A recent study has iden­ti­fied the age at which chil­dren begin attempt­ing to appear racially unprej­u­diced.

One hun­dred and one chil­dren, pre­dom­i­nantly White, half of whom were aged 8 to 9, the other half being aged 9 to 10, par­tic­i­pated in a task rem­i­nis­cent of the board game “Guess Who?” Pre­sented with pho­tos of 40 indi­vid­u­als who var­ied accord­ing to four key dimen­sions, the children’s task was to find out with as few yes/no ques­tions as pos­si­ble which one of those indi­vid­u­als’ pho­tos the researcher had in their hand.

Cru­cially, for half the chil­dren, race was one of the key dimen­sions. Among these chil­dren, the younger kids actu­ally out­per­formed the older ones, and they did so because they were unafraid to ask ques­tions about race. For the other half of the chil­dren, coloured stick­ers replaced race as the fourth iden­ti­fy­ing dimen­sion, and in this case, as you’d expect, the older chil­dren out­per­formed the younger ones.

Side note: I freak­ing love Guess Who?