it was all one thing for LJ

For LiveJournal, I'll sometimes crosspost things about race from my main blog. Here's the latest:

Several studies have been done to see whether babies have a preference for faces from their own racial group, and to learn why many people are better at recognizing faces from their own racial group. The following results are from

• Cross-Race Preferences for Same-Race Faces Extend Beyond the African Versus Caucasian Contrast in 3-Month-Old Infants,
• ScienceDirect - Journal of Experimental Child Psychology : Development of the other-race effect during infancy: Evidence toward universality?,
• Race matters to 3-month-olds, study finds,
• Cross-race effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Note: I've made tiny changes, mostly in punctuation, to make the following more readable, but what follows is my edit, not my prose. Click the asterisk by each point for the original wording and context.

* Adults typically find it easier to recognize faces from their own racial group, as opposed to faces from other racial groups. This is commonly known as the other-race effect.

* The preference for own-race faces doesn’t exist at one month of age.

* The own-race face preference develops by 3 months of age.

* Babies raised with frequent exposure to people of other races don’t develop this early bias.

* One study investigated 3-, 6-, and 9-month-old Chinese infants’ ability to discriminate faces within their own racial group and within two other racial groups (African and Caucasian). The 3-month-olds demonstrated recognition in all conditions, whereas the 6-month-olds recognized Chinese faces and displayed marginal recognition for Caucasian faces but did not recognize African faces. The 9-month-olds’ recognition was limited to Chinese faces. This pattern of development is consistent with the perceptual narrowing hypothesis that our perceptual systems are shaped by experience to be optimally sensitive to stimuli most commonly encountered in one’s unique cultural environment.

* Although the face processing system appears to undergo a period of refinement during this time of life, it does not become fixed. This is attested to by the finding that Korean adults who were adopted by French families during their childhood (aged 3–9 years) demonstrated the same discrimination deficit for Korean faces shown by the native French population (Sangrigoli, Pallier, Argenti, Ventureyra, & de Schonen, 2005). This finding is highly indicative of a face representation that remains flexible throughout both infancy and childhood. Although the face representation emerges early in life based on differential experience, it appears to retain its plasticity until at least 9 years of age.

* A plausible scenario for the emergence of the ORE is as follows: Predominant exposure to faces from a single racial group leads to greater visual attention toward those faces that in turn produces superior face recognition abilities with faces from that group and poorer recognition abilities with faces from racial groups that are not frequently viewed in the visual environment.

* Over three decades of research on the cross-race effect (CRE) suggests a rather robust phenomenon that carries practical implications for cases of mistaken eyewitness identification, particularly in situations that involve a poor opportunity to encode other-race faces and when a significant amount of time occurs between observation of the perpetrator and a test of the witness’s memory. While the CRE has not generally been observed in the accuracy of descriptions for own-race vs. other-race faces, research has found that individuals often attend to facial features that are diagnostic for own-race faces and misapply these feature sets when attempting to identify and describe other-race faces. As such, theorists have proposed that encoding and representational processes are largely responsible for the CRE, including the role of interracial contact and perceptual categorization processes.

* Significant exposure to other-race faces can block the development of own-race preference.

Or, as it's put in one of the few Rodgers-Hammerstein songs that I like:

Possibly of interest to LiveJournalers:

• my apology to Coffeeandink
• writing about race: racefail 09
• on pseudonymity and Coffeeandink

Other responses to anti-racism:

• A Unitarian-Universalist answer: Why Anti-Racism Will Fail by Thandeka.
• A socialist answer: Race, class, and "whiteness theory" by Sharon Smith.
• A conservative answer: The Lightness of Critical Race Theory by Winkfield F. Twyman, Jr.
• A liberal answer: Against Diversity by Walter Been Michaels.

An Anti-Racism Campaign: Who Needs It? (Current Issues Brief 20 1997-98)

The problem with anti-racism campaigns is that there is no clearly understood or agreed method of changing people's prejudices, values, attitudes or behaviour. What is known is that direct confrontation is likely to be counter-productive.

... In 1997 the Council of Europe coordinated a year of anti-racism campaigns and activities throughout Europe. A survey at the end of the year, conducted in European Union countries by the polling organisation Eurobarometer, found that rather than a decline in racism, it had been marked by a growing willingness on the part of Europeans to openly declare themselves as racist.

Priyamvada Gopal: Anti-racism has to go beyond a facile representation game / Guardian:

...apart from the sterling work done by a few dedicated individuals and organisations, anti-racist politics has become a facile "representation" game that involves appeasing the fragile sensitivities of a vocal few claiming to represent the whole community. It is about harassing artists and writers, demanding that they conform to "right" ways of representing the community.

An Examination of Anti-Racist and Anti-Oppressive Theory and Practice in Social Work Education -- MACEY and MOXON 26 (3): 297 -- British Journal of Social Work

The authors suggest that much of the anti-racist social work literature is theoretically inadequate, being informed by neither sociological, political nor economic theory or research on racism in Britain. This has made it vulnerable in a climate which is hostile to struggles for racial and other forms of social equality. The authors conclude that a radical, yet realistic, way forward is to move away from the current narrow focus on anti-racism to a broader anti-oppressive framework. This recognizes the need to continue the fight against racial, alongside class, gender and other forms of oppression, whilst setting achievable objectives within the social work process.

we dont need another anti-racism 101 « guerrilla mama medicine

now i have known for a long time that no poc is obligated to teach a white person about racism. or explain it.

but i am taking it a step further. we shouldnt do it.

and by this i mean teaching white folks, anti-racism theory, critical race theory, the correct words to use, the words not to use, the correct questions to ask, etc, etc, etc. is a waste of our time. and theirs. and is harmful to building a revolutionary movement or creating good relationships.