Racial Preference and Self-Esteem in Black South African Children

Discrimination against black minority children was originally viewed as causing them to evaluate their own-group negatively and the white out-group positively, resulting in impaired self-esteem. Research, however, has produced inconsistent findings, possibly because of social change and the black consciousness movement. The present study investigated this issue among black South African children, a social group that has experienced particularly severe racial discrimination. As expected, the findings indicated that self-esteem, own-group racial pride, and overall ethnocentrism were significantly higher amongst older ( n = 37; 10 to 12-years old) than among younger black children ( n = 41; 6 to 8-years old). The younger children showed a slight though non-significant tendency to out-group favouritism, while the pattern for the older children was non-preference. However, the correlations of self-esteem with in-group pride, out-group prejudice, and overall ethnocentrism were non-significant suggesting that the own-group and out-group attitudes of minority children do not necessarily effect their self-attitudes.