Derogatory labels predict degrading portrayals of minorities in children’s books

Evidence

More recently, Mullen (2004) showed that the use of ethnophaulisms towards ethnic immigrant groups in the US also predicted a more subtle form of exclusion, the portrayal of ethnic immigrants to children. For example, members of ethnic immigrant outgroups that were cognitively represented with less complex (and, to a lesser degree, more negative) ethnophaulisms were less frequently present in children’s literature, described more in terms of physical appearance than in terms of personal traits, and portrayed with smaller heads and with lower verbal complexity. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1270

Categorization

• QUESTION: Does the smaller-heads portrayal echo phrenological caricature traditions that literally dehumanized groups by shrinking heads in illustrations?
• XREF: connects to: Standardized early childhood curricula encode a white-supremacist moral color hierarchy — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 260; Children’s mission columns encoded different kinship frames for white and black authors — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 555