{"title":"The Impact of School Desegregation on White Individuals' Racial Attitudes and Politics in Adulthood","authors":"Mark J. Chin","doi":"10.1162/edfp_a_00428","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n In this paper I study how school desegregation by race following Brown v. Board of Education affected White individuals' racial attitudes and politics in adulthood. I use geocoded nationwide data from the General Social Survey and difference-in-differences to identify causal impacts. Integration significantly reduced White individuals' political conservatism as adults in the U.S. South but not elsewhere. I observe similar effect heterogeneity for attitudes towards Black individuals and policies promoting racial equity, but (positive) impacts and geographic variation are smaller in magnitude relative to those observed for conservatism. Investigations into mechanisms suggest that this heterogeneity may depend on the effectiveness of integration policies. In the south, White-Black exposure was greater following desegregation, and White disenrollment was lower. Finally, I demonstrate that results are robust to concerns of bias resulting from potential non-random in- and out-mobility of individuals into integrating contexts. My study provides the first causal evidence on how theories concerning intergroup contact and racial attitudes (i.e., the contact hypothesis) may have applied to school contexts following historic court mandates to desegregate.","PeriodicalId":46870,"journal":{"name":"Education Finance and Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7000,"publicationDate":"2024-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Education Finance and Policy","FirstCategoryId":"95","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp_a_00428","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
In this paper I study how school desegregation by race following Brown v. Board of Education affected White individuals' racial attitudes and politics in adulthood. I use geocoded nationwide data from the General Social Survey and difference-in-differences to identify causal impacts. Integration significantly reduced White individuals' political conservatism as adults in the U.S. South but not elsewhere. I observe similar effect heterogeneity for attitudes towards Black individuals and policies promoting racial equity, but (positive) impacts and geographic variation are smaller in magnitude relative to those observed for conservatism. Investigations into mechanisms suggest that this heterogeneity may depend on the effectiveness of integration policies. In the south, White-Black exposure was greater following desegregation, and White disenrollment was lower. Finally, I demonstrate that results are robust to concerns of bias resulting from potential non-random in- and out-mobility of individuals into integrating contexts. My study provides the first causal evidence on how theories concerning intergroup contact and racial attitudes (i.e., the contact hypothesis) may have applied to school contexts following historic court mandates to desegregate.
在本文中,我研究了布朗诉教育委员会案之后,学校取消种族隔离对白人成年后的种族态度和政治有何影响。我使用了 "一般社会调查"(General Social Survey)中的全国地理编码数据和差分法(differences-in-differences)来确定因果影响。在美国南部,融合大大降低了白人成年后的政治保守主义,而在其他地区则没有。在对黑人的态度和促进种族公平的政策方面,我也观察到了类似的异质性影响,但相对于保守主义的影响,(正面)影响和地域差异的程度较小。对机制的研究表明,这种异质性可能取决于融合政策的有效性。在南方,取消种族隔离后,白人与黑人的接触更多,而白人退学率更低。最后,我证明了研究结果是可靠的,不会因个人可能非随机地进入或离开融合环境而产生偏差。我的研究为有关群体间接触和种族态度的理论(即接触假说)如何适用于历史上法院强制取消种族隔离后的学校环境提供了第一个因果证据。