Black and white self-esteem: the urban school child 9780912764054

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
1 Black and White Self-Esteem (page 1)
2 The Measurement of Self-Esteem (page 11)
3 Racial Insulation (page 21)
4 Group Evaluation and Self-Evaluation (page 31)
5 Skin Color (page 41)
6 Social Class (page 58)
7 The Broken Family (page 74)
8 Performance in School (page 88)
9 Aspirations (page 104)
10 Social Psychological Implications (page 125)
APPENDIX A The Sample Design (page 146)
References (page 151)

Citation preview

OE aan by | Black and White Self-Esteem:

The Urban School Child

Morris Rosenberg National Institute of Mental Health

| and

Roberta G. Simmons University of Minnesota

Published for the Arnold M. and Caroline Rose Monograph Series, American Sociological Association.

) Dedication To Erma Jean Surman, Florence Rosenberg, and Richard Simmons

i|

THE ARNOLD AND CAROLINE ROSE MONOGRAPH SERIES IN SOCIOLOGY A gift by Arnold and Caroline Rose to the American Sociological Association in 1968 provided for the establishment of the Arnold and Caroline Rose Monograph Series in Sociology. The conveyance provided for the publication of manuscripts in any subject matter field of sociology. The

donors intended the series for rather short monographs, contributions that normally are beyond the scope of publication in regular academic journals.

The Series is under the general direction of an editorial board appointed by the Council of the American Sociological Association and ; responsible to the Publications Committee of the Association. Competition for publication in the Series has been limited by the Association to Fellow, Active and Student members.

THE ARNOLD AND CAROLINE ROSE

. MONOGRAPH SERIES IN ECOLOGY Under the General Editorship of ALBERT J. REIss, JR., Yale University

and the Editorial Board BERNARD BARBER, Columbia University G. FRANKLIN EDWARDS, Howard University EDWARD L. McDILL, John Hopkins University NORMAN B. RYDER, Princeton University ARTHUR L. STINCHCOMBE, University of California (Berkeley) HARRISON C. WHITE, Harvard University

Library of Congress Number 78-183124 International Standard Book Number 0-912764-05-8 © American Sociological Association 1722 N St. N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036

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PREFACE

It is a somewhat unnerving sensation to undertake a study which one knows will be attacked, whatever the results. This is true not only of an investigation of race and self-image, but also of almost any research involving race, especially among children. As Pettigrew (1971:45) noted:

No set of findings can possibly please the chief ideologists. Thus, the ‘unqualified integrationists’ will question any study that does not find racial

desegregation of all types to have significant and lasting value to all the children involved. Members of the ‘educational establishment’ in good standing will not easily accept findings that suggest that ‘compensatory’ education programs in ghetto schools are not the answer to the typically low academic achievement of impoverished black children. Garden-variety ‘white segregationists,’ North and South, will reject any research data that indicate that white children are not harmed by interracial classrooms. And ‘black power advocates’ will brand as ‘racist’ any results that reveal below-

grade-level performance of children in all-black schools. Yet all four of these ideology-violating findings are commonly uncovered by competent investigations.

Similarly, one can confidently predict that any findings yielded by a study

of race and self-image will give offense to one or another ideology. The research worker, of course, has no choice but to follow his data wherever they may lead and to draw the most reasonable inferences that he can. This

we have attempted to do. Facts often deflate ideologies, substituting the prosaic for the passionate, the problematical for the unequivocal, the complex

and intricate for the simple and sure. We can take comfort only in the conviction that policies founded upon a misreading of reality, whether motivated or inadvertent, will prove abortive. Our objective, then, has been to reflect the reality as well as we are able.

This study is based on interviews with a sample of children in an urban public school system. Any large-scale survey study is a collective enterprise, calling for the cooperation and assistance of many people. To undertake this

study required, in the first place, the approval of the Board of Education officials, school principals, parents, and children. The collection and processing of the data involved the services of research supervisors, interviewers, coding supervisors, coders, key-punch operators, assistants, computer programmers, and computer program operators. And the analysis of the data enlisted the cooperation of secretarial and computer personnel, as well as of friends and colleagues who offered critical comments of the several drafts of the manuscript.

