Tucker Confronts Researcher Who Claims Babies are Racist
“It seems unlikely that you could measure the racial attitudes of a three-month-old, beyond like my diaper is dirty”
One of the enduring evils of the regressive insistence that all of society’s ills are rooted in racism is their repeated attacks on children. The latest is a relatively innocuous study that finds that infants are more friendly toward those races with which they are familiar and with which they associate a positive and loving experience.
The flip side of this study erroneously concludes racism is at the root of these infants’ inability to bond with or otherwise respond positively to people of races other than their own. Note that it’s not clear how the researchers determine what race the babies in the study believed themselves to be.
The New York Daily News reports:
University of Toronto researchers found that infants as young as 6 to 9 months show racial bias — contradicting the popular view that it first emerges in a child’s preschool years. Still, bias is believed to be learned behavior.
“What this means is that we’re not really born with some kind of racial bias,” said lead researcher Kang Lee.
Lee said he believes the phenomenon is not a result of parents teaching their kids to discriminate. Instead, it’s a function of the homogenous environments in which most children grow up.
The study used “sad” and “happy” music to help identify with which race the babies most identified.
Researchers at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and the University of Toronto recently released two studies claiming to show six- to nine-month-old babies are biased in favor of people of their own race.
“The results show that race-based bias already exists around the second half of a child’s first year,” said Dr. Kang Lee, a professor at OISE’s Jackman Institute of Child Study, according to a report in the Daily Mail.
The researchers found in their first study babies associate positive-sounding music to people of their own race and negative-sounding music with people of another race. In the second study, the researchers say babies were more likely to follow the gaze of people of their own race than people of another race, suggesting babies are more willing to learn from people who look like them.
Following the “happy” and “sad” music test, it seems to have been decided that the baby clearly discriminated against races other than their own (again, it’s not clear how the babies are presumed to know their own race).
The New York Daily News continues:
The babies were shown videos of six Asian women and six African women, paired with either happy or sad music. Infants less than 6 months old didn’t associate happy or sad music with members of any particular race, the study showed.
But at nine months, the babies gazed at their own-race faces paired with happy music for a longer time. They did the same for other-race faces paired with sad music, researchers found.
“This suggests that when children see an other-raced person, they already have negative associations,” Lee said.
Racist six-month-old babies were the topic of a recent Tucker Carlson interview with one of the researchers involved in the study.
The Blaze continues:
On Friday night, Lee joined Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” to discuss the findings, and Carlson was highly skeptical of the racist-baby theory.
“Now, I’m not a social scientist or a researcher, but it seems unlikely that you could measure the racial attitudes of a three-month-old, beyond like my diaper is dirty kind of thing, or I want some milk,” Carlson said to Lee.
“The way to do it,” Lee said, “is to see what kind of things we associate with or whether or not we tend to learn—the babies like to learn from own-race individuals [rather than] other-race individuals.”
Lee then explained in one of the studies the researchers conducted, they found babies prefer to learn from people with the same or similar racial background. Lee also said he believes this could be the basis for racist attitudes developed later in life.
“From a non-expert point of view, this suggests that these attitudes are not learned behavior but a product of evolutionary biology, but I guess you would know,” Carlson said to Lee. “As someone who would cover politics, though, I’m pretty certain that your study is going to lead to new government programs and government control over babies.”
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Comments
Babies are aggressive, voracious sponges. They suck up information from their environment like little black holes sucking up matter.
Like all of us, they have a talent in varying degrees for pattern recognition. They know mommy, they learn daddy and siblings, and they’ll learn everybody in the household in no time.
I very much doubt that a peach-colored baby being raised in a brown-colored…or any other colored…household would respond differently to his parents than any other kid to theirs.
What a crock…
I remember when Steve Martin was raised as a poor, black child.
But like Obama he turned out to be a jerk.
Had to login to give you the thumb for that one.
OK, where did I put that Tactical Facepalm picture?
Is there anything left that these leftist idiots _don’t_ claim is racist?
so a white baby immediately adopted by a black couple would also exhibit the same results?
or was it too truthful to test that method?
babies react to what they are used to. no changes no unusual reactions. big changes big reactions.
Obvious to anyone but an agenda-driven leftist.
Yeah, I could see PP using this in their ‘counseling’ of pregnant women.
“Recent studies show that the baby will just be one more racist added to the population.”
Psycobabble, World Class!
Obviously, then, following this man’s theories, many GENERATIONS of middle to upper class SOUTHERNERS, raised from birth by African-American nannies, nursemaids, and other household help are the LEAST racist people on the planet!
People can’t really believe this nonsense?
Look at the vote from the last Presidential election and ask yourself that question.
An unbelievable number of people voted for Crooked Hillary even though she lied over and over, sold the favors of her office for hundreds of millions in contributions to her slush fund/foundation and while attempting to conceal this betrayed our country by mishandling classified info.
