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Race And Race

Decent Essays

Kamila Hilal
The question at the center of this article is whether or not children between 5 and 6 years of age (in comparison to adults and children between 10 and 11 years of age) consider race to be a stable over time. This concept is important in understanding both the change in cognitive development of children as well as the significances of difference in social groups as a factor in understanding race. This controlled experimental study used white children ages 10-11, white children ages 5-6, white adults, and children (ages 5-6) of a racial minority. All participants were shown pictures of a young child as well as two grown ups and asked which of the two that young child will grow up to be (with both emotion and race of the images …show more content…

I believe the design is very reasonable and it is able to address the question well though perhaps within each of the four tested groups, the participants themselves could have been selected from various socioeconomic groups (white children ages 5-6 from different socioeconomic backgrounds, children ages 5-6 of a racial minority from different socioeconomic backgrounds, etc...). The experiment shows an implication that although there is a cognitive component with developing the understanding that race is stable, there is a great social component that is presented by the difference between the two 5-6 year old groups. Is it because children of a racial minority may be more likely to be educated by their parents on the concept of race? Is there also a socio economic component to this understanding. The article stated that the participants were "recruited from the same region" though a region is ambiguous. It would be interesting to see diversity of socio economic backgrounds within each of the groups (of course, new groups would need to be created in order to test for a socio economic factor). Does the socio economic background of a child from each of the groups affect their understanding of race in comparison between groups and/or within the group members? In addition, it would be interesting to further divide each group of children by

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