Racial Relationships and Children

     Often, the voice of a child can be more honest and revealing than many voices of experienced adults. A recent study conducted by CNN revealed the opinions of children on friendships between race. Often, the case was that kids have very biased opinions on who to become friends with. This is mostly because of their parents' ideals of their kid's friends. In general, black kids had more civilized opinions on diversity, thinking that people should all be together. Over 70% of white children, on the other hand, are of the opinion that relations between children of different skin color are mostly negative and that they would get in trouble for their attempts to make friends. These opinions are not the kids' own, strictly speaking - they want to have friends of many different groups - their parents' opinions are the only thing that is holding them back. Why are white parents so subtly but absolutely biased? It's likely because they are the majority, they have less experiences with people that look different from them, and they have simply not let go of the belief that there is something fundamentally different about the way black people and other minorities perceive the world. Almost all they internally rely on to tell themselves everyone is equal is hearsay. Black parents, on the other hand, have grown up in a world of mostly whites, so they have experience enough to see them as "just people". rather than "white people".

     I think that while this is a clear step up from the violent racism of the 1960s and before the Emancipation Proclamation, it is still depressing - while the racial bias is small, it is still there, and it still has enough leverage over people's better judgment that it can break up childhood friendships and other fundamental interactions. I want to keep promoting civil rights until racism and other completely unjustified prejudice is ground into the dust.