Children's racial awareness and social learning in Van Ausdale's research

Diversity

Review of Van Ausdale's "The First R: How Children Learn Race and Racism"

As sociologist Debra Van Ausdale discovered during her study of urban nursery school children, racism and racial awareness are learned concepts of the larger society. Challenging conventional theories on how and when children develop racial-ethnic identities, Van Ausdale concluded that young children have a more complex understanding of the social world than previously believed, and this learned development takes a period of time for children to assimilate to develop a consciousness of racial-ethnic statuses. Everyday social interactions with other children involve exploration and experimentation. When racial and ethnic issues are included in those interactions, children's reactions may range from learning social power plays to survival, thus identifying the leaders and the subordinates to the whole group and passing these racial identities from one child to another, as also occurs from adults to children.

Van Ausdale's insight as a nonsanctioned observer raises an important point about learned social development. Social skills, rules, and norms are patterned by adults, intentionally or inadvertently demonstrated to children, and reinforced among children as they develop a consciousness of status, power, and self-preservation. The fact that social awareness exists among even young children illustrates that adults need to consider the filtering of information provided to children and how they are influenced by the moral practices of others. The learned and acquired racial and ethnic understanding that children learn through their family life, as well as by supervising adults (i.e. teachers, coaches), is brought with them to other social situations, such as individual or group play, and applied as they practice social skills with other children.