In case your Monday morning started out too cheerfully:
The researchers found most children are aware that women and minorities have been excluded from the U.S. presidency. Although most of the children believed people of all races and genders should be president, they offered surprising answers as to why only white males have held the nation’s highest political office:
* One in four participants said it is illegal for women and minorities to hold the office of president;
* One in three children attributed the lack of female, African-American and Latino presidents to racial and gender bias on the part of voters; and
* While some children expressed the belief that prejudice shapes how adults vote, another third of the participants said members of the excluded groups lacked the skills to hold the position.
I’d love to know the race/class/gender breakdown among those subgroups, and by “love” I mean, “I want to find out if my assumptions about the race/class/gender breakdown among those subgroups matches my exceedingly pessimistic assumptions.” Because I don’t think I’d really “love” to know.
But that’s all gonna change, right?