School desegregation and social science research

Research on the effects of school desegregation, once quite common in psychology and related fields, has declined considerably since the mid-1980s. Factors contributing to changes in the quantity and focus of such research since the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision are discussed, with an emphasis on those related to the decline of this research in the last 2 decades. These factors include the nation's retreat from the policy of school desegregation and the associated decline in research funding. Changing perspectives regarding desegregation, the outcomes of desegregation that merit study, and the desirable composition of research teams studying desegregation have also played a role. Demographic changes in our society and its schools that have made salient other research topics and the development of effective research paradigms for studying intergroup relations in the laboratory have also contributed to this decline. ((c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differentiation Matching in School Desegregation Workshops

The effectiveness of matching the conceptual structure of participants in educational training and psychotherapy experiences has been demonstrated in previous research. This paper describes an attempt to test the effectiveness of this model in a school desegregation workshop designed to promote a mandatory bussing proposal by a local school board. Differentiation matching had little effect on participants' global judgments of satisfaction with workshop goals but was significantly and inversely related to the decision to voluntarily bus a child, especially among blacks. Abstractness of topics discussed affected participant endorsement of workshop goals but did not affect bussing decision. The findings suggest that how such workshops are organized is dependent on whether the workshop success is to be evaluated on the basis of community public relations or actual decisions to bus children.     

The relation between popularity and achievement: a longitudinal test of the lateral transmission of value hypothesis

Data from a longitudinal study of school desegregation were used to examine the relation between normative social influence processes and academic achievement in order to test theoretical models of how school desegregation produces benefit. Subjects were white, Mexican-American, and black elementary school children who were measured once prior to and twice after desegregation of their schools. For all groups, analyses using structural equation techniques showed that, contrary to the lateral transmission of values hypothesis, which views social influence processes as shaping academic achievement, "causal influence" did not flow from social acceptance to academic achievement; instead, achievement appeared to affect subsequent social acceptance.     

Justice deferred a half century after Brown v. Board of Education

The road to Brown v. Board of Education (1954) was a slow and circuitous climb, whereas the retreat down from Brown has been swift and direct. This article reviews 4 distinct U.S. Supreme Court eras of racial decisions: the segregation, preparatory, desegregation, and resegregation eras. It notes both the strengths and weaknesses of Brown and discusses the effects of school desegregation. Did racial diversity improve the life chances of African American children as intended? The results of longitudinal research demonstrate that the effects have been positive, although these results are not widely known by the American public. The article challenges this and other misconceptions about school desegregation that have become entrenched in the public's thinking and addresses ways to rekindle the spirit of Brown.     

Beyond the optimal contact strategy: a reality check for the contact hypothesis

The contact hypothesis proposes that interaction between members of different groups reduces intergroup prejudice if--and only if--certain optimal conditions are present. For over 50 years, research using this framework has explored the boundary conditions for ideal contact and has guided interventions to promote desegregation. Although supporting the contact hypothesis in principle, the authors critique some research practices that have come to dominate the field: (a) the prioritizing of the study of interactions occurring under rarefied conditions, (b) the reformulation of lay understandings of contact in terms of a generic typology of ideal dimensions, and (c) the use of shifts in personal prejudice as the primary measure of outcome. The authors argue that these practices have limited the contact hypothesis both as an explanation of the intergroup dynamics of desegregation and as a framework for promoting social psychological change. In so arguing, the authors look toward a complementary program of research on contact and desegregation.     

Predictors of African American and European American adolescents' endorsement of race-conscious social policies

To examine the predictors of adolescents' evaluations of affirmative action and school desegregation policies, African American and European American students (ns = 94 and 116, respectively; aged 14 to 17 years) attending a racially diverse high school in the Midwestern United States completed measures of (a) implicit racial attitudes, (b) knowledge about historical racism, and (c) perceptions of and attributions for racial disparities. The following day, adolescents learned about either a proposed affirmative action policy (n = 101) or a school desegregation policy (n = 109) and completed measures of their attitudes toward the policy. Results indicated racial differences in policy support and in the factors predicting policy support. Theoretical implications of the findings are discussed.     

The power of the Brown v. Board of Education decision: theorizing threats to sustainability

Interviews with African American and White American elders capture the immediate power of the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision and the biography of its impact over time. This article reviews the lived experience of the decision and theorizes 3 threats to sustainability that ruthlessly undermined the decision over time: (a) the unacknowledged and enormous sacrifice endured by the African American community in the name of desegregation; b) the violent and relentless resistance to the decision by government officials, educators, and many White community members; and (c) the dramatic shrinkage of the vision of Brown from the dismantling of White supremacy to a technical matter of busing. Implications are drawn for the study of desegregation and for the study of sustainability of social justice more broadly.     