In this study we have had the good fortune to find cooperative attitudes and dedicated effort at every turn. If because of limited space we have failed V

to acknowledge the contribution of every individual who helped us, it does not mean that we are not grateful. It is a pleasure to be able to acknowledge our indebtedness to the following people:

To Erma Jean Surman, who shares the dedication to this book. Research assistant, secretary, coder, coding supervisor, computer programmer, jack-ofall-the-trades involved in social research, she combines brilliance, diligence, unerring accuracy, and good cheer in one remarkable person. There is no single individual so responsible for the fact that we have a report to present as Erma Jean Surman, and our chief debt of gratitude is owed to her. To Lindsley Williams, who so generously exercised his ingenuity in general

and his special proficiency with computers on our behalf. It would have been impossible to undertake the analysis without his help. To Frederica Mann Levin and Kathleen Dellert, research assistants who worked conscientiously and creatively on this study for several years—developing the interview schedules, participating in seven pre-tests, coding the data and supervising other coders, contacting parents and checking parents’ permissions, locating and correcting coding and punching errors, arranging table cards, preparing work tapes, and so on. These tasks, all indispensable, were performed in exemplary fashion. To Melvin L. Kohn and Leonard I. Pearlin, intimate friends and long-time colleagues in the Laboratory of Socio-environmental Studies of the National

Institute of Mental Health. They did not allow friendship to exempt us from their free and unsparing criticism; this is professional colleagueship at its best, and we deeply appreciate their help. We are also grateful to Chad Gordon, Albert McQueen, Robin M. Williams, Jr., Paul Reynolds, and Carolyn Rose, who brought their expert knowledge to bear on this report and made many valuable suggestions.

To Dr. Orlando F. Furno and Mr. Martin Raila of the Division of Research and Development, Baltimore City Public Schools, who cooperated most generously in helping us to undertake this research. To John C. Eberhart, Robert A. Cohen, and Hazel Rea, scientific administrators who have succeeded in dealing with the complex administrative tasks of research programs without ever deviating from the essential objectives of science. It is our inordinate good fortune to have been the beneficiaries of their steadfast support. To the school principals and other school officials who cooperated so generously when we explained the purposes of the study. Regrettably, we are unable to acknowledge them individually, since we have promised to reveal no information which would permit the specific identification of schools. We are also grateful to the many interviewers who worked so enthusiastically on this study, to the coders who classified the vast body of information, and to the computer personnel who prepared the material for data processing. At certain stages in the process of data collection we were also assisted by the Bureau of Social Science Research, Washington, D.C., and we are grateful

| for their valuable aid. : To the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute of Mental

_ Health for providing support for the research. In addition, Dr. Simmons has received the following support in the course of this research investigation: Vi

NIMH Special Fellowship, 1 FO3 MH4 1688-01; NIMH Small Grant, MH-17541-01; and NIMH Research Scientist Award, 5K1 MH 41,688-02— for all of which grateful acknowledgment is made.

Finally, to the parents who granted permission for their children to partici-

pate in our research and to the children themselves who cooperated so splendidly. They trusted us to respect the anonymity of their responses, and that trust has not been violated.

Morris Rosenberg Roberta G. Simmons July 1971

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Page 1 Black and White Self-Esteem ..........0.2000.2.0.ccooce ccc cc ccec cence cee cec eee 1

2 The Measurement of Self-Esteem .....2.0.0.2.0..0.c.ceceeeecceececeeeeeeeeeeeee- IL1 3 Racial Insulation -......2...0..ooococ cece cece ecceccccccececceeceeeceececeseseeeeeeee DL

4 Group Evaluation and Self-Evaluation —.....0.000.00200000c- 31

OES) 60 0 OX 0) (0) ccc 6 Social Class 22.0.0... coco cocci cece eect cet tee eceteteteeceeceee.. 58 7 The Broken Family -...0022..00000.000oooc ccc ceecceeeeeeeeceeeeeceeeeeeeeeteeeeeeneeee 74

8 Performance in School ............2..0.2.2.ccccccccceceecceeeecceeecececcecceceeee--. 88

9 Aspirations —... 22... eee eee cece eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeseeeeeeeee. 104 10 Social Psychological Implications -..........00.02002222222.ccceeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-- 125 APPENDIX A The Sample Design —....00...000000000002ooe elite eeeeeeeeeeeeee----- 146 References 2.2... ie cece cece eee cece ce cee ce eee cee eee ceceecececeeetecsescecccceusceesecescseceaeeee.e L51

