YOU'VE GOT TO BE CAREFULLY TAUGHT - PART 2

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You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

—Oscar Hammerstein II

There was so much material and so many dubious conclusions in the Newsweek article that it wasn’t possible to cover it all in one column, so here’s the follow-up.

Newsweek entitled its outrageous cover story “See Baby Discriminate” and included the subtitle, “Kids as young as 6 months judge others based on skin color. What's a parent to do?”

I think the key word in that subtitle is “judge”. Liberal researchers concluded that because children NOTICE color differences in people’s skin, they necessarily JUDGE people according to those differences — and they expect you to interpret “judge” in the worst possibly way. Here’s a heads-up to all you liberal researchers: NOTICE is not a synonym for JUDGE.

The second study cited by Newsweek was carried out by Phyllis Katz, a professor at the University of Colorado. Katz showed photographs to 6-month-olds and determined that because they stared “significantly longer” at photos of people who were of a different skin color than their parents, the babies were somehow judging those people on the basis of race. We’re not told how long is “significantly longer”, nor are we given any indication of what kind of people were depicted in the photographs or whether there might have been other aspects of the depictions, besides race, that might have given the children cause to look longer at certain photographs.

Let me add another personal experience here. When my older son was less than a year old, I was sitting outside our on-post duplex with my son on my lap. When our neighbor came home, my son became very excited because he thought daddy was arriving. He didn’t notice the neighbor’s dark brown skin; he noticed the army uniform.

But back to the “study”. When these same children were 3 years old. Katz showed them photographs of other children and the 3-year-olds were asked to decide which ones they’d like to have as friends. This study is flawed on its face. Who in their right mind encourages children to choose friends solely on the basis of physical appearance? Any reasonably competent parent would encourage their children to choose friends based on character and commonalities, not appearance.

An interesting aside: On a particular online dating site, the “personality test” included four photographs of smiling people, head shots only, two male and two female, and you are asked to choose which ones are “sincere”. Both my son and I took the test, failed it, and then compared notes. The determination on the site was that the two with “crinkle lines” around the eyes were sincere, while the other two were not. However, that’s not the way we judged it. The two with the biggest smiles, despite the crinkle lines, struck both my son and me as “used-car salesmen” types who were simply TOO happy to be sincere. The two with the hesitant smiles stuck us as more honest. The surprising determination of the “experts” on the site indicates to me that the “experts” seldom make determinations based on real-life experience.

Back to the “study”. When the children were 5 or 6 years old, Katz gave them decks of cards with “drawings of people” on them and asked them to sort the cards into stacks. Katz noted that 68% sorted the cards on the basis of race, rather than gender.

The problems with this “study” are legion. Why did Katz use drawings, rather than photographs? How realistic were the drawings? Were the drawings depictions of faces only or of the entire person? If they were drawings of the entire person, did they include skinny, overweight, and unattractive people? If so, isn't it possible the children made certain judgments based on those aspects? Did the drawings give any indication of activities, such as sports gear, drawing tools, etc.? Did it occur to Katz that the children might react to the skill of the artist and the quality of the drawings, rather than to race or gender? If the drawings were of facial features only, gender would have been more difficult to determine. And, again, why would any reputable researcher use drawings, rather than photographs?

Because the focus of Katz’ study was race, it apparently never occurred to her that children might form judgments based on the quality of the art, rather than on the depiction of the color of someone’s skin. When I was 5 years old, my favorite storybook was one with outstanding illustrations, and I chose it as my favorite solely on the basis of those illustrations. Race, even storyline, had nothing to do with it; I was enamored of the drawings. I’m sure the possibility that 5-year-olds might select cards based solely on the quality of the artwork never even occurred to Katz.

Katz said of her studies, "I think it is fair to say that at no point in the study did the children exhibit the Rousseau type of color-blindness.” By “color-blindness”, does she mean the children did not notice variations in skin color? What? Is she crazy? Of COURSE, they noticed! But noticing skin color is NOT the same as bigotry.

In yet another “study”, an Ohio State University professor observed a first-grade class’s reaction to a black family portraying the family in Clement Moore’s ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas and to a black Santa Claus.

This is yet another flawed study. Children are not stupid. Even setting aside the fact that Santa Claus is a European tradition and, as such, is traditionally white, Moore’s poem clearly says of Santa, “His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry.” When we read or listen to a story, we form pictures in our minds. After having listened to that line, is it any wonder the children objected that Santa couldn’t be black?

But perhaps the professor tweaked Clement Moore’s poem to suit herself? After all, she ended her little play with, “"Merry Christmas to all! Y'all sleep tight." “Ya’ll sleep tight”???? Pray tell, where is THAT line found in the original poem?

I’m sick to death of all these useless liberal “studies” and their dubious conclusions. Say. . . think how much money we could cut from the federal budget by simply eliminating funding for all these ridiculously useless "studies"!

© 2009 by Libbi Adams. All rights reserved.