University of Maryland Researchers Find Racial Bias Among White Children in Predominantly White Schools

A new study by the Society for Research in Child Development finds that white children who attend primarily white schools are more likely to have negative stereotypes about African Americans than do white children who attend racially diverse schools.

In the study, researchers from the University of Maryland showed picture cards of incidents of bad behavior at school such as cheating on a test or pushing a child on the playground. Each picture had two versions, one with a white child as the perpetrator of the bad behavior and one with a black child. White children were then asked to give their interpretations of what the images depicted. White children from predominantly white schools were more likely than their peers at racially diverse schools to affix negative attributes to the black children shown in the pictures.

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