This disquisition pertains to the Senate's judiciary committee's confirmation hearing regarding Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. At her hearing, one Sen. asked the question "are babies racist?" Was he referring to American or Ukrainian babies? He neither defined babies nor racist. However, I define a baby as between the ages of birth to age 4. And, I define racist “ prejudiced against or antagonistic against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.”This definition has aggressive, cognitive, and moral components. As a result of the definition of racism, these 3 major components are considered with the question “are babies racist?”
The definition of being a racist, leads us to the development of a cognition, morality and aggression. What about the newborn's first year of life ? Initially, the newborn experiences anxiety and tension surrounding its birth along with its physiological needs for existence. During development, it initially becomes aware of fingers,toes and mouth before it becomes able to discriminate between "self" and "other." In about six months or so, it begins to now be able to distinguish between self and other while forming an attachment to mother. When a mother leaves the baby, it typically cries or fusses- separation anxiety. Later in development, when a stranger enters , the baby cries - stranger anxiety. Also, the baby is able to repeat some words but is still dependent on the mother for survival. The baby at this stage of development is unable to formulate racism or express antagonism because of skin color or beliefs. The baby has experienced fear, anxiety and has expressed aggression toward the mother. Just ask any nursing mother about her sore nipples during breast-feeding ?
In the second year, the baby begins to experience ambivalence . Ambivalence is both a liking, a preference as well as a disliking , a disgust toward another or something . When positives are gratified,like with ice cream, we have liking and when negatives are presented, like with broccoli, we have disliking or disgust. We also experience dislike with punishment, rejection or disapproval . At about three or four years of age, with attachments, we have the development of identification, possession and or possessiveness. Feelings of love, hate, jealousy, fear and rage become more exhibited. Briefly, the baby expresses these feelings in a number of ways, and may even say "I hate you." Expressing hate at that age relates to emotional factors such as insecurity, anxiety, fear, jealousy, rivalry . These factors are necessary factors for developing a prejudiced and racist attitude and behavior during later stages of personality development .When the four-year-old hassles or hits his or her brother for some reason, the aggressiveness is not racist based.
Let’s now turn to Piaget's view of intellectual development. Piaget referred to the first year and a half of life as the sensorimotor stage of development . He characterized intelligence as being action oriented as in innate reflexes- sucking. Actions become repetitive, in which there seems to be no intent or purpose . This is followed by a trial. Now actions are repeated to produce a result. For example, the baby kicks his legs in order to produce the swinging motion of a toy suspended over his crib. Then, the baby advances and now becomes able to knock down a pillow in order to obtain a toy hidden behind it. Later, in development, the baby proceeds to more trial and error experimentation. The baby now becomes able to vary his responses in order to obtain the goal. The baby,generally,by 4 years . has developed a primitive form of representation, a kind of imagery that's used in problem-solving. The child is now able to invent new ways to obtain his goals by the development of an internal or inner exploration.
Further, Piaget classified the ages 1 1 /2 to 7 as the preoperational stage,The baby begins language development of language with meanings of objects and events . The baby becomes able to treat objects as symbolic things rather than themselves. For example, he may treat a stick as if it were a candle and blow it out .Also the 3-year-old’s words and images are not necessarily organized into firmly and articulated concepts and rules.
According to Piaget, a five-year-old can learn to walk four blocks from his home to the neighborhood store. However, he cannot sit at a table with a pencil and paper and trace the route he took. He does not have a mental representation of the entire sequence of actions at this level of functioning. Piaget also found that four-year-olds are not experienced at the stage of conservation which is when liquids and solids can be transformed in shape without changing the volume or mass. This task is manifested only when the child reaches the age of five and called concrete operations. Further, the child does not understand relational terms such as darker, larger,and bigger . He interprets darker as meaning very dark rather than darker than another object when being shown light objects in one which is slightly darker . When asked to pick the darker one, he may not be able to answer. According to Piaget, another facet in the preoperational stage is that babies cannot reason simultaneously about part of the whole and the whole. If a five-year-old is shown 8 yellow candies and four brown candies and asked “ Are there more yellow candies or more candies ,” he’s likely to say more yellow candies. Piaget suggests that the baby cannot reason about part and whole simultaneously. 4 year olds are unable cognitively to define, employ, or understand “ prejudice” which is related to the membership of a particular racial or ethnic group.
