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Special Issue of the Journal of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Education
Young Children, Race, and Racism: Global Perspectives

Submission deadline: July 1, 2019

• Kerry-Ann Escayg, Ph.D.
  University of Nebraska-Omaha
  Co-editor
• Beverly-Jean Daniel, Ph.D.
  Ryerson University
  Co-editor

Since the landmark studies of Criswell (1937) and Clark and Clark (1939), extensive international research has shown that young children’s racial awareness, self-identification, and prejudice emerge in early childhood. Indeed, investigations conducted in the United States, Canada, and across the globe, continue to confirm that between the ages of three and five, children, regardless of their racial background, demonstrate a racial consciousness marked by an incipient belief in white supremacy. Conversely, for racialized children in contexts such as the United States and Canada, developmental interpretations suggest that in-group racial pride occurs after the age of seven, with a pro-white bias dominating affections and perceptions prior to such time. In recent years, however, a new line of inquiry has focused on implicit racial bias in young children (e.g., Baron & Banaji, 2006; Qian et al., 2015). In attempting to explain children’s racial awareness, identity, and attitudes, much of the scholarly discussions have engaged developmental precepts, although a few scholars have utilized post-modern perspectives to demonstrate how culture and context impact children racialized beliefs (e.g., Escayg, Berman, & Royer, 2017; MacNevin & Berman, 2017).

The special issue seeks to provide a collection of diverse and international scholarship on children and race. In addition to empirical contributions that focus on components of young children’s (0-8) racial identity (self-identification, perceived similarity, racial awareness) and attitudes, we are particularly interested in receiving submissions that draw on theoretical perspectives such as post-colonial, anti-colonial, critical race theory, anti-racism, and poststructuralism to offer new exegeses on the processes, including racial discourse, that shape both racialized and white children’s understanding of systemic and individual racial privilege, subjectivity and identity.

Possible topics include:

• Children’s racial identity development
• Racial attitudes
• Implicit bias
• Anti-racism and anti-bias pedagogy in early childhood/elementary classrooms
• Post-modern theoretical analyses (anti-colonial, post-colonial, post-structural, anti- racism, critical race theory) of children’s racial attitudes and racial identity development
• Developmental analyses of children’s racial identity and attitudes
• An examination of the measures used to assess children’s racial attitudes
• Ethnographic studies on children and race, including observations of children’s play activities.
• Children’s engagement with and re-working of context-specific racial discourse
• Children and whiteness

References

• Baron, A. S., & Banaji, M. R. (2006). The development of implicit attitudes: Evidence of race evaluations from ages 6 and 10 and adulthood. Psychological science, 17(1), 53-58.
• Criswell, J. H. (1937). Racial cleavage in negro-white groups. Sociometry, 1, 81-89.
• Clark, K. B., & Clark, M. K. (1939). The development of consciousness of self and the emergence of racial identification in Negro preschool children. The Journal of Social Psychology, 10(4), 591-599.
• Escayg, K.-A., Berman, R., & Royer, N. (2017). Canadian children and race: Toward an antiracism analysis. Journal of Childhood Studies, 42(2), 10-21.
• MacNevin, M., & Berman, R. (2017). The Black baby doll doesn’t fit: The disconnect between early childhood diversity policy, early childhood educator practice, and children’s play. Early Child Development and Care, 187(5-6), 827-839.
• Qian, M. K., Heyman, G. D., Quinn, P. C., Messi, F. A., Fu, G., & Lee, K. (2016). Implicit racial biases in preschool children and adults from Asia and Africa. Child development, 87(1),285-296.

Submission Procedures:

The manuscript should be between 5,000-7,000 words, (references included) written in Times New Roman, 12-point font, double-spaced. The APA sixth edition format must be used consistently throughout the manuscript. All submissions will be blind peer-reviewed. Follow “Submit Article” instructions at the Journal of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Education, located at http://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/ctlle