Exploring the relation between early childhood education and historical and contemporary racism and bias for Black children

Racial disparities in educational outcomes start early in childhood and persist through adulthood. High quality Early Care and Education (ECE) programs tend to show benefits for Black children, but less is known about how larger contextual inequalities, both historical and contemporary, relate to young children's outcomes in these high-quality settings. Previous work has shown that historical racism, such as the prevalence of enslavement in 1860 (just before the Civil War) relates to present-day structural inequalities and implicit bias across geographic regions. In this study (N = 1,343), we examined the relation between an area's historical racism, operationalized as the proportion of enslaved individuals living there in 1860, current structural inequalities (economic mobility, racial disparities in poverty, and residential segregation), implicit bias, and children's outcomes in high quality ECE settings. Although significant correlations were found among historical and current structural inequities, implicit bias, and children's outcomes, no significant relation remained after accounting for nesting and children's prior skills. Though more work is needed to establish the reliability and robustness of these findings, our analysis provides initial evidence that negative structural factors are not linked to children's outcomes within more optimal settings, such as high quality ECE programs.