Racial Awareness In Young Children
Racial Awareness in Young Children
In this paper I will discuss the early stages of racial awareness. Many researchers have conducted studies to find out around what time children develop and become more conscious of racial differentiation. These studies are important, because if we can identify around what age racial awareness begins, we can understand why and when prejudices starts and find ways to eradicate racism and stereotypes.
First of all, it is often believed that young children do not understand concepts such as racial group or ethnicity. This belief often draws on Piaget’s theories of cognitive development. In Piaget’s theory there are distinct stages in the child development: sensorimotor (birth to age two), preoperational (age two to six), concrete operational (age seven to eleven) and formal operational (age twelve and older). He believed that children were going through these stages linearly and were incapable of understanding information the same way adults can. He also thought that children were egocentric and were not able to show any real awareness of social and moral concepts before the age of seven. However his interpretations were limited as “Piaget never investigated children in social setting not dominated by adults” (Ausdale and feagin p.3) The example of the three year old Carla shows that children are not as innocent and incapable of knowing the implications of what they are saying like adults think they are. Also children do not always imitate adults; sometimes they are influenced by their peers. Carla, who was preparing for resting time, decides to pick up her cot and move to another place. The teacher asks her what she is doing and Carla replies that she can’t sleep next to a nigger pointing out a four year old black girl, Nicole. After this incident her parents were summoned. However it wasn’t from her parents that she learned that rather it was from another little girl Teresa. It shows that like most of the children observed...
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