‘Most 11-year-olds biased about race’
MOST pupils in a class of 11 and 12-year-olds were found to be “unconsciously biased” about race, a documentary will reveal.
Researchers tested 24 volunteers attending a comprehensive school in south London.
As many as 18 were found to have an “unconscious bias to white people” and “two showed an unconscious bias to black people”.
The Channel 4 programme, The School That Tried to End Racism, begins with the proposition that “we could all be biased without knowing”.
Researcher Rhiannon Turner, of the School of Psychology at Queen’s University Belfast, said: “The results showed a significant preference for white people.”
The two-part series was shot before lockdown and before the death of George Floyd in the US.
The students from Glenthorne High School in Sutton undertook a version of Harvard’s benchmark Implicit Association Test.
Professor Turner said: “Tests have revealed that children as young as six are aware of racial differences but, as a society, we do not talk about them and often take a colour-blind approach to race.
“Is our failure to discuss race part of the problem?”
Activists tell the film that the discussion needs to move on from the “colour blindness” which came out of the civil rights movement in the 1960s – as that is now seen as a form of racism itself.
Dr Nicola Rollock, of Goldsmiths College, University of London, said such colour blindness “erases the history of a person as a black man or woman”.
Campaigners now want to see the tests rolled out in school curriculums around the country.
After the tests, the Year 7 students were separated into “affinity groups” along racial lines.
One mixed-race student, Farrah, did not know which group to join. Her father is Sri Lankan and her mother is white. She said: “I don’t want to be described by my race.” When white students were placed in a white-only group their discussion went silent and some appeared uncomfortable.
One, Henry, was upset and left the room. He later told his parents: “If I had the choice I would be with my friends, not just by my race because that feels awful.”
Glenthorne head Stephen Hume said: “I believe we have good relationships between students of different ethnic groups, but we know that society is fundamentally racist.
“You can look at racism in football or at thewindrush scandal.
“There are issues in my school, but there would be with any school because they’re in society.”
‘Tests show children as young as six are aware of racial differences’
● The School That Tried To End Racism, Channel 4, this Thursday and July 2 at 9pm