Reduce Discrimination "Where are the Native Americans now?"

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In Schools, Honest Talk about Racism Can 
Reduce Discrimination 
“Where are the Native Americans now?” asked fifth grade students in an Iowa 
City classroom last year. There are many ways their teacher, Melanie Hester, 
might have answered. She could have pointed out that today Native 
Americans live in cities and towns across the U.S. About 20 percent live on 
reservations
, and Hester could have used that to open a discussion of the 
U.S. government’s forcible movement and isolation of tribes. Hester might 
have also discussed how European and American settlers 
brutally
killed 
many Native Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries. 
Instead she 
evaded
the question and continued her lesson without offering 
historical context for her students to understand the present. Teachers across 
the country are avoiding 
explicit
conversations about race, racism and racial 
inequality because of a series of recent laws passed in several states. In 
Iowa, for example, a law prohibits any teaching that suggests the U.S. is 
“fundamentally or systematically racist or sexist.” The Iowa law also specifies 
that teachers must ensure that no student feels “discomfort, guilt, 
anguish
or 
any other form of psychological distress on account of that individual’s race 
or sex.” The laws in other states lay out similar logic. 
The legal language seems, for the most part, protective of children. But the 
effect is quite the opposite. As psychologists who study how parents and 

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teachers communicate with kids about race, we can 
attest
to an ever growing 
body of scientific evidence that suggests these laws are failing the children 
they 
purport
to help. 
First, years of research make it evident that kids notice racial and ethnic 
disparities from an early age. For example, psychologists have found that 
white kids as young as age four will consistently pair white families with 
higher-wealth items (such as nice cars and bigger houses) and Black families 
with lower-wealth items (for instance, run-down cars and smaller houses). In 
other words, very young children are aware of persistent racial disparities in 
wealth. Around the same age, children begin forming preferences for 
wealthier kids with more “stuff,” which, given the link between wealth and 
racial background in the U.S., may result in white children preferring and 
choosing to play with other white peers over Black peers. 
Second, we know that when children notice differences between people or 
groups, they usually look for an explanation. Here a psychological principle 
called the inherence bias comes into play. In general, when we see someone 
behave in a distinctly different way from others, we assume there is 
something inherently different about that person. Adults often fall into this trap: 
if someone cuts you off on the highway, you are likely to assume they are a 
bad driver rather than assume, for instance, that they are a good driver who 
happens to be rushing to a hospital in an emergency. In the same way, 
children are more likely to