Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The historic Brown v. Board of Education decision rendered de jure racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. In the wake of this decision, a nationwide school desegregation movement began with a goal of providing greater opportunities for students of different races and ethnicities to interact. Partially influenced by the contact hypothesis, desegregation proponents believed that close and sustained contact with members of other racial and/or ethnic groups would promote more racial tolerance. Several decades later, however, reviews of research in desegregated schools generally found only mixed support for the contact hypothesis. Given that research investigating the contact hypothesis and adolescents’ racial attitudes is limited, it is difficult to treat these results as definitive. In this paper, we use a nationally representative sample of Asian, Black, Latino, and White adolescents to address this limitation. We also investigate possible mechanisms (i.e., interracial friendship, frequency of contact, and quality of contact) that might mediate the relationship between interracial contact and adolescents’ racial attitudes. Our findings reveal that the opportunity for interracial contact is quite restricted. About two in ten youth nationwide have the opportunity for cross-racial contact. We also find that the effect of interracial contact on racial attitudes is weaker for youth of color than White youth.