Your baby is an evil racist

I've met Kang Lee and discussed his research into the lying behavior of children with him. Dr. Lee and his team are the only redeeming element at OISE, because, aside from his brilliance, his seems to be the only area there which hasn't become heavily politicized. Yet.

U of T Professor Kang Lee says two of his recent studies indicate that racial bias may arise in babies as young as six to nine months of age.

Lee, a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, says that lack of exposure to other races may be the cause.

He and researchers from the University of Toronto, the U.S., U.K., France and China, show that six to nine month olds demonstrate racial bias in favour of members of their own race and racial bias against those of other races.

In the first study, published in Developmental Science, Lee  showed that six- to nine-month-old babies begin to associate faces from their own race with happy music and those from other races with sad music.

In the second study, published in Child Development, the researchers found that babies as young as six months were more inclined to learn information from an adult of his or her own race, rather than from an adult of a different race.

“The results show that race-based bias already exists around the second half of a child’s first year,” said Lee, a Canada Research Chair in moral development and developmental neuroscience and lead author of the studies. “This challenges the popular view that race-based bias first emerges only during the preschool years.”

He believes the results of these studies are important given the issues of widespread racial bias and racism around the world.

“These findings thus point to the possibility that racial bias may arise out of our lack of exposure to other-race individuals in infancy,” Lee said. “If we can pinpoint the starting point of racial bias, which we may have done here, we can start to find ways to prevent racial biases from happening.”...