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An intriguing yet also maddening article from Newsweek, See Baby Discriminate, by Pro Bronson and Ashley Merryman, September 14th, 2009. It is intriguing because it does offer up a summary of some current research which I will cite in a minute. It is also maddening because it is so steeped in an increasingly anachronistic, indeed archaic, frame of assumptions for which there is little supporting evidence. In the face of many alternative ways of interpreting data, many of our researchers seem to be fixated on race as an explanatory variable where all the data seems to indicate that there are multiple issues and that variables such as home culture, socio-economic status, parental education attainment, and income are far better predictors of educational and behavioral outcomes than is race per se (recognizing that there are instances of correlation).

The main point of the article is that even within families, we have difficulty discussing race as an issue. I am not sure that that is really the case. I think what the researchers are wrestling with is that the discussions don't conform to the desired narrative, in part because the reality doesn't conform to the desired narrative. For example:

UT's Bigler was one of the scholars heavily involved in the process of its creation. Bigler is an adamant proponent of desegregation in schools on moral grounds. "It's an enormous step backward to increase social segregation," she says. However, she also admitted that "in the end, I was disappointed with the amount of evidence social psychology could muster [to support it]. Going to integrated schools gives you just as many chances to learn stereotypes as to unlearn them."

Until our academics begin to focus on the real issues of behaviors, values, home environments, etc. I think it will be difficult to shed real light on these issues.