Taylor Caldarino (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer
Have you ever wondered what age is best to start a conversation with your kids about racism? It can require creativity to come up with a way to explain this topic that is age-appropriate and ensures your child grasps what you are saying, but discussing racism from an early age helps give your child the tools necessary to prevent forming certain ideologies.
I believe parents should start conversations with their children about race starting around one year of age, but of course, making it extremely basic. This is because starting as early as three months old, babies start to show preferences for people that look like them. This makes it more likely that children will develop friendships that are homogenous, even if the child is growing up in an ethnically diverse area. Developing friendships outside of one’s race may help them to experience more cultures, which can lead to less ignorance or a better understanding of which ways racism affects people who experience it.
Children are highly malleable, they pick up what the media and their peers say very quickly, and they believe it. This means that, since some races are portrayed in negative ways and white people are portrayed as superior, children form ideologies that the colour of your skin determines whether or not you are beautiful, a good or bad person, or smart or unintelligent. This is shown in Mamie Phipps Clark’s famous doll test study, in which kids are shown a white and a black doll and the majority of the kids applied positive attributes to the white dolls while associating negative attributes to the black dolls. I highly recommend watching this video on the doll test, it is quite eye-opening.
It can be hard to come up with ways to make a discussion age-appropriate or comprehensive for little ones, but there are plenty of great books and shows available that do very well when it comes to explaining how to treat others from different races.
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My name is Taylor, and I am currently majoring in psychology and minoring in gerontology at Simon Fraser University. I also love to hike and cook!