Some interesting research shows that infants as young as 6 months old can show racial bias in the sense that they associate own-race faces with happy music and other-race faces with sad music. This preference occurs without specific indoctrination and in the absence of negative experiences.
This article did not list how many infants of each race were tested but since part of the study was done in the US and Canada while other subjects were in China, there were at least two races involved.
Perhaps this preference evolved because one has a better chance of survival with people to whom one is genetically related. Remember the wicked stepmother stories. Several centuries ago, when these fairy tales were written, stepchildren really did die at higher rates than children with either two biological parents or just one parent in the home who is genetically related.
It is easy to see how this idea of genetic closeness can be extended past the family and into racial relations.
It is also easy to see how this racial preference can easily morph into xenophobia or outright racism.
It therefore makes sense to me when CRT proponents claim that racism in the US is normal and not aberrational — I am stealing this phrasing from the online Encyclopedia Britannica — because this preference for same-race faces seems to be almost universal or nearly so.
In light of these infant studies, I do not know how to understand another claim of CRT, that race is socially constructed and not natural.
Maybe the different reactions of infants to specific faces reflects nothing more than being comfortable with the familiar. It would be interesting to test this idea with faces of the same race but that differ from the racial norm for other reasons, such as dress, hairstyle, or makeup.
But the fact remains that the precursors to racism are present at a very early age.
The study authors recommend exposing babies to people of different races before the age of six months — when this preference for same-race faces kicks in. However, lots of upper-income southern whites were exposed to African American faces because they had African-American caregivers. Did this make them less racist than, let’s say, Americans in the north of the same economic level who did not have this exposure?
I don’t know.
