Young children and the Watts revolt

Immediately following the August, 1965 Los Angeles (Watts) race rioting, semistructured, interviews were obtained with 107 Negro, 23 Mexican-American and 52 white preschool children. Response data were used to assess the children's awareness of riot events, their fears or other affective reactions and their attitudes toward the riot participants. Over 70% in each group were aware of the rioting and approximately 50% gave evidence of rio-trelated fear. Attitudes of Negro and white children toward the rioters varied in (positive-negative) direction and intensity, while the small Mexican-American group was more uniformly hostile-fearful.