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Sarah Ann's picture

BABIES.

So I don't really want to post my research on here (as was suggested as a posting option in class), but I feel like the person I'm researching bears mentioning, because her evolution and its result has affected all of us in this class. I'm researching M. Carey Thomas and what may have molded her into the headstrong woman she grew up to be.

I just started thinking about nina44's post and her point about babies preferring to look at faces of their own race. If we take the evidence gathered by the researchers as valid (going back to the whole can-we-really-tell-babies'-thoughts-by-their-gaze-time business), what does that tell us? I mean, is it just the simple fact that those faces clearly do not belong to mom, as babies first recognize? Does this whole thing suggest that not just racism, but fear of the generally unfamiliar are qualities we're born with? And are we really "born with" anything more than a blank slate, a brain with all of the physical and biological potential to be molded into the thinking organs we use as adults? I don't know. It's 1:30 in the morning right now, so everything's kind of out there for me.

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