Labour-run Islington Council say children as young as three months old can be racially biased

An Islington council poster announced that babies as young as three months old can be racially biased, 

The Labour council’s under-5s department shared the graphic with diagrams of children from babies up to six, titled: ‘Children are never too young to talk about race.’

The poster said that ‘at three months, babies look more at faces that match the race of their caregivers’. 

This comes as babies that young are unable to talk and unlikely to have socialised with many other children. 

It added that ‘children as young as two years use race to reason about people’s behaviours’, and ‘by 30 months, most children use race to choose playmates’.

The graphic claimed that ‘expressions of racial prejudice often peak at ages four and five’ and that ‘by five, white children are strongly biased in favour of whiteness, and have learned to associate some groups with higher status than others’.

It was shared on the Islington Early Years Twitter account late last year where parents were shocked by ‘activist educators’ in the nursery.

The graphic came from the Children’s Community School, a radical US website and remains up today.

The poster by  the Children’s Community School was shared on Islington Early Years twitter page 

The website cites a series of contested studies, mostly from before 2010, for each of the six claims about children and race through life.

The nurseries tweet of the poster triggered seven angry comments as one called it: ‘Bonkers.’

Parents were alarmed after The Telegraph found at least four Labour-run councils have used ‘Maoist’ diversity consultants to ‘decolonise the mind sets’ of nursery staff.

Nottingham City Council, the Welsh Government, Islington council and Early Years Bristol have worked with the Black Nursery Manager, a diversity consultancy. 

The company previously criticised ‘the violence of whiteness’ and called the Government an ‘agent of white supremacy’.

MPs told The Telegraph that the training must be investigated as ‘the most poisonous and divisive kind of dogma’.

The Early Years Alliance hit back by saying critics were ‘incredibly short-sighted’ and the National Day Nurseries Association said the training ‘should be encouraged not criticised’.

Campaigners however say the backlash from the early years groups shows how normalised radical race theories have become in nurseries. 

How to teach children about race can be difficult for schools, parents and councils to agree on

Many organisations reject the ‘colour-blind’ approach because it does not focus on the differences between races.

Adrian Hart, a parent from the campaign group Don’t Divide Us and author of The Myth of Anti-Racist Kids, said: ‘Fundamentally, many of the studies presented in support of these sorts of ideas about children and race simply conflate acceptance of one group with rejection of another.

‘Children’s choices in relation to things like doll or toy preference, in artificial experimental conditions offer no indication of whether the child takes account of race in everyday social interactions.’

The current curriculum for nursery staff does not mention racism or particular races.

The Government’s Development Matters guidance is designed to support impartial teaching of diversity.

Some early years sectors released their own guidance last year which mentioned the idea of ‘white privilege’.

An Islington council spokesman said: ‘As we work to create a more equal Islington, we will keep challenging the subtle and complex ways in which people are held back and opportunities are denied.

‘Structural inequalities stop too many people in our borough from reaching their potential, and we will keep challenging inequality so all our children, young people, families and communities can thrive.’