In the article “Want to Be Less Racist?”, Moises Valasquez-Manoff shows his interest in the racial attitudes of the residents of Hawaii and why they seem to view people of color in a completely different way than others. He touches on subjects about how when children grow up in places that are more populated by people with lighter or white colored skin, they involuntarily learn racist behavior whether it was taught ‘deliberately’ to them or not. The evidence that proves this was a social test done by Dr. Pauker, “She found that between ages 4 and 11, upper-middle-class children from mostly white neighborhoods around Boston increasingly viewed race as a permanent condition and expressed stereotypes about other racial groups: that blacks were aggressive or, on the flip side, good at basketball; that Asians were submissive and good at math. These children came from public schools in liberal areas.” (Paragraph 5, Manoff) This social experiment proves that because these children are in bigger groups of people that look more like them, are able to almost hunt in packs. This is an analogy that Manoff uses that I think is one of the biggest reasons why there is still racism today even if children are not taught much of the topic of racism at young ages.
On the other side of this story comes the enlightenment of the children who grow up knowing that everyone is different and unique in their own way. The reason for that is because almost every single person in Hawaii has drastically different ethnicities. Someone might be native Hawaiian, African and Philipino, while someone they pass on the street is German, French and Native American. You can never know by just looking at someone and what Manoff does, is he explains why this might be the reason for that. The social experiment that he includes that was run by Dr. Pauker was done with children in densely populated areas where the ethnic groups are vastly different as explained above. Then, she did the same experiment with the children from Hawaii and the results were much different. She explains that these children, while still acknowledging the physical differences in people, were able to look past the stereotypes that arise from physical characteristics everywhere else. “They recognized skin color, hair texture and other features commonly associated with race. But they did not attribute to race the inherent qualities — aggression or book smarts” (Paragraph 6).