From segregation to intergroup contact and back: Using experiments and simulation to understand the bidirectional link

Research on intergroup contact has mostly viewed desegregation as a necessary condition for contact to unfold its power to reduce prejudice. Through residential and school choices, however, prejudice also contributes to segregation. To shed light on this bidirectional link, we conducted two survey‐based experiments with stratified quota samples of German adults. In Study 1, respondents with less contact and more prejudice indicated a lower likelihood of renting an apartment in a neighborhood with a larger proportion of minority members, although housing quality and crime rate were held constant. In Study 2, similar results were obtained for the likelihood of enrolling their child at a school with a larger proportion of minority students. Building on these results in a computer simulation, we find that because contact only reduces prejudice, but does not produce pro‐minority preferences, spontaneous desegregation is unlikely to occur even under the most favorable structural and economic conditions.     

The correlational validity of IQ as a function of ethnicity and desegregation

IQ tests were viewed solely as predictors in this investigation. It was printed out that there is little or no data to support the prevalent assumptions that IQ tests predict school performance equally well for different ethnic groups and/or in a desegregated school setting. Moreover, test users and publishers often mistakenly imply or assume that the correlational validity for a total ethnically heterogeneous population applies in equal magnitude to the respective ethnic subgroups of that population. An investigation to provide evidence relevant to these assumptions was conducted using all the pupils in grade K-3 in Berkeley, California—the first large district to voluntarily desegregate its schools completely.

The results revealed equal but very low within-ethnic-group correlations between IQ and achievement measures administered concurrently prior to desegregation and for tests administered one and two years following desegregation. The correlations between IQ and the criteria for the ethnic groups were, as expected, significantly lower than the total population correlation. The practical implications of these findings of generally poor predictability were discussed.     

Does school desegregation change occupational goals of Negro males?

Instruments, designed to assess values which affect the motivation to work and aspiration levels, were administered to over 600 Negro male seniors in Texas high schools. Results indicate that the degree and duration of school desegregation these students have experienced, ranging from less than 1 to more than 5 years, have had little effect on work values and occupational aspirations.     

Racism in higher education in South Africa: A challenge to student counsellors

The repeal of apartheid legislation applied to education presents new challenges to student counsellors. Given the history of racial conflict that accompanied limited desegregation on campuses in South Africa, one can expect that conflict ivill increase now that any student may freely study at any university. Of necessity, counsellors will need to develop new expertise to deal with conflict arising from racism on campus. Counselling centres will also have to reflect the diversity of the student population, which will require changed university employment policies.     

Equitable relief as a relay between juridical and biopower: the case of school desegregation

The present paper looks at the intersection of juridical and biopower in the U.S. Supreme Court’s school desegregation cases. These cases generally deploy “equitable relief” as a relay between the juridicially-specified injury of segregation and the biopolitical mandates of integration, allowing broad-based biopolitical remedies for juridically identified problems. This strategy enabled the Courts to negotiate between these forms of power. The analysis here thus suggests the continued relevance of juridical power, and also the limits of Foucault’s own analysis, which suggested that biopower tended to fully colonize juridical power by way of norms.     

Inez Beverly Prosser and the education of African Americans

Inez Beverly Prosser (ca. 1895-1934) was arguably the first African American woman to earn a doctorate in psychology. Her dissertation, completed in 1933, examined personality differences in black children attending either voluntarily segregated or integrated schools and concluded that black children were better served in segregated schools. This research was one of several studies in the 1920s and 1930s that was part of the debate on segregated schools as maintained in the United States under the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). This article examines the life and career of Prosser in the context of educational barriers and opportunities for African Americans in the early part of the twentieth century and explores the arguments that pitted African Americans against one another in determining how best to educate black children, arguments that eventually led to the desegregation decision of Brown v. Board of Education (1954).     

