Most parents assume that if they tell their kids from the get-go that people of all races are equal, the message will sink in. According to the book “NurtureShock,” researchers say that’s not the case.

A study on racial attitudes on children in the relatively liberal, diverse city of Austin, Texas, found that while parents “wanted their children to grow up colorblind,” they had done little to reinforce those ideals.

Researcher Birgitte Vittrup studied white children from 100 families, ages 5 to 7. She gave some multicultural-themed videos to watch without requiring that their parents discuss the videos with them. In another group, parents were to discuss interracial friendship with their children after viewing the videos. A third group of parents and kids were to talk about race without viewing the videos. Entry tests of the children before intervention revealed the following:

Asked how many white people are mean, these children commonly answered, “Almost none.” Asked how many blacks are mean, many answered, “Some,” or “A lot.” Even kids who attended diverse schools answered the questions this way.

More disturbing, Vittrup also asked all the kids a very blunt question: “Do your parents like black people?” Fourteen percent said outright, “No, my parents don’t like black people”; 38 percent of the kids answered, “I don’t know.”

Vittrup expected to see some change after the videos and race dialogue that she had assigned to families. However, there was no statistically significant change. Soon, though, it was clear why:

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Combing through the parents’ study diaries, Vittrup realized why. Diary after diary revealed that the parents barely mentioned the checklist items. Many just couldn’t talk about race, and they quickly reverted to the vague “Everybody’s equal” phrasing.

Of all those Vittrup told to talk openly about interracial friendship, only six families managed to actually do so. And, for all six, their children dramatically improved their racial attitudes in a single week. Talking about race was clearly key.

In their effort to be inclusive and colorblind, parents had left a void for their kids to fill in the blanks in ways they never would have anticipated. That risk is particularly high among white families, according to a 2007 study of 17,000 families in Journal of Marriage and Family. Almost three-quarters of white parents never or almost never talked to their children about race; nonwhite parents, however, were three times more likely to tackle the subject.

Researchers point out that kids “naturally try to categorize everything, and the attribute they rely on is that which is the most clearly visible.” So pretending differences don’t exist won’t mean a child ceases to notice them; it simply allows them to make their own assumptions.

Moreover, ensuring that schools are diverse isn’t doing much to foster interracial friendship. A Duke University researcher, James Moody, studied 90,000 teens at 112 schools. He found that “the more diverse the school, the more the kids self-segregate by race and ethnicity within the school, and thus the likelihood that any two kids of different races have a friendship goes down.”

How can parents effectively talk to their children about race, then? “NurtureShock” offers a few tips:

  • Most parents are completely comfortable telling their children that gender discrimination is wrong (i.e. “A woman can be a firefighter, too”) model the same unambiguous discussions using race (“A person can be a firefighter no matter their skin color.”)
  • When a child says something that reinforces a stereotype, instead of shushing them, use it to open a dialogue.
  • Use language a child can clearly understand. (Saying everyone is “equal” won’t send much of a message if the child is fuzzy on the definition of “equal” and all of its connotations.)
  • Minority parents, while more likely to talk openly with their children about race, should avoid only doing so in the context of preparing their kids for potential bias later in life; it can set the child up to perceive discrimination where there is none.

Did your parents talk to you about race when you were a kid? How do you plan to raise the subject with your own children?