A white child and a black child look at
the exact same picture of two students on the playground but what they
see is often very different and what they say speaks volumes about the
racial divide in America.
The
pictures, designed to be ambiguous, are at the heart of a
groundbreaking new study on children and race commissioned by CNN's
Anderson Cooper 360°. White and black kids were asked: "What's happening
in this picture?", "Are these two children friends?" and "Would their
parents like it if they were friends?" The study found a chasm between
the races as young as age 6.
Overall,
black first-graders had far more positive interpretations of the images
than white first-graders. The majority of black 6-year-olds were much
more likely to say things like, "Chris is helping Alex up off the
ground" versus "Chris pushed Alex off the swing."
They
were also far more likely to think the children pictured are friends
and to believe their parents would like them to be friends. In fact,
only 38% of black children had a negative interpretation of the
pictures, whereas almost double -- a full 70% of white kids -- felt
something negative was happening...
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