Mandela's quote is not good science

Many now are talking about a quote of Nelson Mandela's that was tweeted by Obama and has been retweeted more than any other tweet before. Here's the quote:

"No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin or his background or his religion...People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love...For love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite."

People don't actually have to "learn" racial bias. It develops naturally in infants as early as six months of age. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170411130810.htm):

Two studies by researchers at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto and their collaborators from the US, UK, France and China, show that six- to nine-month-old infants demonstrate racial bias in favour of members of their own race and racial bias against those of other races.

In the first study, "Older but not younger infants associate own-race faces with happy music and other-race faces with sad music," published in Developmental Science, results showed that after six months of age, infants begin to associate own-race faces with happy music and other-race faces with sad music.

In the second study, "Infants rely more on gaze cues from own-race than other-race adults for learning under uncertainty," published in Child Development, researchers found that six- to eight-month-old infants were more inclined to learn information from an adult of his or her own race than from an adult of a different race.
(In both studies, infants less than six months of age were not found to show such biases).

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"When we consider why someone has a racial bias, we often think of negative experiences he or she may have had with other-race individuals. But, these findings suggest that a race-based bias emerges without experience with other-race individuals," said Dr. Naiqi (Gabriel) Xiao. 

Anyone who has ever observed a very small child freak out or inexplicably behave rudely to someone new who is from a different ethnicity or race knows that these findings reflect the truth. Anyone who has traveled the world has seen how racism exists in every group of people and seems to develop as naturally as greed. Does that mean we give up and just let everyone act on that racism? No, just like with greed, we need to teach people NOT to be racist and penalize and stigmatize those who let their racial bias lead them to engage in criminal and antisocial behavior. We also need to give them early exposure to caring, trustworthy people of many different ethnicities to help them develop warm feelings for all humanity from an early age.

I find Mandela's quote unfortunate because it places blame on humanity for something that grows without being taught. The focus should instead be on working to give young children positive interactions with people of all ethnicities and races to prevent racism from developing in the first place.

(I think the findings above help explain why I've never quite understood all the accusations of "racism" swirling through the air: A Mexican housekeeper crossed the border to take care of me daily when I was a toddler, and when I first started school, I had an African-American friend, violin teacher, and school teacher. People who cared for me, loved me, and taught me built my trust and affection for all people, and my parents supported that development.)