Ethnic Preferences in Young Children and in Their Adolescence in Three London Districts

Abstract

Two Black/White doll-choice tests and a houses distance test using line drawings and photographs, designed to allow assessment of preference intensities, were administered to White children, aged 3-7, in schools in three London districts, two equal in White/West Indian contact, but one tense, the other relatively harmonious in race relations, the third district with few Black residents. Mothers were also interviewed. Significant inter-test correlation and associations were found. Own-race preference, rising in an age trend to peak with significant increase around age 6, was not influenced by sex, father's status, or mother's child-control attitude, however, hostility in a mother's ethnic attitude was significantly associated with houses test distance for Blacks and (when strong) with consistent own-race doll preference. Resemblance of ethnic attitude pattern of children and mothers generally in each district indicated extra family influences and significant district differences in both reflected the qualities of contact. An eight-year follow-up with the children now aged between 11 and 15 years (using only new line drawings and the photographs) found increased own-race preference only in the previously harmonious contact district. Children with consistent own-race doll preferences did not now differ from those not so rated. Sex, status, and child-control attitude were still without influence, but that of mother's ethnic attitude, stronger in one respect, weaker in another, was moderated by attitude differentiation and apparently developing autonomy in the young adolescent. Ethnic attitudes of mothers and children had shifted towards the moderate and neutral center of the scales, except in the harmonious contact district, where attitude hardening was related to social changes in the period.