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CHAPTER 1

BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM

In the past two decades, at least, one assumption generally accepted virtually as an article of faith both in the popular and scientific literature is that blacks are more likely to have lower self-esteem than are whites. The reasons

for this assumption certainly appear powerful. It has been assumed that self-esteem will suffer seriously in a minority group which consistently ranks lowest in the society’s prestige structure; whose members, for the most part,

are located at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder; who consequently experience low occupational prestige, severe poverty, and powerlessness;

many of whose physical characteristics are deemed unattractive by the larger society; who are subjected directly to widespread prejudice and massive discrimination; whose children are more likely to perform poorly in the impor-

tant arena of school; and who are more likely to originate from types of family backgrounds disparaged on the larger social scene. The general theoretical underpinning for the assumption of low self-esteem

among blacks has been skillfully expressed by Chad Gordon (1969a:38): Self-hatred among members of minority groups has been a consistent theme in social-psychological writings . . . Marginality, self-alienation, self-consciousness and self-disparagement have been suggested as essential

features of being Jewish in a largely gentile world . . . More recently the BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 1

focus of attention has shifted to the situation of the black people. Whatever the substantive focus, the asserted relation is the same: a member of a disparaged and discriminated against social category is likely to internalize the meanings appended to the culture’s stereotypes and to the social realities of the way he is treated, and thus come to conceive of himself in cognitive and evaluative terms very similar to the discrediting rejection accorded his group by the society’s majority.

There are sound reasons for expecting that the low societal ranking of blacks in terms of their racial status, occupational position, physical type, family background, and school performance will markedly reduce their ability

to perceive themselves as worthy persons. The theory underlying these hypotheses is clearly that of Mead (1934) and Cooley (1912), who posit that the individual’s self-attitudes are to an important extent the product of reflected appraisals. If the black is treated as an inferior on grounds of his race or his lack of success in the occupational or academic realms, then his sense of personal value should assuredly be low.

On this issue both black and white social scientists appear to be in agreement. The black psychologist, Kenneth Clark (1965:21, 64), speaks of “pernicious self and group hatred, the Negro’s complex and debilitating prejudice against himself.” In time, he asserts, “Negroes have come to believe in their own inferiority.” The black sociologist, E. Franklin Frazier (1957:24), presents reasons why “the black bourgeoisie has developed a deep-seated inferior-

ity complex.” And the black psychiatrists, Grier and Cobbs (1968:9), observe: “The essence of the situation is that black women have a nearly bottomless well of self-depreciation into which they can drop when depressed.”

White students of the black self-image from the 1940s through the 1960s have also reached the conclusion that the blacks’ self-esteem is lower than whites. Kardiner and Ovesey (1951) use such terms as “self-hatred,” “selfcontempt,” “low self-esteem” in characterizing black personality. Proshansky

and Newton (1968:178-79, 191) discuss the “heavy psychological costs of low self-esteem, feelings of helplessness, and basic identity conflict” borne

by the black. The black’s identity conflict “tends to nourish feelings of self-doubt and a sense of inadequacy, if not actual self-hatred.” He will “characterize himself in unfavorable terms, that is, . . . reveal a negative self-image.” Pettigrew (1964a:9) says of the blacks’ problems of identity that they ... are inextricably linked with problems of self-esteem. For years, Negro

Americans have had little else by which to judge themselves than the second-class status assigned them in America. And along with this inferior

treatment, their ears have been filled with the din of white racists egotistically insisting that Caucasians are innately superior to Negroes. Consequently, many Negroes, consciously or unconsciously, accept in part these assertions of their inferiority. In addition, they accept the American empha-

ses on ‘status’ and ‘success.’ But when they employ these standards for judging their own worth, their lowly positions and their relative lack of success lead to further self-disparagement.

Other writers, both popular and scholarly, often simply assume low selfesteem among blacks as a self-evident, fundamental, and irreducible datum, and proceed from there. (Deutsch, 1960; Tenenbaum, 1962; Erikson, 1966;

2 BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM

Ausubel and Ausubel, 1958; Pettigrew, 1964a; Vontress, 1966; Kvaraceus, et al, 1965; Poussaint, 1966.) Only recently are there some voices (McCarthy and Yancey, 1971; Baughman, 1971) dissenting from this nearly unanimous conclusion.

