Study: Babies Show Racial Bias

The proper word is preference not bias.

I have often wondered if this "preference" isn't "hard-wired" into all humans. Perhaps at one time in our history it would have been a survival type of thing; looking for the same vs. the different. The same, being more trustworthy.

Years ago I read about the filming of one of the Planet of the Apes movies. The studio put out a call for extras to play various types of apes...gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans, etc. The extras showed up and put on their costumes, which they could not take off until the end of the day.

At lunch in the commissary, they noticed something remarkable. All of the gorillas were sitting with other gorillas. Chimpanzees were sitting with other chimpanzees, etc. There were even cases where two friends came in together to be extras and were assigned different types of costumes, and instead of sitting with each other, they sat with strangers who had the same kind of ape costume!

This was a case where the extras had nothing to go by except costumes. They had no idea who was white or black, rich or poor, pretty or ugly, young or old. They only saw costumes...and they segregated themselves by costume, without even realizing they were doing it.

It’s human nature! Time people got over it.

The first time my infant at about 10 months old saw a black person, he pointed at him and said, "Ernie!"

The guy, a salesman in a baby furniture store, looked puzzled and unsure whether to be offended or not. So I explained:

Thankfully, he took it as a compliment!

All of the gorillas were sitting with other gorillas. Chimpanzees were sitting with other chimpanzees, etc.

As to your comment, and Liz's above about whether these behaviors are hard-wired, I had an interesting experience. It has something to do with the way people in the UK tease and bully kids with red hair and/or freckles, coloring that they call "ginger." I always thought it might have originated in England as a prejudice against the Irish.

For several years I dressed teddy bears in patriotic neckties and took them to an army hospital here in the US, where there was a donation table on weekends in an area where soldiers and their family members passed by. I purchased bears that were available in a range of "skin" colors, including white, beige, tan, golden, ginger (like red hair), brown and black; and usually took one of each every week.

There were white, black, mixed race and hispanic (brown) soldiers. Sometimes soldiers picked a bear that matched their skin color, sometimes not -- or maybe they took the one they liked best of whichever ones remained after other people had chosen a bear. But one thing happened almost every week: the "ginger" bear was left over, or last chosen. Eventually I stopped even supplying them. And I love red hair!

It seems to me that this is proof of a “racism gene”. So then, why should a “racism gene” be any different from a “gay gene”? Since the “gay gene” is now protected, racism should also now be protected under the constitution.

Is it really the ethnicity of the baby or perhaps the ethnicity of the people who raise the baby? Did the study control for that? If a family fostered or adopted a baby - from birth - of a different race, what preference would that baby show?

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