Attitudes in the fiber of everyday life: the discourse of racial evaluation and the lived experience of desegregation

This article critically reviews the social-psychological literature on race attitudes, which has assumed that the prejudicial status of any expression is determined by the underlying psychological attitude that motivated it. Variation and inconsistency in individuals' attitudinal expressions and disagreement over how to measure prejudice have bedeviled attitude research. Contemporary theories of racial attitudes (symbolic racism, self-presentation, aversive racism) have responded to this problem by explaining how, when, and why attitudes vary and by proposing research paradigms for isolating prejudiced from nonprejudiced expressions. The authors argue that research in this area may be enhanced by the use of qualitative methods that place fewer constraints on the expression of racial attitudes and variability than quantitative methods do. Using empirical materials from a South African case study, the authors show that a focus on attitudinal discourse and the lived experience of desegregation allow researchers to investigate attitudes as social practices.     

Challenging the Stubborn Core of Opposition to Equality: Racial Contact and Policy Attitudes

A Random Digit Dialing survey (n = 794) examined the interracial contact experiences and racial attitudes of White South Africans. The survey measured racial attitudes not only in terms of individuals' prejudice, but also in terms of their perceptions of group threat, perceived injustice, and support for various government policies designed to rectify the legacy of apartheid. The results indicated that the frequency and quality of interracial contact predicted Whites' support for both race compensatory and race preferential policies of redress, and these effects were partly mediated by perceived threat, sense of fairness, and racial prejudice. The research points to a potential rapprochement between the social psychological theories of intergroup contact and group positioning theories derived from the work of Blumer. It also highlights the value of adopting a more expansive and politically nuanced conception of the “consequences” of contact and desegregation.     

Eating together apart: patterns of segregation in a multi‐ethnic cafeteria

Research on segregation has tended to focus on relations located at a macro‐spatial level of analysis and unfolding in contexts where boundaries to interaction are formally established. This research, by contrast, investigated segregation as a micro‐ecological process by observing patterns of seating in a multi‐ethnic cafeteria. A total of 3114 seating positions were coded over a 2‐week period and the resulting data were analysed using both adapted segregation indices (P and D) and loglinear and logistic regression techniques. The results suggested that ethnic segregation existed both at the level of interactional groups and in the form of broader patterns of racial clustering and dispersal in the cafeteria. Moreover, the magnitude of segregation was predicted by the gender composition of seating groups and by variations in the density of the cafeteria's population over time. Some implications of these results for social psychological research on contact and desegregation are considered. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Non-ideal theory and the application of cautionary precepts

This paper discusses non-ideal theory as guidance for making bad situations better by morally permissible means. It distinguishes constructive theorizing, which suggests ways of improving specific kinds of bad situation, from cautionary theory, which concerns moral risks of actions under bad conditions. Reflective moral judgment yields cautionary precepts, identifying presumptively unjustifiable modes of action. The paper illustrates the application of precepts cautioning about coercion and the exposure of others to significant risks, by considering the 1955–1956 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, and the ‘Children’s Crusade’ of the 1963 Birmingham desegregation campaign. All such campaigns involve coercive elements, but the paper argues that coercion was not a morally significant factor in either case. Endangerment is another matter: given the violent, sometimes lethal, reactions to civil rights actions under Jim Crow, those two campaigns’ endangerment of innocent persons must be taken very seriously, especially as it concerns Birmingham. And, in fact, potentially lethal anti-reform violence occurred during each campaign. Relevant factors include the preparation and understanding of young participants and the difference in risk that is assumed by engaging in peaceful, nonviolent public actions.     

Exploring generative dissonance: Inten[s]ional states and relational interruptions

There is great potential to mine social psychological theory and explore the human experience of thoughts in tension. The work in cognitive dissonance reveals how cognitive inconsistencies and the consequential aversive psychological state of dissonance may affect one's understanding of the relations between self and other, creating openings for more inclusive social boundaries. The phenomenon of the “tension state” has potential links to notions of the dialogic space, reframing cognitions and altering social relations toward new interpretations of social givens. I discuss cognitive and relational dissonance in a case study on school desegregation and raise the possibility that desegregated school settings might create opportunities for cognitive openings, new understandings, and space for solidarity. Linking the long and rich theoretical history of cognitive dissonance to critical social theory, the paper advances a related and new concept of generative dissonance. This construct underscores the interruption of cognitive cohesion and the production of new ways of thinking and new social relations. These forms of cognitive and relational rupture generate openings with embodied relational implications, creating the possibility for reframing social problems and reconfiguring human relations.     

Primary School Correlates of Secondary School Achievement

This study is an investigation of the relationship between third grade final marks, achievement test scores, and subsequent achievement in elementary and secondary school. It was focused on the early identification of students for whom changes in the curriculum might be indicated.