Arizona Education Department encourages talking to babies about racism, says 3-month-olds can be racist: Report

The Arizona Department of Education has purportedly created an “equity toolkit” that teaches parents how children as young as 3 months can develop racial bias and encourages parents and teachers to talk to young children about race.

“SCOOP: The Arizona Department of Education has created an ‘equity’ toolkit claiming that babies show the first signs of racism at three months old and that white children ‘remain strongly biased in favor of whiteness’ by age five,” writer Christopher F. Rufo reported on Twitter.

An infographic included with the tweet shows how children’s racial attitudes evolve from birth to age 6, with newborn babies showing no racial preferences but starting to develop one as early as 3 months old.

“At birth, babies look equally at faces of all races. At 3 months, babies look more at faces that match the race of their caregivers,” the graphic says.

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By 30 months, children are using race to choose playmates, and by ages 4 to 5, children’s “expressions of racial prejudice peak.”

But while black and Hispanic children start to lose their inherent racism, white children are apparently prone to carry racial biases further into adolescence.

“By five, Black and Latinx children in research settings show no preference toward their own groups compared to Whites; White children at this age remain strongly biased in favor of whiteness,” the graphic reads.

Another recommended reading teaches “white parents” how to “talk to their kids about race.”

“White parents can and should begin addressing issues of race and racism early, even before their children can speak,” the lesson reads. “Avoiding the topic, rather than actively countering it with anti-racist attitudes and actions, simply opens the door for children to absorb bias from the world around them.”

One resource, titled “What White Children Need to Know About Race,” argues against “neutral” and “colorblind” approaches to race, saying such approaches are a “tool of whiteness.” Instead, white children should “develop a positive racial identity, which requires an understanding of systemic racism.”

“While students may need to be reassured that they did not ask to be white … they should also know that the reality in which they are embedded ascribes unearned privileges to their whiteness,” the resource notes. “It is through seeing themselves in a larger radicalized context that white people can begin to understand how they can work to change racism — and change what it means to be white.”

Other resources warn that one can “still be racist,” even if the person has a black friend, partner, or child,

The resource says that white people “throw in terms” such as “the race card, black-on-black crime, reverse racism” and “colorblindness” as a way to “alleviate some of their white fragility.”

“These are made-up terms that white people use to feel better about themselves,” the resource says.

While the resource says it is a “good” thing for white people to have had children, partners, and friends of color, it warns that “those relationships do not give you a one-way ticket out of Racism Town.”

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“Unless we, as white people, are listening, learning, and changing based on what we’re being taught within these relationships, we aren’t doing any good at all,” the resource continues. “In fact, we’re doing more harm than good. Clapping back when being called out only proves that white people cannot stand not to be at the center of every single conversation, policy, and action.”

The Arizona Department of Education did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.

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