New study shows white supremacy limits white children mentally emotionally and psychologically so they are unable to compete on any level playing field!
Anti-Black racism remains a pervasive crisis in the United States. Racist social systems reinforce racial inequalities and perpetuate prejudicial beliefs. Couple this with school systems that teach historical fictions for fear that historical truths would damage the self image of white youth and you have the catalyst for developmental problems centered around cognitive dissonance. These beliefs emerge in childhood, but can arise later in adulthood in many negative ways such as anti woman and misogynistic tendencies that lead to an inability to have healthy male female relationships to a preponderance of white male suicides once their self image as a provider is negated.
Racist and misogynistic attitudes which are the hallmark of white supremacy are difficult to change once entrenched in adolescence and childhood, and often in adulthood lead people to support policies that further reinforce racist systems at the detriment of their own self interests. Therefore, it is important to identify what leads children to form prejudicial beliefs and biases and what steps can be taken to preempt their self destructive development.
This study examined how children’s exposure to and beliefs about racial inequalities predicted anti-Black biases in a sample of 646 White children (4 to 8 years) living across the United States. It was found that for children with more exposure to racial inequality in their daily lives, those who believed that racial inequalities were caused by intrinsic differences between people were more likely to hold racial biases, whereas those who recognized the extrinsic factors such as systemic racism, limited access to education, economic disenfranchisement etc. underlying racial inequalities held more egalitarian attitudes.
Grounded in constructivist theories in developmental science, these results are consistent with the idea that racial biases emerge in part from the explanatory beliefs that children construct or are given to understand the racial inequalities they see in the world around them.
Racist social systems have an agenda not only to reinforce racial inequalities and perpetuate prejudicial beliefs but exist in order to maintain a social dominance of a particular group but not necessarily ALL members of that group. In the United States today, the perpetuation of racial bias, prejudice, and discrimination maintain and reflect racist social systems that systematically advantage White people (but not equally) while systematically disadvantaging Black, Indigenous, and other people of color mainly through economic disenfranchisement and access to upward mobility in the social arenas and all areas of endeavor. One critical step to redressing this injustice is understanding the psychological processes and influences that lead to the formation of racist thoughts and actions. A lot is known about the developmental mechanisms that underlie the emergence of these thoughts and actions. beginning with warnings about proximity to the "Others" meaning those of a different phenotype or religion especially those who have a strong melanin content in their skin or speak a different language.
Given the scale and scope of racial bias in the United States, there are undoubtedly multiple social and psychological processes involved that have been reinforced through media, educational programming, and oral history brought down from generations; for example, experiences with intergroup contact explains∼4% of variation in bias we can see evidence of this on social media platforms like Tik Tok where white adults relate the stories their parents and other relatives related to them about atrocities and family beliefs held about people of different racial backgrounds.
In the present study, we examined an additional mechanism that we hypothesize underlies the development of anti-Black bias in White children living across the United States: children’s exposure to and explanatory beliefs about racial inequalities. We expected that children who have had more exposure to racial inequalities in their dailylives (i.e., older children living in neighborhoods with larger disparities between Black and White people) would hold racial biases reflective of their beliefs about those inequalities.
Specifically, we expected that children who believe that racial inequalitiesare caused by intrinsic differences between people would have more racial biases because they are coming to view race and status as inherently linked, whereas children who believe that inequalities are caused by extrinsic factors would have fewer racial biases because of the recognition that it would be unfair and inaccurate to judge people based on these extrinsic circumstances. To shed light on this mechanism, we assessed children’s endorsement of intrinsic and extrinsic explanations for racial inequalities, children’s exposure to racial inequality in their residential ZIP code (i.e., Black/White disparities in income and education with children’s age as a measure of the duration of exposure), and children’s racial biases using two standard assessments of bias in child-hood (i.e., children’s choice to play with and attitudes about peers from different racial backgrounds . We then examined how children’s exposure to and beliefs about racial inequalities interact to predict variation in anti-Black bias during childhood. Explicit anti-Black biases emerge early and continue to develop throughout child-hood .
By 4 to 5 years of age, children—and White children in particular—hold more negative attitudes toward Black than White peers, attribute more negative intentions to Black than White peers, and are less likely to form friendships with Black than White peers. These biases are consequential in the quality of life of these children as well as their ability to think critically and attain higher educational goals without privilege as the catalyst! The concept of institutional racism is the systematic distribution of “resources, power and opportunity in our society to the benefit of people who are White and the exclusion of people of color,” according to Solid Ground, a social justice organization in Washington state.
Institutional racism has been blamed for the higher likelihood of poverty, food insecurity, poor overall health, environmental injustice and incarceration among Native Americans in the United States and among Black, Latinx and Asian people in both the US and the United Kingdom.
It’s separate but related to the bigotry or racial bias of individuals, according to Solid Ground, because it entails “systematic policies and practices within institutions that effectually disadvantage certain racial or ethnic groups. ”But rarely to we hear discussions on how it actually disadvantages white children and keeps them in poverty or without access to a better life in exchange for the illusion of superiority! Finding out later in life that your world view has been false and is the central reason for your feelings of inadequacy is also detrimental to the psyche even to the point of suicidal and homicidal ideations. These vulnerable psyches can be drawn to groups that support the ideals of Xenophobia (anti immigrant), Neo Nazi fascism and the Ku Klux Klan anti black extremism and terrorism. The sentiment even affects crime and sexual fetishism as red states have a higher preponderance of rape, incest, and internet porn interest in interracial themed, rape or violence against women porn.
The data also confirmed that since much of prejudice is indoctrination and memory by rote instead of education that teaches a student to question and think critically this severely inhibits a child's advances cognitively! Despite their important implications for interpersonal behaviors and relations, cognitive abilities have been largely ignored as a result of indoctrination to racial prejudice. We proposed and tested mediation models in which lower cognitive ability was clearly aligned with greater prejudice, an effect mediated through the endorsement of right-wing ideologies (social conservatism, right-wing authoritarianism) and low levels of contact with out-groups.
In an analysis of two large-scale, nationally representative United Kingdom data sets (N = 15,874), we found that lower general intelligence (g) indoctrination of racist tropes in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology. A secondary analysis of a U.S. data set confirmed a predictive effect of poor abstract-reasoning skills on anti-homosexual, anti-women,xenophobic and anti-black prejudice, a relation partially mediated by both authoritarianism and low levels of intergroup contact. All analyses controlled for education and socioeconomic status. Our results suggest that racist indoctrination stifling cognitive abilities play a critical, albeit underappreciated, role in prejudice. Consequently, we recommend a heightened focus on expanding critical thinking teaching youth to question and use tools to enhance cognitive ability in research on prejudice and a better integration of improving cognitive ability to effect the eradication of harmful prejudice models.
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