefs that people are divided into discrete racial groups---do much more than make them anxious. When adults tell children that something they know to be the case is not the case, it is anxiety-provoking. It is not, however, a very effective way to change belief. Imagine how successful you'd be in getting someone to lose weight by telling them that they weren't hungry. MT: Does this have implications for what children feel toward members of other groups? LH: Yes. Studies show that by age 3, children have developed quite negative attitudes toward outgroup members. Many people believe that children learn these attitudes passively by modeling their beliefs after the important adults (usually parents) around them. As the saying goes, "As the twig is bent so grows the tree." I'm not sure that this is so, however. The studies we have conducted lend little support either to the claim that children are pliant learners nor to the contention that parents play a critical role in shaping children's attitudes. The twig may be bent, but it is not necessarily the parents that are doing the bending. In fact, it may be the twig that's setting its own course. Again, this makes sense if we think of race as emerging out of an evolved adaptation to group living. Social groups are part of the social landscape and learning about them is best served by attention to that broad landscape. Children learn about race by having their attention directed to what the community as a whole believes, not by having their attention directed solely to what their parents believe. This sort of process is not unique to race. Immigrants who speak with strong accents do not have children who speak in accented English. They don't because their children do not attend only to their parents' speech. They are also guided by the speech of others around them, even if that speech is less frequently encountered than parental speech. In the same way, the broad cultural environment shapes children's racial beliefs because of the way children tend to "listen." When learning about race, the child's task is to find information relevant to the nature of social difference, and culture is saturated with this sort of information. Much of it confirms that racial differences are fundamental and deep, so it isn't a surprise that children come to the same conviction quite precociously. Look at the way race is portrayed on television---a source of information even our youngest children spend a lot of time "studying." For every episode of The Cosby Show a kid watches, he sees dozens of athletic shoe ads. These ads depict blacks as animal-like and dangerous, engaged in violent "games" of basketball played on inner-city courts and viewed through chain-link fences. When the child sees whites in these ads, they tend to be portrayed as disciplined, focused and controlled, running in parks or working out on sparkling exercise machines. What message do we expect children to take away from this?
From the link above that you ignorantly didn't read: The findings, the results of a new study from the University of Toronto.
No, your point is reinforced by your own opinion. A racist opinion prejudged everything on a racist basis. For some reason you won't admit to this conditioning... Racism is not innate, it is learned.
Hmm, then why is it that 6 mos old exhibit it? And how is a preference or affinity for one's own group "racism". Are you really trying to make the argument that people identifying most with their own broad racial group necessarily "hate" all other groups? Really?? I guess some wicked racist at the beginning of time figured out some way to recondition the rest of humanity. Because it's very visible in every multiracial society on earth. I guess that racist overlord at the beginning of time did a really bang up job!! Also, puberty, menopause, and male pattern baldness must also be "conditioning". Why wont people admit it??