If you’re a caregiver to tweens or young teens, you may have noticed that more of their friendships are with kids of their same race, compared to when they were younger. If you’ve observed this, it’s not just your child! Research shows that cross-racial friendships become less common when kids reach middle childhood.
Maybe you’ve worried that your child is becoming more racially prejudiced, or just more inclined to go along with the segregated patterns of society.
But some interesting research by Dr. Kristin Pauker, a psychology professor at the University of Hawaii, indicates that a very different factor may be at work.
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Dr. Pauker’s research on “prejudice mindsets” and cross-racial friendships
In two studies of a multiracial group of 8- to 13-year-olds, Dr. Pauker found that there was an important connection between how children understood prejudice and their willingness to interact across racial lines.
Some children believed that prejudice is permanent or fixed. For example, if a person has acted in a racist way once, they will always be racist. Other children believed that levels of prejudice could change over time.
The research found that children with a “fixed” mindset about prejudice (i.e. prejudice can’t and won’t change) were less likely to want to interact with kids of other races. This was true even with kids who the research found had low levels of prejudice.
Children who believed that prejudices can change were friendlier across racial lines and expressed more interest in interacting with peers of a different race.
Related post: How I talk about white privilege with my child
Dr. Pauker’s findings make a lot of sense to me. As kids get older, they are more aware that being prejudiced or racist is a bad thing (even if they are confused about what exactly constitutes prejudice.) White kids in particular may be afraid of being labelled as racist and so avoid interactions where they could do or say the wrong thing.
When learning about racism makes white youth “act weird”
Pauker’s research has me thinking about the importance of not just teaching kids about race and prejudice. We also need to think about the messages we use during that teaching. (More on that in a bit.) It also reminded me of an anecdote I read recently.
In the young adult adaptation of White Fragility: Why Understanding Racism Can Be So Hard for White People, co-author Dr. Ali Michael shares a conversation she had with a Mexican American college student. His college was offering more anti-racism trainings, which he thought was a good thing. But he’d noticed that after the trainings, his white peers would often “act weird” around him.
For example, people avoided using his name because they were afraid they might accidentally call him the wrong name. They didn’t want to commit a microaggression, so they became vague. Another time, one white peer asked him where he was from. Another white person said “we’re not supposed to ask that. It’s a microaggression,” and then the two guys just walked away. The college student told Ali, “Please help people learn, but tell them not to get weird. I still want to connect.”
Once again, an overwhelming fear of making mistakes can be a big obstacle to positive cross-racial interactions and relationships.
Brave messages that help kids develop healthy cross-racial friendships
So, what should caregivers and educators say as we teach young people about race, prejudice, and racism? There are two big messages that it’s important for youth to hear, as well as to see adults live out in their own relationships.
Message #1: People can unlearn racial prejudice. There’s no such thing as a permanent racist.
Just like any other type of skill or knowledge, antiracist mindsets, behaviors, and perspectives are learned over time with lots of practice.
It’s also important to be aware of how we label people from history and today as we talk about racism. Point to how a particular behavior or action is prejudiced or racist, rather than putting people into hard and fast categories. Talk about how your own prejudices have changed and discuss other people you know who’ve learned to do better when it comes to race.
In the adaptation of Stamped for teens, Ibram X. Kendi describes how W.E.B. DuBois’ beliefs about race changed over time. Some of his early beliefs encouraged Black people to assimilate into white society, but his later work embraced antiracist ideas.
In this booklist of both fiction and non-fiction books that address white privilege, you’ll find several that show white characters learning and growing in their understanding of prejudice. As they grow, their actions change.
Message #2: You will make mistakes as you form relationships with kids of different races. Those mistakes are opportunities to grow.
If there’s one message I tried to hammer home in my book Raising Antiracist Kids: An age-by-age guide for parents of white children it’s that mistakes are inevitable. Adults will make racial mistakes. Kids will make racial mistakes. When we spend lots of energy trying to avoid every mistake, it leads us to withdraw from relationships and opportunities to act for an antiracist world.
In the young people’s adaptation of White Fragility, the authors point to the idea of anti-fragility, taken from macroeconomics.
“Anti-fragility is not the absence of mistakes or the presence of perfection. It is the idea that growth happens because of mistakes and stress. Encountering racial stress, by that logic, does not weaken us – it makes us more capable. Anti-fragility suggests that stress, conflict, mistakes, and feedback can make a person stronger.”
For any relationship to be authentic, we have to risk making mistakes and being willing to see where we need to change.
Related post: How to model apologizing for racial mistakes
