Group Differences - Race/Ethnicity: Individual portion

The article I read for my group project of Race and Ethnicity is Modifying Children’s Racial Attitudes by Frances E. Aboud. I found this article to be extremely interesting! It aimed to discuss certain ways to help children overcome negative prejudice and bias.

The first thing worth mentioning was the definition of prejudice that he used: “holding derogatory social attitudes…towards members of a group on account of their membership of that group as expressed through emotions and evaluations.” It was interesting that he quantified it as expressed through emotions and evaluations, because I think so many times, when we define prejudice colloquially, we leave out quantifiers. We qualify it with adjectives such as negative, bad, demeaning, or hateful, but forget to address how it is actually expressed.

The second thing that really stood out to me was the following quote: “While children are capable of learning attitudes from parents, particularly from parents who overtly express their prejudice, the attitudes of children in North America frequently do mot match those of their parents.” It implied, to me, that something about prejudice is inherent in everyone. As much as we think and push that prejudice is learned, clearly that isn’t the case. Additional statements throughout the article reinforced that to me. By saying things like children hold less positive or more negative attitudes towards individuals of the “outgroup,” it reinforces the idea that children just automatically think that way. Children under the age of 7 are still in the egocentric phase. They focus on themselves and people who are similar. Because of this, they may develop certain prejudices. Furthermore, their egocentrism assumes that everyone else thinks the way they do, so they dismiss the tolerant views and attitudes of adults.

The third and final thing, that incorporates the rest of the article as a whole, is how to battle these prejudices. It’s difficult to prevent, since we’re not really sure where prejudice originates, however, some techniques have been developed to help reduce prejudice. Aboud discusses three types of intervention: multicultural media, intergrated schooling, and behavior changing. All three of these seemed to have positive results. They worked best with post-exposure discussion, direct contact, and peer influence. He discussed how often times a bully isn’t necessarily extremely prejudiced, but desires control. However, when those bullies go uninterrupted, the public discrimination becomes accepted. It goes back to paying attention to the socializer and the message. The message isn’t necessarily “be prejudiced” but it’s socialized in a way that prejudicing becomes acceptable.