Kids and race

A non-biochemistry post for a change--I'm sure most of you know about the study that shows how much racial bias children demonstrate when asked to judge pictures of people with different skin color. I wanted to respond to the following comment made by author Po Bronson:

"(Parents) want to give their kids this sort of post-racial future when they're very young and they're under the wrong conclusion that their kids are colorblind. ... It's in the absence of messages of tolerance that they will naturally ... develop these skin preferences."

I have to question the use of the word "naturally" here. It seems it is being used to really mean "even though their parents don't teach them to"--when in reality there are plenty of other sources they could pick up this prejudice from, especially other kids. Even young children appear not to be immune to the tendency to take cues from peers in terms of who is "good" and "bad", and be more likely to like a popular than an unpopular classmate.

The study does nothing to determine where these kids picked up their light skin preference, but it surely isn't some sort of simple effect of perceptual familiarity, as the black children showed it too. To call it "natural" is to make it look as though racial tolerance is this difficult thing to master, and that parents are solely to blame when it is lacking.