Race and Class Matters at an Elite College

6 Learning from Racial Diversity

6 Learning from Racial Diversity T he college offered optimal conditions for students’ racial stereotypes to be challenged and replaced by more accurate views of members of other races, for students’ racial understanding to be broadened and deepened. But did such learning actually occur? The majority of blacks had gotten to know two or more whites well, and the majority of whites had gotten to know two or more blacks well. Did such cross-race interaction lead to learning about race? Did being in the classroom with students of other races contribute to students’ racial learning? This chapter begins with an examination of students’ racial stereotypes and then moves to a consideration of the extent to which racial stereotypes were broken down and students’ notions about race changed over the course of their first year of college. In addressing students’ racial stereotypes, it is useful to take a step back and look at the forces that have shaped their conceptions of race. Psychologists have found that the tendency to categorize people into ingroups (e.g., white) and out-groups (e.g., black) is rapid and automatic, and that stereotyping can easily become activated following racial categorization .1 Racial stereotypes are ubiquitous and strongly socialized in our culture,2 and the faulty attribution of negative stereotypic characteristics to members of a racial group leads to prejudiced perceptions of and responses to individuals.3 Whites have tended to characterize blacks as “lazy, ignorant, loud, musical , rhythmic, poor, stupid, dirty, and physically skilled (e.g., athletic)” 88 / Chapter 6 and, more recently as “militant, violent, criminal, and hostile.”4 While the breadth of negative characterizations of blacks has increased, whites have shown an actual decrease in the attribution of the negative traits stereotypically associated with African Americans over the past 50 years.5 But racial stereotypes persist . They have simply become more subtle and complex, and less overt.6 Psychologists such as Samuel Gaertner and John Dovidio have found that whites, having grown up in a racist society, “almost unavoidably possess negative feelings and beliefs about blacks.”7 But it is important to their selfconcepts to endorse egalitarian, nonprejudiced principles, so their aversive racism may be unconscious. Indeed, many researchers have found that whites hold implicit stereotypes of blacks that are outside of conscious control but can be spontaneously activated and have the potential, unbeknownst to the perceiver, to affect judgments.8 Racist beliefs are internalized not only by whites but by blacks as well. Many blacks tend to accept and incorporate the dominant society’s negative images of them and prejudices against them, just as whites tend to accept or be unwilling or unknowing participants in a system of racial oppression.9 In addition, in some studies blacks have been found to hold antiwhite attitudes and to consider whites to be racist.10 Given the pervasiveness of racial stereotyping in our society, it should not be surprising that racial stereotyping surfaced in students’ interactions on campus. When asked, approximately half the black students and half the lower-income white students in the study readily provided an example of an incorrect stereotypic assumption that had been made about them or members of their race, versus only 7% of affluent white students.11 The presence of these assumptions reflects the passive acceptance of dominant beliefs that are so much a part of everyday life in America. Many white students lacked contact with or education about blacks before college, making them more prone to stereotyping. For the most part the stereotypes that arose were about blacks, but some pertained to whites as well. Racial Stereotypes on Campus Intelligence A prominent societal stereotype of blacks is that they are less intelligent than whites; a corollary is the belief that black students at the college are less academically talented than whites. Black students’ comments suggest that some perceived themselves at times to be in an environment in which their intelligence , and that of members of their race, was under question. Both affluent and lower-income black students spoke of times when they felt that assumptions were made about their intelligence or that of black classmates. Jason, an Learning from Racial Diversity / 89 affluent black, said, “There are definitely times when people just assume when you’re in a classroom setting you don’t know what’s going on. They sort of feel the need to dumb down the class for...