Poster #67 - The Relations Between Parents’ Color-blindness and Children’s Racial Bias

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Diversity, Equity & Social Justice

Integrative Statement

Introduction
White children as young as 3 years old demonstrate explicit (i.e., actively expressed) and implicit (i.e., outside of immediate cognitive awareness) racial biases in affective, cognitive, and behavioral domains assessed through a variety of measures (see Raabe & Beelmann, 2011, for a review). There is evidence that children’s racial biases may be most flexible immediately following their formation, highlighting the importance of providing children with anti-racism messaging early in life (Gregg et al., 2006)
In today’s society, parents must help children navigate a diverse world and in doing so can either perpetuate or challenge the racism that is dominant in society. However, researchers have consistently found that, at least in research contexts, White parents avoid talking to their children about race and racism (Brown et al., 2007; Hamm, 2001; Katz, 2003; Pahlke et al., 2012). This surprising issue might be explained in part by White parents’ tendencies to endorse color-blind racial ideology (CBRI), meaning that many parents insist that neither they nor their children “see” race and that race does not, and should not, affect any of their behaviors (Pahlke et al., 2012; Vittrup, 2016). As CBRI theorists argue, by ignoring race, individuals also ignore racism and its effects; thus, color-blind ideology has become one face of modern racism that functions to maintain systems of White power and privilege (Bonilla-Silva, 2015; Bonilla-Silva, et al., 2004; Neville et al., 2013). The present study examines this possibility by investigating whether White parents’ color-blind racial ideology is related to their young children’s explicit and implicit racial bias.

Method
Multi-method data used in this study were collected from 102 White children (47% female) between the ages of 5 and 9 years old (M=7.0, SD=.94). Parents’ color-blind racial attitudes were measured using the Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS; Neville et al., 2000). Child implicit racial bias was measured using the street exercise (Valk & Karu, 2001) and the child Implicit Association Test (Dunham et al., 2008). Child explicit racial bias was measured by asking children to watch a series of short video clips depicting an injustice toward both a Black or White child (counterbalanced) and report on how much they like the victim in the video, and how much they want to sit next to and play with the victim. The perpetrator of the injustice in each video was always White and the sex of the characters in the video always matched that of the study child. Children’s sex and social desirability (measured with an adapted version of the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, 1964) were controlled on all analyses.

Results & Discussion
Higher levels of parental color-blind racial attitudes predicted higher levels of children’s explicit racial in-group bias (i.e., preference for playing and liking White children, β=.20, p = .05; β = .21, p = .05, respectively). Parents’ color-blind racial attitudes were unrelated to children’s implicit racial biases, possibly for developmental reasons. The present findings provide evidence that parent and child racial attitudes are related, and suggest the importance of interventions targeting parents’ color-blindness.

Authors

• Diana E. Gal, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author

• Tracy Spinrad, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nancy Eisenberg, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rebecca H. Berger, The Center for Early Education and Intervention, University of Maryland, College Park
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sonya Xinyue Xiao, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jingyi Xu, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author