Much of the evidence behind the assumption of low black self-esteem has come from studies showing that black children prefer light-skinned dolls,

pictures, or puppets to those with brown skin (Clark and Clark, 1947; Goodman, 1952; Landreth and Johnson, 1953; Morland, 1958; Stevenson and Stewart, 1958) or that they show problems of self-esteem in psychotherapeutic sessions (Kardiner and Ovesey, 1951; Brody, 1963). While many of these studies are of a high order of excellence, they characteristically suffer from certain limitations with regard to method: (1) self-esteem has almost invariably been inferred by the investigator from indirect evidence rather than direct examination; (2) the samples have rarely been representative so that it is difficult to know to what populations they properly apply. As a result of these considerations, we undertook a study of self-esteem among black and white children in Baltimore during the spring of 1968. In contrast to some of the earlier investigations, ours attempted to obtain a reasonably large and representative sample of a public school population and to measure self-esteem in a direct fashion. Our interest was not only in comparing the self-esteem of black and white children but also in learning how certain aspects of their respective social environments would bear upon their self-attitudes, and how children of each race would respond to these environmental influences. Since one of our central concerns was to study these matters in a reasonably large and representative sample, we will describe at the

outset the locale of the study, the selection of the sample, and the data collection procedure. Sample and Procedure

The population of this study was the public school pupils in Baltimore City ! above the second grade. A random sample of 2625 pupils distributed among 26 schools was drawn from the population of third- to twelfth-grade pupils in the spring of 1968. The sampling procedure is modelled after the U. S. Census Bureau’s usual cluster sampling method.” In the present study, each school in Baltimore City

was initially stratified according to two variables: (1) the proportion of nonwhite students and (2) the socioeconomic status of the Census tract. First, we randomly selected twenty-six schools that fell into the appropriate intervals, taking into account size of the school. From each school, 105 children were selected by random procedures from the central records. 1 The term “Baltimore City” is used here to distinguish it from adjoining Baltimore County, a suburban area which borders the city on the north and west; thus, when we refer to Baltimore, we mean Baltimore City, not Baltimore County. Our request for permission to conduct this study was granted in Baltimore City but refused in Baltimore County. Our population, therefore, lacks the white suburban representation which would more adequately reflect the general population.

“We are indebted to Mr. Joseph Waxberg of the U. S. Bureau of the Census for his advice in developing the sampling procedure. A more precise description of the sampling procedure and the sample appears in Appendix A.

BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 3

Some children had withdrawn from school after compilation of the central records and could no longer be reached. However, we were able to interview 1917 children,® that is, 79.2 percent of the sample children still registered

in the school or 73.0 percent of all the children originally drawn from the central records. Reflecting the Baltimore urban school population, the present

sample is heavily black (64 percent) and somewhat skewed toward the working class. Also, since the population is restricted to children attending public school, .Catholic parochial school children are not represented nor are children who withdrew from school after the age of sixteen. Therefore, any comparison across ages must take into account the fact that a certain

type of child present in the younger sample has dropped out of the older group. Finally, black children from the Deep South are not represented. Balti-

more itself, of course, is not a Deep Southern city, and what is more, it appears to include very few children who themselves are recent migrants from the Deep South (only 2 percent of our sample).

Each subject was interviewed for three hours directly after school in his school. The interviews were divided into three sessions for the younger children and two sessions for the oldest. For the elementary school children, objective background information was collected from the parents, since pretesting indicated that young children were unaware of many of the facts considered basic by the sociologist. Parents were reached either by a 5 or 10-minute telephone interview or, where there was no telephone, by interviewers who went to the home. Almost all parents were extremely cooperative, and in only 60 cases were we unable to locate the parent or conduct the interview. Race and Self-Esteem

In the present study we have used a direct measure of self-esteem. Essentially, the scale asks the subject how highly he regards himself, not as a black or a white, but in general. Does he feel he is a person of worth? The exact scale and its meaning will be discussed in detail shortly. Let us, however, immediately raise.the obvious first question: Does a study based on a reasonably large and representative sample which measures self-esteem directly agree with earlier conclusions about the self-esteem of black children? Table 1-1 shows it does not. In sharp contrast to most assumptions about the selfesteem of black children, the blacks in our Baltimore sample do not have lower self-esteem than whites; in fact, their self-esteem appears higher. But is this result attributable to some systematic distortions in the sample? For example, the school dropout rate is higher among blacks than among whites, and it is possible that the self-esteem of children who have dropped

out is particularly low. While we have no data on this matter, it may be noted that the younger black children, among whom there are almost no dropouts, show higher self-esteem than comparable whites, just as do the older black children (Table 1-2). 3 One school, a combined elementary and junior high school, was entered twice in the total population of schools and, by chance, was selected in both categories. It was not practicable to double the sample size of this school; hence, the responses of these 35 elementary school children and those of the 36 junior high school children were doubled in weight in order to achieve a better representation of the total population. In our analysis, we have thus treated our sample as 1988 children.

