a comparison of racial/ethnic preferences among anglo, black and latino children

Amer. 1. Orthopsychiat. 46(4), October 1976

A COMPARISON OF RACIAL / ETHNIC PREFERENCES AMONG ANGLO, BLACK AND LATINO CHILDREN

Linda A. Teplin, Ph.D.

Departments of Psychiatry and Sociology, Northwestern University, Evanston, 111.

This study uses a photo-choice method to compare raciallethnic group preferences of black, Anglo, and Latino children, with a focus on the latter- relatively little-studied-group. While both black and Anglo children chose ingroup photos, Latinos preferred pictures of Anglo children. Explanations of this outcome are explored, and a comparison between the situation of today's Latino child and the black child of ten years ago is suggested.

ecent reviews of the literature in the R area of racial preference of children 3, l?, 34 have noted that the pre- dominant result has been for white dolls, puppets, or photographs to be preferred by both black and white children.', e~ 22 But some recent investiga- tions 11, 1 3 9 35 have reported that black children do not choose white stimuli or reject representations of black children. This latter finding has generally been in- terpreted as reflecting the changing so- ciocultural milieu and the achievements of the Black Pride Movement. (Al- though Taylor 33 feels that results of many past studies reporting black self- rejection may be largely an artifact of

poor methodology-biased sampling, poor construct validity, ambiguous the- oretical framework, etc.-and he suggested that the findings of the more recent studies may reflect improved methodology and greater conceptual clarity, rather than any change in attitudes per se. )

While some of the more recent reports indicate a more positive self-image among black children than was previously believed, there has been little at- tention to whether a similar pattern of racial preference holds true for mem- bers of other minorities, specifically Spanish-speaking children. This paper will present results of a study of racial/

Submitted to the lournal in November 1975.

702

LINDA A. TEPLIN 703

ethnic preferences of 398 Anglo, black, and Latino school children. In light of past conflicting findings of the impact of factors such as gender and school en- vironment,*2. *’ the variables of sex and school membership were also investi- gated.

SUBJECTS All 398 subjects were third-grade and

fourth-grade elementary school students in the public school system of a large Midwestern city. Twelve classrooms in three different elementary schools were involved in the study. The sample included approximately one-third Anglo, one-third black, and one-third Latino students. All schools were racially/eth- nically integrated, but in different proportions. One school was comprised of approximately 45 % black children, the remainder being Anglo and Latino; the second school was comprised primarily of Anglo children; and the third school was attended by mostly Latino children.

PROCEDURE The children were presented with a

group of 24 pretested photographs of children unknown to them. In order to obtain this group of 24 pictures, 80 photographs were judged on two five-point semantic differentials (good-bad; happy- sad) by 7 1 other third-grade and fourth- grade children, The 24 photographs judged as being neutral on both scales were chosen for the measure; these included four children of each racial/ethnic-gender “type:” four Anglo males, four Anglo females, four Latino males, four Latino females, four black males,

and four black females. Ten adult judges were asked to identify the race/ethnicity of the child in each photograph; all correctly identified the child’s racial/ethnic group membership. (Due to constraints of the field, it was not possible to en- gage children to be judges of the race/ ethnicity of the youngsters depicted in the photographs).

Children were asked, “Who would you most like to have as a friend here?” and, “Who would you most like to work with?”* The respondents were asked to make six choices.

Although several researchers in this substantive area have found that the race of the experimenter has not significantly affected their 0 9 l1 it was de- cided to use two experimenters,, a black female and an Anglo female. Students were randomly assigned to either experimenter.

The measures were prefaced by say- ing, “This is a game.” The two measures were administered at different sessions. Race was never mentioned by the experimenter. The race/ethnicity of each child was obtained privately from the youngster’s teacher.

RESULTS Interval scales were constructed based

on the proportion of the respondent’s ingroup that were chosen out o f a possible six; scores thus ranged from zero to 100%.

Experimental Controls: Race of Ex- perimenter. T-tests were utilized to determine if race-of-experimenter significantly affected the proportion of ingroup chosen, as well as the proportion

* Since it was found that these two measures (‘‘work” and “friend”) were correlated above 350, only the “friend” measure will be presented and discussed.

704 RACIAL/ETHNIC PREFERENCES

Table I FIRST CHOICE OF MALE AND FEMALE RESPONDENTS BY RACIAL/ETHNIC GROUP

PHOTO CHOICE

LATINO RESPONDENT'S GROUP ANGLO BLACK

Anglo Males (N =65) Anglo Females (N = 48)

Black Males ( N = 75) B l a c k Females (N = 43)

Latino Males ( N = 58) Latino Females ( N = 77)

Total Males (N = 198) Total Females (N = 168)

42 (64.6%) I I (,16.9%) 12 (18.5%) 37 (77.1%) 4 f 8.3%) 7 (14.6%)

16 (21.3%) 49 (65.4y0) 10 (13.3%) 4 9.3%) 30 (69.8%) 9 (20.9%)

24 (41.4%) 7 (.12.170) 27 (46.5%) 56 (72.7%) 2 I 2.6%) I 9 (24.7%)

82 (41.4%) 67 (33.8%) 49 (24.8%) 97 (57.7%) 36 (21.4%) 35 (20.9%)

of black children chosen; the variable of school was held constant. No significant differences were found.