Sorry Mamas and Papas but the only worthy version of I Shall Be Released is from The Last Waltz 😉
this suggests that these attitudes are not learned behavior but a product of evolutionary biology, but I guess you would know
Don’t bet on that.
This idiot spent millions to come up with this horse hockey? Talk about a Golden Fleece.
No.
From the information we see reported on how scientists can’t reproduce the results of ~70% of any other “scientist’s” experiments, I’d say the money was spent on a cushy lifestyle while they had their undergrad “research assistants” follow the horses around.
Not such an idiot for making out like a bandit.
Pattern recognition. This behavior has been known for a very long time. It’s hard wired into the brain, and essential to survival. It boils down to- same is good, different is bad. For example, if everyone who surrounds you is bearded, and the clean shaven Cossacks come riding into the village- hiding because they’re different increases chances of surviving to adulthood. If you see dogs all around, and here comes a big cat, hiding instead of approaching because it’s different increases survival chances. same with snakes or bears or anything else. It’s why a kid will eat PB&J 30 days in a row- it’s familiar, it’s good, and it’s not different. Unless you know how to do it right, introducing children to new foods can be a nightmare.
This is why the methods described in the article to decrease racism increase it. Same is good- different is bad is HARD WIRED into the mind. If you tell a child that this person is different or likes different music or worships differently or note ANYTHING different about them, you’re telling the child this person is bad. Doesn’t matter that you’re saying this is a good thing. The child hasn’t reached the age of reasoning yet, and the hard wiring says- same is good- different is bad. Can’t get around it with mere words. In the 1960s when I was young and learning, the schools, church, anywhere engaged in education (because it’s not just schools where you learn) emphasized sameness. The difference between Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, and the myriad forms of Protestants wasn’t taught. Instead we were taught that we all worshiped the same God. Good. We weren’t told of all the differences between whites and blacks and Asians. We were told all people were the same, and wanted the same things. Nice neighborhoods, a good place to live, a loving family, etc. Sameness was emphasized. Or, good. Now all those same institutions teach differences, and say they’re good, when the kids KNOW different is bad. It’s counter productive, and all the smart people who devise the lessons are too stupid to realize it. Small children are not miniature adults. They have to learn to reason, and some never do. But that takes place for most somewhere in the teens, not age 5 or 6.
I found you comment about your remembrances of learning very interesting. When I was in the military, I objected loudly in classes about race relations (I can’t now recall by what idiot name the classes actually were known). These classes emphasized differences and my objection was that they should be emphasizing our similarities.
I had the same experience, and those stupid classes were mandatory! The best people I ever worked for during 22 years active duty were the ones who saw and treated everyone as blue – i.e. the color of our uniforms. Sounds a little crazy, but nonetheless all of us – black, white, Christian, Jew, whatever – were treated the same.
And of course, some still complained about being singled out for “special treatment” … usually, the slackers!
Thanks Obama! You racist bastard.
Bigotry has been proven in this research. It’s called confirmational bias and it is being exhibited by the researchers. As a researcher myself, I can see flaws and logic errors in this work large enough to drive a racial truck through. Is it any wonder why “experiments” such as this one are broadcast as fact by the left and yet can be replicated less than 10% of the time. This doofus is doing nothing more than seeing what he wants to see. Also, notice how the researcher is someone considered a minority in the West so he may actually be doing nothing more than grinding his axe.
I think I get it…
Diversity training should start right after a racist baby is born, if indeed “IT” is allowed to live “IT” should be fixed by the a Grubernment immediately upon taking “It’s” first breath and becoming a racist or is “IT” a racist in the womb before it becomes human. Wait…is it even human if “IT” is a racist?
Duh. Babies have uneasy reactions to people that look different somehow from the faces they’re used to seeing. Any mother could tell you that. Let the baby meet the actual person, not just see a photo, and have a pleasant interaction with the person. Problem solved.
What about dogs’ attitudes to people of different races? Or ages? I gots to know!
Of course the problem continues with the use of “positive-sounding music” and “negative-sounding music”, which is possibly a culturally learnt attribution anyway. In Western culture, major chord music is considered happy and minor chord music is considered sad or threatening, but this might be learnt through the familiarity of music heard in the womb or after birth.
As far as I know there is less evidence of a genetically driven classification of happy or sad music than there is for the genetic preference for the familiar faces a baby sees from birth.
When I look up the researcher’s area of study I get: “I have two major foci of research:
The first focus is on lying in children and adults. … The second focus of my research is on face processing in children and adults.”
I now wonder whether we have become part of a study that is investigating reactions to an adult’s lies.
I remember from child development getting my RN that it is well established that newborns begin mapping the faces of caregivers particularly mom who would obviously be of the same race. Pretty simple explanation I see other commenters have stated.
Sick of hearing from racists whining about racism.