COLLEGE PARK, MD (July, 2013) When producers from CNN’s Anderson Cooper show “AC360” commissioned Dr. Melanie Killen, professor in the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, to lead a research study on children and race, garnering television accolades was not an imagined possibility. However, the special report titled “Kids on Race, the Hidden Picture” has been nominated for a 2013 News & Documentary Emmy Award in the Outstanding News Discussion and Analysis category.
Dr. Killen, a child psychologist, teamed up with Coopers team to present a ground breaking report exploring how kids view interracial contact in their daily lives, how their opinions about race are shaped, and how early are these opinions formed. The research study was based on historic research from the 1940s that examined how African-American children interpret race, discrimination and stigma using dolls.
In Killens study, the children, ages six and thirteen, were shown images depicting scenarios that were scientifically designed to be ambiguous to children. What is happening in this picture was the starting point for interviews conducted with the group of 145 African-American and Caucasian children in six schools across three states. The report explored how childrens interpretations of the images often changed when the races of the characters were switched.
This series, which aired in April 2012, tackled controversial issues and answered some difficult questions. Is race a factor in how children view conflicts and choose friends? Do children see race or are they, as many parents believe, socially colorblind? How, when and why do they form their opinions on race? Can those opinions change over time or at a certain age, are kids hard-wired about race? And does the racial make-up of their school and environment affect their opinions on race?
The 34th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards honors programming distributed during the calendar year of 2012. The awards will be presented on Tuesday, October 1 at a ceremony at Frederick P. Rose Hall, Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, located in the Time Warner Center in New York City.
For more information about the study and clips from the series, click here. To read Anderson Coopers blog on the special report, click here.
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