Patterns of Racial Preference. Al- though the variable of school membership was not found to significantly affect the proportion of ingroup choice, both race/ethnicity and gender were found to be statistically significant main effects ( p = .OOl and p = .048, respec- tively). Concerning the variable of race/ ethnicity, all respondents chose a greater-than-proportionate number of their ingroup. Perhaps the most inter- esting result is that the Latino respondents chose substantially fewer of their ingroup ( a = .408) than either the An- glo (a = S19) or the black children ( j z = 503). In addition, females chose significantly more of their ingroup than did males. Anglo females were more ingroup-oriented than any other group.

While the analysis of variance indi- cated that children of different ethnicities and genders chose significantly different proportions of their ingroup, it did not delineate the proportion of pho-

tos of each racial/ethnic group selected. Specifically, while it has been noted that the Latino children chose fewer ingroup photos than either the Anglo or the black respondents, the next steps are to determine whether these youngsters preferred black or Anglo photographs, and whether there are any substantial differences in preference patterns between first choices and total choices. TABLE 1 tabulates respondents' first choices, which are shown separately for males and for females (chi-square for each gender group, p < .001. ) These first- choice results confirm the significant race,/ethnic and gender differences in total choices. All Anglo and black children (both male and female) were more likely to choose their ingroup than the outgroup. Among females, this tendency seemed even more pronounced. The fre- quency of Anglo ingroup choice among males was 64.6%; among females, 77.1 % . In contrast, the Latino female children chose far more photographs of outgroup than ingroup children; they chose very few blacks (in fact, only two

* An analysis of variance table for this measure is available from the author.

LINDA A. TEPLIN 705

children chose blacks), but 72.7% of these respondents chose photographs of Anglo children.

DISCUSSION Among these third-grade and fourth-

grade students, blacks chose photographs depicting black children, while Latinos did not choose photographs of Latino children, but instead preferred pictures of Anglo youngsters. This tendency was particularly pronounced among females.

There are a myriad of plausible explanations for these findings. Since attitudes presumably change with the so- ciocultural milieu,12 the high rate of ingroup choice among these black children may reflect sociopsychological change. There is little reason to believe that such attitudinal change takes place at a similar rate all over the county," and it is possible that the citizens of this Midwest city are finally catching up with other areas of the country. More logi- cally, since several years have elapsed between this study and much of the pre- vious research, the result may reflect a new familiarity on the part of black children with inanimate representations of black people. One example of this may be the wide availability of black dolls, which until recently were unavail- able. Of even greater impact may be the mass media, particularly television. Chil- dren (ages six to eleven) watch an av- erage of 24.5 hours of television per week! *O Thus the recent influx of black performers into what has been, up to recent times, virtually a lilly-white me-

dium may have considerable influence on children. Youngsters of all races may now be more accustomed to viewing and identifying with unknown black people, i.e., nonsignificant others. The greater presence of blacks in television commercials may be a similarly influenc- ing factor.

The work of Taylor 33 and of Rosen- berg and Simmons 27 suggests yet another possible explanation for this finding. These researchers feel that it is the black child's day-to-day interpersonal encounters within the black community that are primarily responsible for deter- mining his self-regard. Taylor suggested that the failure of past researchers to recognize the black child's sources of positive role models within the black community, coupled with the severe methodological and conceptual problems of many past studies, may have resulted in distortions. In this view, the finding of the present study, that black children prefer photographs of blacks, may simply constitute confirmation of a longstanding reality that has gone un- recognized due to misconceived research methodologies.

The finding that Latino c:hildren did not choose photographs of His- panic children is more difficult to ex- plain.* While research on the racial/ethnic preference patterns of Latino children has heretofore been a somewhat neglected area, the few studies which have dealt with Latino children have found the opposite result. Specifically, Brand found that Chicano children chose more ingroup children than did

* It should be recalled that the race (white/black) of the experimenter has previously not been found to significantly effect racial/ethnic preference patterns. Nevertheless, it is possible that the presence of a Latino experimenter would have encouraged a greater rate of ingroup choice among the Latino children. Perhaps research will be undertaken to test this contingency.


the Anglo respondents. Similarly, Rice et a1 25 found higher ethnic identification among Mexican- Americans than among either black or Anglo children. Among third-graders, only the Mexican-Ameri- can children preferred their own ethnic- it^.^^ These two findings are in direct contrast to the results of the present study; in this sample, Latino children chose photographs of their ingroup significantly less often than did either black or Anglo children. Instead, the Latino children preferred photographs of Anglo youngsters. There are at least three explanations for this finding: 1 ) the Latino children have a negative self-concept or low self-esteem; 2 ) the Latino children did not recognize the photographs of the Latino youngsters as being His- panic; and 3) Latino children may not be accustomed to viewing inanimate representations of Hispanic children.

