Children Aren't Color-Blind

The chapter "Why White Parents Don't Talk About Race" in the book NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman contains some critical information for us at Esperanza. 

Some important research findings:

• Children aren't color-blind, even those who attend diverse schools.
• Parents who explicitly talk about race with their children as early as age 3, the children have better attitudes about differences.
• Children are developmentally prone to in-group favoritism; they're going to form these preferences on their own. The attribute they rely on to categorize is the one which is most clearly visible.  Once a child identifies someone as most closely resembling himself, the child likes that person the most.
• Going to integrated schools gives you just as many chances to learn stereotypes as to unlearn them.  Children can self-segregate within the school. Diverse schools don't necessarily lead to more cross-race friendships.  Often it is the opposite.  In other words, sending a child to a diverse school is no guarantee that he or she will have better racial attitudes than children in homogeneous schools.  The more diverse the school, the more the kids self-segregate by race and ethnicity within the school.  More diversity translates into more division between students.
• To be effective, conversations have to be explicit, in unmistakable terms that children understand.
• Minority children who hear messages of ethnic pride are more engaged in school and more likely to attribute their success to their effort and ability.
• The more a culture emphasizes individualism (like in the U.S.), the more children form and join distinctive subgroups (cliques) to meet the need to belong. 
• Light-skinned blacks and Anglo-appearing Hispanics feel their status within the minority group to be more precarious.  Therefore, they act more in keeping with their image of the minority identity, even if it is a negative stereotype. 
• If minority children hear preparation-for-bias warnings too often, they are less likely to connect their successes to effort, and much more likely to blame their failures on others (such as teachers) who they perceive as biased against them. 

I  highly recommend that every Esperanza educator and parent read this chapter in this book as I have only captured the highlights.  There is so much more that is extremely valuable.