As if the assault on our children’s education, physical wellbeing, and their mental health hasn’t been enough over the last two years, yet another attack has been waged against them.
Sinking to a new low in the United Kingdom, London’s Islington Council recently published reports that infants as young as three months old have been identified as capable of showing racial bias towards the people around them, and in particular towards childcare staff.
Claims such as “white children are strongly biased in favour of whiteness,” were reported to have been posted on the Islington Council account.
Recently demands have been made by the council that extremely young children should be a topic of discussion with relation to ‘race’ issues. As uncovered by The Telegraph, at least four public sectors across the United Kingdom have hired the services of ‘The Black Nursery Manager (BNM)’ a firm it labelled as a “Maoist” anti-whiteness organisation that provides racial awareness training to nursery staff. The Telegraph also reported that a council in the UK has taken on the services of this firm, who’s consultant has previously said that infants as young as 3-months-old may be racially biased toward their carers.
Earlier this month, BNM’s Liz Pemberton retaliated against the ‘Maoist’ tag claiming her work is supported the education sector.
In furthering its claims, Islington Council linked material to their account which was published by the BBC in 2020 in a segment on ‘How to talk to young children about racism. The linked material claims that by age 2, children start sorting themselves into groups showing what is known as group bias, and that according to research, even babies at 3 months old can tell different races apart.
While the publication states that babies don’t appear to attach judgements to ‘race,’ it suggests that infants of 3 months can distinguish ‘races,’ and if left unchecked the process of racial bias would further develop over time.
Adrian Hart, a member of the parental campaign group ‘Don’t Divide Us’ addressed the infant racism claims. He told The Telegraph that claims such as these; which are similar to the ones made by Islington Council; present supporting studies that “simply conflate acceptance of one group with rejection of another.” Hart went on to add,
“Children’s choices in relation to things like doll or toy preference, in artificial experimental condition offer no indication of whether the child takes account of race in everyday social interactions. Parents and educators and policy makers in local and central government alike cannot take claims like these at face value.”
Hart’s point is valid. On examination of the alleged claim on Islington Councils account – “white children are strongly biased in favour of whiteness” it is not too difficult to see how ‘studies’ can be taken on face value to support a narrative conducive to furthering a particular agenda.
As an example, a 2008 a study was published by the National Institute of Health (NIH), Three-month-old’s, but not newborns, prefer own-race faces (2008). The study concluded that:
“At 3 months of age Caucasian infants are able to discriminate between own-race faces but not other-race faces. This discrimination bias may represent an early manifestation of a similar deficit seen in adults, which is typically called the other-race effect.”
It is important to note that the study concludes Caucasian infants show discriminatory bias, and it is not till the end of the publication that it acknowledges the study conclusions are limited by having only tested Caucasian children.
The inference that the study was applied over a broader ethnic base of three-month old’s is suggested in its much more generalised title and content. Without further examination one may be led to believe that that there is a crisis of race in the educational system stemming from Caucasian three-month-old’s.
In an article published in February Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi tackled previous claims made this year accusing the UK school system of ‘brain washing’ children with ‘race theories,’ saying that he wanted to make clear to educators that their job is to educate not indoctrinate.
Zahawi added, that while some level of uncertainty may exist around where to draw the line, new guidelines and rules would be issued to stop classrooms being filled with propaganda.
“This is why parents and carers need to be able to trust schools to be totally impartial. They need to be confident that their children can learn about political issues and begin to form their own independent opinions, without being influenced by the personal views of those teaching them,” Zahawi said.
“Put simply, it means education, not indoctrination,” he said.
