White Parents' Racial Socialization During a Guided Discussion Predicts Declines in White Children's Pro-White Biases.

Although parent–child conversations about race are recommended to curb White U.S. children's racial biases, little work has tested their influence. We designed a guided racism discussion task for U.S. White parents and their 8–12-year-old White children. We explored whether children's and parents' (a) pro-White implicit biases changed pre to postconversation, (b) racial socialization messages (color conscious, external attributions for prejudiced behavior and colorblind racial ideology [CBRI]) predicted changes in each other's implicit biases, and (c) associations varied by the type of racism (subtle vs. blatant) discussed. Children's and parents' biases significantly declined, pre to postdiscussion. Parents' color conscious messages predicted greater declines and messages reflecting CBRI and external attributions predicted smaller declines in children's bias. These patterns were observed during discussions of subtle, but not blatant bias. Effects of children's messages on parents' bias were mixed. Our findings suggest that color conscious parent–child discussions may effectively reduce implicit pro-White bias in White children. Public Significance Statement: Although they believe it to be beneficial, many White U.S. parents avoid discussing racism with their children or downplay the importance of race when they have these conversations. In the current study, we developed a method to encourage color conscious conversations in White families and found that parents' and children's racial biases reduced after the discussion. Our findings suggest that parent–child discussions about racism may effectively reduce racial biases in White families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]