Knowledge about racism is a critical component of educational curricula and contemporary race relations. To examine children's responses to learning about racism, European American (Study 1; N= 48) and African American (Study 2; N= 69) elementary-aged children (ages 6-11) received history lessons that included information about racism experienced by African Americans (racism condition), or otherwise identical lessons that omitted this information (control condition). Children's racial attitudes and cognitive and affective responses to the lessons were assessed. Among European American children, racism condition participants showed less biased attitudes toward African Americans than control condition participants. Among African American children, attitudes did not vary by condition. Children in the two conditions showed several different cognitive and affective responses to the lessons.

In the year prior to Hillary Clinton's and Barack Obama's bids to become the Democratic nominee for the U.S. presidency, we explored children's views about the role of race and gender in the U.S. presidency, with a specific focus on perceptions of discrimination. Specifically, we examined children's (aged 5 to 10) knowledge of and attributions for the lack of female (Study 1, N = 76), African American (Study 2, N = 64), and Latino (Study 3, N = 65) presidents. Results indicated that children are knowledgeable about the gender, race, and ethnicity of past presidents, and that many children attribute the lack of female, African American, and Latino presidents to gender and racial discrimination. Theoretical and policy implications of the work are discussed.An expanding body of work documents the ways in which race and gender influence the development of youth, particularly with respect to experiences with discrimination. Based on evidence that experience with discrimination negatively affects adults (see Albee

Crisp and Turner (May-June 2009) argued that imagining intergroup interactions reduces intergroup prejudice. They argued that the procedure is remarkably effective, with "significant potential application for policymakers and educators seeking to promote tolerance for social diversity" (p. 238). We believe that such interventions, although appealing to many individuals, are problematic and that the authors' conclusions are overly optimistic. We believe that simulated contact interventions are highly unlikely to produce meaningful attitude change.Simulated contact interventions are appealing, we suspect, in large part because they require so little effort or cost. Consider the case of anti-African-American prejudice in the United States. Simulated contact interventions do not require individuals to live in racially integrated neighborhoods or to send their children to integrated schools. Such interventions do not require financial or emotional investment in communities of color or require individuals to learn about and appreciate African American history or culture. Such interventions do not require the forging of actual bonds of friendships with African Americans, nor do they require individuals to imagine themselves seeking social contact with African Americans who differ from themselves in dress, manner, or values. Simulated contact interventions demand of prejudiced persons only that they pretend that they would engage in a one-time conversation with a single outgroup member who inhabits their same social world and actively seeks contact with them. Such efforts are shallow in our view. The appeal of this form of intervention may have colored the assessment of its effectiveness. We believe that there is little reason to be optimistic about the ability of simulated contact to reduce prejudice meaningfully.The first basis for skepticism concerns past work. The literature on social stereotyping and prejudice reduction is enormous; it spans multiple countries, disciplines, and decades. If a single point might be gleaned from this vast literature, it is

In the present study, the authors investigated what prosocial-assertive, passive, and coercive strategies 6-year-olds (N=257) would propose in response to stories about 2 socially challenging situations: displacing another child in a game and obtaining a toy from another child. The scenarios also varied the gender composition of the characters. Participants' verbalizations while acting out their responses using toy props fell into 13 categories of strategies. Teachers reported antisocial behavior and social competence of the participants. Girls and boys responded similarly in their general suggestions of prosocial or assertive strategies, but girls were more likely to offer prosocial strategies with other girls than with boys. Teacher-rated competence and antisocial behavior interacted in predicting coercive responses by girls but not by boys. The results demonstrate that prosocial and antisocial behaviors need to be considered in interaction to fully understand the nature of social competence.

To examine the predictors of adolescents' evaluations of affirmative action and school desegregation policies, African American and European American students (ns = 94 and 116, respectively; aged 14 to 17 years) attending a racially diverse high school in the Midwestern United States completed measures of (a) implicit racial attitudes, (b) knowledge about historical racism, and (c) perceptions of and attributions for racial disparities. The following day, adolescents learned about either a proposed affirmative action policy (n = 101) or a school desegregation policy (n = 109) and completed measures of their attitudes toward the policy. Results indicated racial differences in policy support and in the factors predicting policy support. Theoretical implications of the findings are discussed.