Why Babies Are Racist

     Babies are racist. At least, most babies are. At 3 months of age Caucasian babies can tell the difference between Caucasian or White faces but can't tell the difference between two faces from any other ethnic group. Is this exclusive to white babies? No. All babies are racist. There are famous experiments where if you put 2 White babies, 2 Black babies, 2 Hispanic babies and 2 Asian babies together in a big play area and start them out separated from each other the babies from the same ethnic groups will crawl to each other and sit together, self-segregating, ignoring all of the other babies. 

     Why do babies self segregate? Because they were raised in segregated houses. It turns out that babies learn to discriminate between human faces at a very young age, or learn to tell 2 faces apart by the subtle differences from the standard layout of 2 eyes, 1 nose and a mouth, and if a baby is only ever exposed to their same ethnic group, then they will only ever learn to distinguish between faces from that one ethnic group, as far as who is who, and how to tell two people apart, whereas faces from all other ethnic groups will tend to all look the same. In adults something similar is commonly called the, “other-race effect,” which causes people to say that all people from a particular ethnic group, “look alike,” and can manifest as a lack of empathy for other ethnic groups.

     But when researchers exposed 3-month-old babies to just 3 different faces from an “other-race” ethnic group they learned to discriminate between all faces from that ethnic group equally as well as they could between faces from their own group, and this is a social skill that appears to continue into adulthood. So it turns out that the only reason 2 older babies from the same ethnic group will crawl towards each other is because they had only ever seen faces from their own ethnic group due to their parents self-segregating. How common is self-segregation in America? Very common, White people tend to live with White people, Black people tend to live with Black people, Hispanic people tend to live with Hispanic people, and Asian people tend to live with Asian people. Partly because of a shared cultural similarity, partly because stores carry the kinds of food they like to eat. But for whatever reason while America is a melting pot it continues to be very segregated, not by law, but by choice.

     In 1896 the Supreme Court passed Plessy versus Ferguson that allowed for the concept of, “separate but equal,” which inherently encouraged the concept of segregation: Black neighborhoods would have Black people, White neighborhoods would have White people, and new immigrants from Europe would get their own neighborhood. And while history tells us that in reality separate was not equal at all, it was legal, and when it came to housing, Plessy v Ferguson and “separate but equal" was the law of the land until 1968. The first chink in the armor of legal segregation came with Brown versus Board of Education in 1954, and then between the first and second Civil Rights Acts in 1964 and 1968 all signs of Plessy versus Ferguson were eliminated, and segregation became illegal almost everywhere in the United States except for in some private clubs.

     By 1968 Black people could now freely move to any neighborhood and live wherever they wanted, and so could Hispanics, and so could Asians, and no one could discriminate against anyone for almost any reason when it came to employment, housing, loans or anything else. Also, in 1967 the Supreme Court had abolished all “anti-miscegenation,” laws banning marriage between Whites and Blacks, or between Whites and other, “races.” At the time only 1% of all marriages in the United States were between a Black and a White adult of the opposite sex, and all of those were in the north. Now in the 2020s after more than 50 years guess what the percentage is? The exact same 1%. Just because Black and White adults can legally get married in every state in the United States and have been able to live in multicultural neighborhoods since the late 1960s doesn't mean that anything has changed. While people may now live in multicultural neighborhoods, they still live in self-segregated houses made up of people from their own ethnic group, and the vast majority only socialize with and marry people from their own ethnic group, so much so that their babies never see people from other ethnic groups.

     The problem is that there is apparently a very small window of time for learning how to distinguish human faces, and if babies only see the faces of their own ethnic group in this window they become face blind to all other ethnic groups. By 6 months humans start to distinguish between the faces of different species, and if babies are exposed to at least 3 different monkey faces between 6 and 9 months of age they learn to distinguish between different monkey faces, and this too lasts for the rest of their life. Whereas most of us can't tell two different Rhesus monkey faces apart, and would say, “the monkeys look the same,” or, “I can’t tell," simply because we didn't learn to distinguish between monkey faces when we were 6 to 9 months of age. So if you don't want to raise a racist baby, all you have to do is expose your baby to the faces of 3 different people from each ethnic group around the age of 3 months. Babies study faces, if you raise your eyebrows, they copy you and raise their eyebrows, if you purse your lips, they copy you and purse their lips. This is how they learn to discriminate between faces, and how they learn to read emotions. So let 3 moms, dads, or other adults of each different “race” or ethnic group hold your baby around the age of 3 months, because this is when we know from studies that the window is open for learning to discriminate between the faces of different ethnic groups.

     Form a mom group, have a party, make sure you have at least 3 people from each ethnic group and pass the babies around so that they can study everyone's faces. Boom, done. You now have a bunch of non-racist babies that will not grow up to say that all other ethnic groups look alike. Who knows, researchers consider lacking the ability to discriminate between “other-race faces” a deficit in adults, so maybe having the skill will give the non-racist babies a leg up in life, making them better at interpersonal relations, and giving them potentially better job opportunities because they can distinguish between all human faces. The simple formula is 3 faces at 3 months from as many different ethnic groups as possible. The more the better. If you don't, and you raise a segregated, racist baby, they will not be able to tell the difference between two people's faces from another ethnicity, and whether or not they are happy, or angry, or in pain, which is the root of why the “other-race effect” in adults manifests as a lack of empathy for other ethnic groups.