4 BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM

TABLE 1-1

ee Blacks Whites Self-Esteem % % Low 19 37 Self-Esteem by Race

Medium 35 30 High 46 33 N = 100% * (1213) (682 )

* Excludes 93 respondents who failed to answer scale items.

TABLE 1-2 Self-Esteem by Race and Age Age

8-11 years 12-14 years 15-19 years

ee Blacks Whites Blacks Whites Blacks Whites

Self-Esteem % % % % % % Low 20 35 39312337373115 35 Medium 31 27 High 45 30 40 32 54 37

N = 100% (508) (211) (320) (257) (292) (187)*

* In tables throughout this monograph, the percentages frequently do not add up to exactly 100%, due to rounding.

The other important group excluded from this sample are the suburban white children, a group whose life circumstances are in many ways conducive to high self-esteem formation. Our data reveal, however, that the advantage of the black children in respect to self-esteem remains unchanged when socioeconomic status is controlled; indeed, it remains unchanged when SES and age are controlled simultaneously.

These data thus clearly challenge the widespread assumption that black children are conspicuously low in self-esteem. Obviously, a number of questions immediately arise in the face of such a theoretically unexpected result. First, is the finding unique to our study? Might it be due to some unknown property of this particular population? Second, what do we mean by selfesteem? Is our meaning so singular and exceptional that it has little bearing upon the general issue of black and white self-esteem? Third, how did we actually measure self-esteem? Are there problems with the measuring instrument or the interview situation that may call these results into question (see Chapter 2)? Unless we can deal with these matters, it is difficult to know how seriously to take this unexpected finding.

Comparison With Recent Research It is useful to look at this finding in the light of other recent studies which

use substantial samples and fairly direct measures of self-esteem. Twelve such studies were located, many of which are still unpublished or are published as research reports. All of these data were collected between 1960 and 1968. Chart 1 summarizes the findings of these studies. Some show blacks

BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 5

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28 RACIAL INSULATION

us to understand the association between contextual dissonance and selfesteem? While it is the case that black children in white schools are more likely to have experienced direct prejudice, and while it is also true that children who have experienced prejudice are more likely to have low selfesteem, it is not the case that such experiences are solely responsible for the relationship between contextual dissonance and low self-esteem. When we

standardize on racial teasing, we find the following: in the junior high school, | 13 percent of the relationship between racial context and self-esteem is accounted for by racial teasing; at the senior high level, the figure is 19 percent.®

The relationship between contextual dissonance and self-esteem thus appears to be due only in part to the fact that these children personally experience more direct racial prejudice. To be sure, this cannot be a firm conclusion because the measure of exposure to direct prejudice is weak; a more satisfactory index might well have yielded stronger results. There is reason to believe, however, that the consequences of contextual dissonance extend far beyond direct prejudice. They are varied and intricate. It is not necessary for the black in a predominantly white school to encounter racial slurs and face-to-face taunting in order to experience the full impact of his minority group position. Simple cultural dissimilarity, to the extent that it exists, might also play a role. It is a sociological truism that group members in interaction tend to develop certain shared norms, attitudes, values, goals, etc. Given the racial insulation we have observed, this may well occur among blacks and whites. When the black child enters a predominantly white group, then, he may find himself in a cultural environment which differs at least in some respects from his own. Practices which he considered “right” may now be criticized. Qualities which were admired in his own group, and on which he may have prided himself, may be less respected in the different cultural group. At the very least, cultural dissimilarity will heighten his sense of difference, and this in turn may lead him to question himself, doubt himself, wonder whether he is unworthy.

