A Newsweek low point

In 2006 Newsweek magazine ran an issue with the front cover headline "Is your baby racist?"

The cover story was an argument in favour of the left-liberal, rather than the right-liberal, attitude to race/ethnicity.

Right-liberals believe that you can make race not matter by being blind to it (colour blind). But left-liberals think that if you don't see race it will continue to matter, i.e. there will still be racial disparities. Therefore, left-liberals want people to see race and to intervene to treat the races differently.

There are left-liberals who think that whiteness was constructed to create an unearned privilege and to oppress the non-white other. Therefore, they believe that white societies must be deconstructed and that an assertion of white identity is a defence of "supremacy". Non-white identities, on the other hand, are regarded more positively as means of resistance to injustice or as expressions of culture.

And so the Newsweek article opened with an account of an experiment in which white parents showed their children multicultural books or videos. All of the parents supported multiculturalism, but some of them dropped out of the experiment when they realised they would have to point out the existence of race to their children:

At this point, something interesting happened. Five families in the last group abruptly quit the study. Two directly told Vittrup, "We don't want to have these conversations with our child. We don't want to point out skin color."

These were presumably the right-liberal parents who believe that race can and should be made not to matter by being blind to it.

The Newsweek writers, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, hold these parents to be wrong on the basis of research showing that very young children if left to their own devices won't become race blind but are likely to notice race and to identify with their own race. Furthermore, putting children in diverse environments is only likely to raise this awareness of race.

And so what the Newsweek writers wants parents to do is to speak openly about race to their very young children (the critical period being from 6 months to first grade).

But this is where the story gets particularly nasty. The racial message that Newsweek wants white infants to get is not a neutral one; the idea is to demoralise young white children through guilt:

Bigler ran a study in which children read brief biographies of famous African-Americans. For instance, in a biography of Jackie Robinson, they read that he was the first African-American in the major leagues. But only half read about how he'd previously been relegated to the Negro Leagues, and how he suffered taunts from white fans. Those facts—in five brief sentences were omitted in the version given to the other children.

After the two-week history class, the children were surveyed on their racial attitudes. White children who got the full story about historical discrimination had significantly better attitudes toward blacks than those who got the neutered version. Explicitness works. "It also made them feel some guilt," Bigler adds. "It knocked down their glorified view of white people."

And what about non-white children? Instead of guilt, the emphasis is on instilling in them a sense of ethnic pride:

Preparation for bias is not, however, the only way minorities talk to their children about race. The other broad category of conversation, in Harris-Britt's analysis, is ethnic pride. From a very young age, minority children are coached to be proud of their ethnic history. She found that this was exceedingly good for children's self-confidence; in one study, black children who'd heard messages of ethnic pride were more engaged in school and more likely to attribute their success to their effort and ability.

So Newsweek wants white children to be knocked down in their sense of identity, but non-white children to be raised up. How could that possibly be justified? The Newsweek writers have a go at it with this argument:

That leads to the question that everyone wonders but rarely dares to ask. If "black pride" is good for African-American children, where does that leave white children? It's horrifying to imagine kids being "proud to be white." Yet many scholars argue that's exactly what children's brains are already computing. Just as minority children are aware that they belong to an ethnic group with less status and wealth, most white children naturally decipher that they belong to the race that has more power, wealth, and control in society; this provides security, if not confidence. So a pride message would not just be abhorrent—it'd be redundant.

The Newsweek writers assume that their mostly white readers will agree that "It's horrifying to imagine kids being 'proud to be white'". Horrifying? Really?

If a positive identity is "exceedingly good for children's self-confidence" then why should white children miss out? According to Newsweek it's because white children belong to "the race that has more power, wealth and control in society" and therefore white children have security and confidence and ethnic pride is "redundant".

That's wrong for several reasons. First, the race that does disproportionately well in the U.S. are Asians; they do best per capita in education, in professional employment and in family stability. Whites come next and then blacks. But when it comes to self-confidence, studies show that blacks have the highest level of self-esteem, then whites, and Asians come last. So you don't get self-confidence by belonging to a race which does well educationally or professionally.

And, anyway, the value of identity is not limited to its effect on self-confidence. It is a good that is basic to human life. We don't, for instance, say "it's horrifying to imagine white people marrying and having children because that is good for their self-esteem and they already have too much of that compared to others". Instead, we hope that white people, just like others, will get to enjoy the love and fulfilment that comes with a successful marriage and parenthood, goods that can be realised in life despite differing levels of wealth or status.

And it's much the same when it comes to identity. Whether we are wealthy or not, self-confident or not, does not make identity "redundant". It remains significant in our lives regardless.

White parents should neither be denying race nor attempting to instil racial guilt in their children. To do either is to neglect one part of a parent's loving care for a child. White children, just like any others, should be raised to positively identify with their own ancestry and tradition. If this increases their self-confidence in life, that should be welcomed; it is unjust to think that a child should be deliberately deprived of either identity or self-confidence in order to further a plan of racial levelling.