Children and Racism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYCz1ppTjiM


              In this CNN report, a race experiment is set out to discover if children see color. Interestingly enough, the documentation of this experiment does show that children are well aware of racism and are perceptive to the skin color of choice when it comes to societal acceptance. There are instances in the video that strikingly contribute to our understanding of racism and the portrayal of it.
           
              At 30 seconds into the video, there is already evidence of children being able to pick up on racism. The white child chooses the darkest colored image and states that she is the bad child because her skin is "black black," emphasizing the image's darkness by repeating the color black. Similarly, a black child chooses the white colored doll image to indicate who was a "dumb child." Because these two children chose kids different from their skin color reminds society that children are perceptive to what goes on around them. The stereotypes that are assigned to ethnicity in America seems to be working at large with how these children perceive the questions that are asked to them.

           Another interesting point that is brought up in this study is the  act of white bias. According to the video, white bias is act of white people, in this case children, responding to positive attributes with the dolls of their own skin color and negative attributes with the dolls that are black. This reminds me of Simmel's concept of ":The Stranger" in the sense that even though Black Americans have been in this country for over two centuries, the negativity towards their presence has still not been desensitized. This action at large shows that children are not immune to racism and they are molded by what they hear and see around them. And their acute understanding of the importance of skin color is alarming because this shows the beginnings of racism and how it is formed, sometimes unaware by parents or guardians.