The problem with any attempt to discuss the" consequences" of school desegregation is the lack of consensus among judges, lawyers, researchers, policy makers, and advocates about the social goals and purposes of this policy. Indeed, one of the central paradoxes of the history of school desegregation is the mismatch between the original legal rationale for dismantling dual systems of education and most of the subsequent social science research intended to measure the effect of such efforts. For instance, some of the early Supreme Court rulings on racial segregation in education-namely, the рте-Brown higher education cases1-focused on the negative consequences of African American students' exclusion from white institutions. The Court's rationale was that exclusion of black students from white universities was detrimental not simply because of the greater resources within these institutions, but also because of the higher status that they held in society as well as the valuable social networks of the faculty and students within them. Furthermore, the Supreme Court's landmark Brown2 decision focused on the psychological harm of segregation in a way that related to the status of all-white as opposed to all-black schools and not simply the" tangible" resources within each one. Thus, in the higher education rulings and the Brown decision itself, the Supreme