Low self-esteem. It is possible that the Latino children in this Midwest city do not have as high a level of self-esteem as do the city’s black or Anglo children, or children in other areas of the country, such as California. This seems particularly likely given that the two previously- mentioned studies 3 v 25 that included Latino children in their sample were conducted on the West Coast. It seems likely that people from the Midwest may have attitudes quite different from His- panic people residing in areas comprised of more homogeneous Spanish- speaking populations.

Certainly, the slogan “Chicano- Power” is not heard as frequently as the terms “Black Power” or “Black Pride.” However, the conclusion that the Latino children in this study have low self-esteem rests on the premise that the photo- choice technique is a direct measure of self-esteem. Although photo-choice

methods have frequently been used in such a 7 , 15- 17, 31 such applica- tions would appear to be both meth- odologically and conceptually problematic considering other potentially con- founding factors (e.g., the unusualness of viewing nonwhite inanimate stimuli). In addition, a recent study 27 has shown that, while black children exhibit a marked verbal preference for lighter skin color, black children do not have lower self-esteem than do whites. Ro- senberg and Simmons 27 feel that the most influential predetermining factor of black self-esteem is not the prestige of their race in society-at-large, but rather what the children believe their significant others think of them. In short, the abil- ity to assess self-concept from photo- choice or doll-choice research studies would seem to be at least somewhat problematic.

Identification of photographs. One of the presumptions of this type of research is that the different races or ethnicities are correctly differentiated by the respondents.’* While the race/ethnicity of each child was correctly ascertained by a number of adult judges, it is possible that their judgments did not concur with those of the subjects under study. The definition of an object arises not from its objective meaning 2, l6 (i.e., that we, as adults, define the photographs as being pictures of Latino children) but from the meaning the object has for the child. Still another possibility is that the children may have perceived that the youngsters in the photographs were in some way qualitatively different from the Latino children with whom they associate in real life. This seems particularly likely, since the photographs were not taken in the neighborhood where the research was actually conducted.

LINDA A. TEPLIN 707

Unfamiliarity with inanimate representations. This possibility is intertwined with the media issue already discussed. If the low rate of ingroup choice once found among black children was attrib- utable to the general absence of blacks in the media, the point may be even more relevant currently to the Latino children. Hispanic persons are only rarely depicted in advertisements or other famil- iar media, save for an occasional travel advertisement for Puerto Rico or Mex- ico. Thus perhaps one plausible explanation for the Latino children’s low rate of ingroup choice may be that they are not accustomed to seeing two-dimensional representations of unknown Latino children. Thus they choose attitude objects with which they have the greatest familiarity and positive feelings-photographs of Anglo children.*

It has been thought by many that, until fairly recently, black children had a negative self-~oncept.~ At best, they knew they were “different;” at worst, they felt that being black was “bad.” If, as has been postulated, people desire to associate with those who are similar to themselves,1s- 2e it seems likely that black children would nor want to identify with or choose pictures of black children or black dolls; they would not want to believe that those pictures of black children were indeed similar to themselves. As a consequence, the black child might instead choose white stimuli be- cause he wants to believe that he is more similar to the white child. Certainly

much of the literature on racial misiden- tification has supported this point.6

The Latino children in the present study could be viewed as being similar to the blacks of ten years ago. One reason they did not prefer the photographs of Latino youngsters may be that they perceived the children in the pictures as being dissimilar to themselves on what- ever criteria they deemed to he important and relevant. In contrast, they may have perceived the Anglo children as similar to themselves. Although this is pure conjecture, it is nevertheless inter- teresting to note that the data patterns of black children of ten and twenty years ago are markedly similar to those of the Latino children in the present sample.?, 17, l8, That some of the more recent studies have found that black children do choose black dolls or photographs of black children,O, 11, 85 may be attributed to their changed perceptions about “blackness;” this could result in their perceiving pictures of black children as being similar to themselves, which could effect a higher rate of ingroup choice.

Since people of different reference groups have unique perceptions and attitudes,l6I 28 these children may tend to utilize different criteria in their racial/ ethnic preferences. That the females in this study were more white-oriented and more ingroup-oriented is a case in point. Clearly, girls and boys have difEerent perceptions of their situations and themselves, and consequently may base their

* It is important to note that the results of studies utilizing doll-choice or photo-choice methodologies may or may not correspond to real-life choice patterns. Nevertheless, such research may provide a more complete picture of the dynamics involved in prejudice and racism in children’s attitudes and interactions. An extensive analysis of the dynamics involved in children’s attitude-behavior inconsistencies as regards racial preference has been presented else- where.34


choices upon different criteria. Alterna- tively, it is possible that the respondents in the present study may utilize the cri- terion of “similarity” as a prerequisite for choice, but perceive what is “similar” in an individualistic manner. The partic- ular ways in which these differences arise provide a base for future research.

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For reprints: Linda A. Teplin, Institute of Psychiatry, Northwestern University, 320 E. Huron, Chicago, Ill. 60611

a comparison of racial/ethnic preferences among anglo, black and latino children

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