No Pride in Prejudice: Teaching Children the Value of Diversity

Despite its reputation as a progressive city, Austin is actually very racially
segregated, says Dr. Rebecca Bigler, a psychology professor at UT-Austin whose
nationally recognized research focuses on children’s racial stereotyping. “Whites, blacks,
Asians and Latinos live in separate neighborhoods,” she says.
For that very reason, she sent her own children to a private school so that they’d
be exposed to a diverse student population (her children also attend St. Francis School).
“I took my children out of the public school because [the schools] were too
racially segregated,” she says. “I didn’t want my children to be in an environment where
all around they had others who looked like them”.
Segregated Schools, Prejudiced Kids?
Public schools in Texas have fairly high levels of segregation, says Dr. Gary
Orfield, a UCLA professor of education and director of The Civil Rights Project. Dr.
Orfield has monitored trends in racial segregation since the 1970s. He says segregation in
schools has been rising significantly in the past few years, with Latino students more
segregated than black students in Texas.
“It’s really hard to teach people to manage race relations well in a segregated
setting,” he says.
The problem is, Austin tends to be residentially segregated, which leads to ethic
segregation in public schools, says Dr. Alfred McAlister, professor of behavioral sciences
at the University of Texas-Houston School of Public Health and the director of the World
Health Organization Collaborating Center.
To push for diversity in its schools, the Austin Independent School District has
strict rules about transferring into or out of racially imbalanced schools. To some, such
monitoring of race in schools may seem like political correctness run amok. But those
who study the issue say maintaining diversity in schools is one way to avoid prejudice.
“One of the big predictors of reduction in children’s prejudice is cross-race
friendships,” says Dr. Melanie Killen, associate director for the Center for Children,
Relationships, and Culture at the University of Maryland.
Dr. Killen’s research with young children suggests that children do not have racial
bias in schools where they have an opportunity to make friends with children of different
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