no, i don't think my statements are inconsistent with the facts.
the white infant sees both whites and blacks in his/her surroundings while being fed and sheltered from the beginning. (remember, whites and blacks are involved in total care, although the black suckles the white child.) the child cannot distinguish btwn them, i.e., loves both colors because they are both associated with nourishment and safety. he/she is "color blind", i.e., makes no distinction between the two colors and doesn't try to avoid one or the other. that's nature, i.e, instinctive imprinting.
however, then at a later stage when the child can understand language, the white parents begin to indoctrinate the child, carefully explaining how to distinguish btwn the colors "white" and "black". also, that there ARE differences btwn the black nurse and her family and friends on the one hand and the white mom and her family and friends on the other hand with associated cultural, economic and political differences. that's all news to the child. that's nurture operating.
i had a good example of this happen in my family. one of my daughters, her husband and their 2 kids lived in a mixed race neighborhood near PHILA. the kids were born and raised for the first 6 years there and, of course, my daughter taught them nothing about "them" and "us". both colors played and schooled together. when i asked my daughter if the kids were color blind, she said they were. in other words, they didn't know that color was a distiguishing feature of children in that mixed neighborhood because no black or white had taught them the distinction. pure "colorblindness". the results of both nature and nurture.
norm
Norm wrote:
>racial/ethnic discrimination: if an infant imprints (emulates) on someone
>with specific appearance, speech and movement that feeds and shelters
>him/her, and shuns someone who looks, talks and acts differently who does
>not feed or shelter him/her, then his/her survival chances are better.
>that's nature. then you add a few years of what the parents whisper into
>johnnie's and janie's ears during infancy and you get someone who is more
or
>less discriminatory. that's nurture.
However, at the height of racism -- the days of slavery in the American South, for instance -- white masters' infants were often wet-nursed & cared for by enslaved black women. White infants of the master class then may have had more intimate physical contacts with enslaved black women than their biological mothers & fathers. The nature of racism, it appears to me, has little to do with Norm's speculation here.
Yoshie