My 7-y-o son attends a multicultural public school in an affluent urban residential neighbourhood. He has classmates from Africa, South and East Asia and from all over Eurasia. But when I ask him to describe specific kids in his class, "race" never even occurs to him. He will describe their personalities, what games they like to play, and whether they behave in class. If pressed for description, he will sometimes give hair or eye colour. (He's a blue-eyed blond, and is aware that he's in a minority.) He never mentions skin colour or accent, and if the kid is an immigrant he is aware of their country of origin if asked.

As you can probably tell from my spelling, I do not live in the United States. Although far from a multicultural paradise, Canada's urban communities (I'm in Ottawa) are far less racialized than what I see coming up from the United States. I really hope you guys can move past the extreme obsession with superficial human differences and cultural diversity that seems to drive the discussion down there. It doesn't have to be that way.

I am really proud of the Black kids.  The white kids, not so much. 

Note: They said the white children are more negative about interactions between the races not that they are more negative about other races. In other words, they are more likely to say that they can't be friends with people of other races. But they are not necessarily saying that one race is better/worse than another. 

Also note that a major factor in views is based on how racially diverse their community is. 
This is only part 1 of 2 of the special. Part 2 airs tonight. You can probably watch it later on the CNN site. 

There's a potential confound here—did they show kids pictures of same-race children on the swings? Maybe white kids perceive the picture more negatively for other reasons, and then talk about race when pressed for an explanation. (I'm not trying to negate the implications of the study; I'm sure that kids see race very early on. But then, if this confound is also a factor, there's another question as to why racial attitudes about hardship are different.)

A prime reason why those awful tweets about the "Hunger games" happened. It starts early, these kids are a product of the lager society, and when you have parents fail to give their kids reasons why they don't have diverse social circle, you get kids trying to fill in the gaps.

Growing up, I went to a private, middle-class K-12 school. There wasn't a ton of diversity, but I had friends that were black, Asian, Hispanic/Latino, etc. Unfortunately, either my parents didn't view racism as a problem or they didn't know how to address it, because I grew up "color-blind" until college, not believing that racial issues still existed.

I cringe at the memory of an essay I wrote in high school--I was arguing that racism didn't exist anymore and that *twinge* people need to stop complaining about it. I remember talking to a couple of my friends about the article we read--and being shocked that they believed racism was a problem (they were black). During this time, I also didn't believe sexism was a problem and I was horribly misinformed about homosexuality (although I'm sure a large part of this was going to a Christian school).

Anyway, my point is that you don't educate your kids about racism, it doesn't mean that it will disappear. In fact, as in my case, it will probably foster a form of the neo-racist victim-blaming that is so common in today's generation.

Sigh.

Its funny that any of this surprises anyone.  

I am white, my partner is white and we have two white kids.  We are progressive/radical people living in a part of our city which is basically 50% white and 50% african american.  We talk about race more than most white people I know.  We talk about race, and racism, quite a lot.  So, imagine my horror when one day at the playground my sweet 4-year old blurted out "no black kids allowed!" at a small group of young african american girls.  I guess I feel like our kids have "permission" to vocalize about race in a way that most white kids don't.  We don't send the message that you can't talk about race, but our kids live in a bizarrely segregated, racist world and internalize those messages.  It really took about a year for his social-sensor to kick in and really understand that he couldn't yell out uncomfortable, racial feelings.  There were other, albeit less awful, incidents....

I was pretty disheartened by the reaction my white parent friends had.  Most took pains to explain that their children were color blind.  I don't buy it.  If I listen at the playground, young African American children talk about race a lot.  Most mixed-race playground interactions with my kids before the age of about 5 or 6 included some race-talk.  White children, on the other hand, really internalize the message, really early, that you DONT TALK ABOUT RACE.  But they aren't stupid... they see that something is really off.  

Anyway, the whole thing was a great opportunity to fine-tune the way we discussed race and racism (and privilege!) around and with our kids.  Its complicated!  Your kids will ask you why you don;t have black friends.  They will ask why only black people live in the really poor part of town.  They will want to talk about why we don;t use more accurate color-words (they ask this all. the. time.) They will ask uncomfortable questions about slavery and relationships and privilege and you will hear racism that hasn't been filtered yet.  Its intense and we make mistakes, but its better than pretending nothing is wrong.  Its great because all kids wonder about this stuff, but white kids have learned not to talk about it.  

I am curious if other race-talking white parents have had a similar experiences with their little ones and what they did.  

I remember a Christmas where my tiny, 3 year old cousin was given a Power Wheels. He lived in a housing project with a single mom. He proclaimed to everyone that he was leaving his Power Wheel at Grandma's house. Grandma said "No, that's yours, honey! You take it home with you." he started crying and sobbed "No!!!the n1gg3rs will get it!!!" I was a little girl myself at the time and my mother fought to try to find the words to placate him and possibly explain that.... well, as I recall it was no use. He did end up leaving it at Grandma's for a while. How do you address something like this? He had things stolen before and picking up on sociological cues, this is what he came up with. I feel like his childhood was robbed and his innocence stolen in this moment. To this day, it makes me sad to think about this momentt of my childhood.

I was born in 1989 in South Africa, in a relatively rich white area. By the time I started pre-school, blacks were let into the schools (at least in the public ones I attended). It was a weird time. As a 5 year old white girl, I was friends with both black and white kids. We never treated each other differently based on skin colour (from what I can remember). But I was wary of black adults. And now that I think back, I would play at my white friends house, and they would play at mine, but the same can't be said for the black friends I had. I never knew where they lived. 

Other than that, we were all good friends, and we had no clue about the political stuff that was happening in the country at the time.

This video just proves that children with prejudiced and racist parents take on those views. Which is sad and detrimental to an evolving society.