Additionally, according to linguist Eve Clark, the average baby by 2 years has a vocabulary that he can use or understand of over 300 words. By the time he is 5, about a thousand. A baby's vocabulary is generally more concrete than adults and the baby has a tendency to over discriminate. For example, there are cases in which familiar objects are not considered instances of the general class. For instance, some babies said in response to a picture of the dog, "That's a dog, not an animal." Further, preschool-aged babies often seemed to interpret pairs of antonyms such as more and less, same and different, before and after as synonyms. Therefore, cognitively, it's highly unlikely that a four-year-old can give an exact and know the definition of prejudice, let alone the term racist.
In thinking about antagonism towards people, a few words about moral development. At about two or three years of age, babies' conscience development tends to be erratic, confined to prohibitions against specific behaviors based on external rather than internal sanctions. By 4 to 6 years of age, most babies become less confined to specific behaviors and begin to involve the development of more generalized abstract standards; become less exclusively determined by external rewards and punishments ;more by internal sanctions and begin to involve not only the avoidance of prohibitions but also the pursuit of what one should do.
Lawrence Kohlberg, in his brilliant study of moral behavior , found that four-year-olds tend to judge and act as good or bad in terms of administered reinforcement. That is, whether the reinforcement led to punishment or reward rather than in terms of the rule. Perhaps, babies with strict parents are more afraid of violating their parental prohibitions, which is the lowest level of moral development. In other words, antagonistic actions motivated by race and prejudice, do not exist . These actions are not guided by inner principles- abstract ethics,logical comprehensiveness or by consistency.
It’s clear, newborns are not racist. Their cognitive and moral behavior development is based in large part upon the parents character and reinforcement style. That's not to diminish the role of discrimination in our society. For example, in Iowa, although 3% of the population is black, the incarceration rate for blacks approaches 50%. Turning back to the baby's development, the concept of identification has been established and instrumental in conscience development. Pros and cons; good and bad; right and wrong are initially based on the attitudes,values , language and actions of the parents.The legendary behaviorist John Watson stated that he could turn people into doctors , lawyers or plumbers based upon his conditioning. Further research by behaviorists found that modeling and imitation increased aggressive behavior . Further, an increase in aggressive expressions by babies is related to parental reinforcement and their permissiveness towards aggressive behavior .Parents model aggressive angry behavior. Although punishment was often effective in reducing the amount of aggressive expression, the effects of parental punishment on children's aggressive behavior is complex . Physically punishing a baby in order to inhibit their aggressive behavior serves as an aggressive model. Now the baby is more guided by an orientation towards punishment and obedience compared to trying to maintain the approval of
parents..Parents are experts at modeling aggressive and racist behavior.
It should be clear that the baby's tendency to become racist is likely to be learned,initially, by the character of his parents; attitudes and actions in the peer group and in society at large. Parents who verbalize aggressive, sadistic antagonism towards individuals of different color or belief system repeatedly and/or behaviorally send a clear, concrete message to their children. With a malignant and inconsistent sense of moral and ethical development, the punishment or non punishment practices by parents reinforce attitudes when disciplining or not disciplining their babies verbalizations and behavior.
Confirmation means “an act of ensuring the truth. of strengthening, or approving. “ This confirmation hearing was an embarrassment. When a senator asked the question “ are babies racist”, the senator was telegraphing his character. He was not at all looking for the truth with Judge Jackson. This ambiguous racist question was about his racist character and disrespect for this judge. He believes this behavior will please some , so they will vote for him. On the other hand, Cory Booker asked and elicited from Judge Jackson about her values and about her character. He was proud. Too bad that television was misused for this political spectacle. I just donated to NPR.
I was not born prejudiced , antagonistic towards Russia nor taught communism was evil. During childhood, I learned that my grandparents not only came from Russia but my grandfather first arrived as a teenager. I also learned that my cousin Morris G. performed for Nicholas ,the Russians Czar and he taught my mother to play the piano. At age 10, I learned that Russia and Communists were evil during the infamous Joe M . Congressional hearings. That demagogue Joe accused, without evidence, many in our government; journalists; and Hollywood celebrities as being communists. Then, I read that my father was accused, by some unnamed source, of being a communist. As it turned out, my father's colleague Jim N. and friend's wife were associated with "communists." Was my father, a communist, guilty by association? Subsequently, Jim N. was fired from his government job and wound up in Canada. I was not accused of being a communist even though I played and associated with Jim's eldest son.
Reference
Mussen,Conger and Kagan. Child Development and Personality.
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