| Abstract: | Two experiments investigated the effect of the classroom structure and the classroom climate of desegregated schools on the prejudices of White intermediate school students in a large, southwestern school district. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses indicated that (a) the higher the percentage of minorities in a class, the more minority friends the White students had; (b) the more the minorities in a class displayed hostility toward Whites, the more negative were the Whites' attitudes toward minorities in general; (c) the more equal the social class and achievement levels of the Whites and minorities in a class, the more minority friends the White students had; and (d) the higher the self-esteem of the Whites in a class, the more positive their ethnic attitudes. Implications for the design of desegregation plans are also discussed. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