Beyond direct prejudice and cultural dissimilarity (or frequently intertwined with them), contextual dissonance may also have a range of other consequences which bear upon self-esteem. It may influence the child’s perception of his racial status; it may bear upon his response to a broken family; it may affect his reaction to his performance at school. In later chapters we shall see how each of these factors influences the child’s self-esteem and how

each, in turn, is influenced by the consonance or dissonance of his racial environment. For the effects of contextual dissonance are many and varied, some with fortunate outcomes, others with unfavorable consequences. Only as we are able to specify and understand these varied effects will we succeed in understanding the complexity and the concrete reality of this environmental condition. 5 This computation is based on the statistic “I,” developed by David Gold at the University of California at Santa Barbara. This statistic calculates the reduction in the percentage differences between the categories of the independent variable when the test factor is statistically controlled through standardization. A discussion of standardization as a means of statistical control appears in Rosenberg (1962b).

BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 29

Discussion

We may now consider these data in light of our earlier question: Why don’t black children as a group appear to have lower self-esteem than whites? It is not that the black child’s immersion in a predominantly white environ-

ment may not damage his self-esteem. Our data suggest that it does have such an effect among secondary school children, a conclusion buttressed by

certain other recent large-scale studies. The point, rather, is that so few black children in our sample live in predominantly white environments; only 3 percent live in predominantly white neighborhoods, and 12 percent attend predominantly white schools. Broader social forces have operated to place the great bulk of black children in a racially insulated environment, and this

environment establishes certain barriers to assaults upon their feelings of personal worth, such as direct expressions of prejudice. This is one reason why the self-esteem level of black children as a group is not as low as one

might otherwise expect. |

When we speak of the racial environment of the child, then, we are direct-

ing attention to an important aspect of his world, one which molds his experiences and conditions his responses to a variety of forces which impinge

upon his life. In most Northern cities, the evidence indicates, most black children live their daily lives in essentially black worlds and actually have little exposure to white children. Many of their otherwise puzzling responses will become understandable in light of this fact.

Insofar as the phenomena of integration and segregation can be viewed as expressions of the broader principle of the “dissonant social context,” they have patent social psychological relevance. We can say nothing yet about their implications for policy. As we shall see in the course of this report, the consequences of integration are diverse—some beneficial, others disadvan-

tageous. This entire matter will be discussed in detail in Chapter 10. Our object here is simply to indicate how certain social forces structure the child’s environment, and how this environment bears upon one aspect of his personality. It may be asked, incidentally, why we have been concerned with the effect of contextual dissonance on the black child but not on the white child. The answer, very simply, is that white children in dissonant racial contexts are a rarity. If there is anything more unusual than a black child in a white school or neighborhood, it is a white child in a black school or neighborhood. When a black child is attacked by others because of his race, the message that comes across clearly is not only that he is personally disdained but also

that his race is considered unworthy. Yet, even if the black child is not attacked directly by peers, the low prestige of his race in the society is a matter both of common observation as well as documented evidence. How, then, does the black child respond to the fact that his race is held in such low repute in the society, and how does this bear upon his feeling of selfregard? These are the questions to which we now turn.

30 RACIAL INSULATION

CHAPTER 4

GROUP EVALUATION AND SELF-EVALUATION

Racial insulation may protect many black children from direct expressions of prejudice, yet they still must face the fact that there is considerable derogation of their race in the society. The question we propose to consider now is how the general cultural evaluation of the black group may bear upon the self-esteem of black children.

In American society, the existence of prejudice, not only against blacks, but against many other minorities, including Jews, Mexicans, Japanese, Chinese, and Catholics is a familiar fact of history. Groups have been hierarchically ranked in order from the best to the worst with remarkable consistency over the decades (Bogardus, 1928, 1959; Hartley, 1946). Associated with this pattern of prejudice is a plethora of racial, ethnic and religious stereotypes, some favorable, but most of them demeaning (Katz and Braly, 1947; Hartley and Hartley, 1952:690-701; Ehrlich and Rinehart, 1965). The implications of this fact have, to most people, appeared self-evident.

If a group is disdained in a society, if it is stereotyped in demeaning or disparaging terms, then the members of that group are likely to see themselves accordingly. Unable to evade their group membership, accepting the stereotyped notions of it, the minority group member is expected to develop a corresponding low opinion of his group and himself. This line of reasoning is a familiar one in sociology, psychology, and BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 3 |

psychiatry. Dorwin Cartwright (1950:440), following the intellectual guidance of Kurt Lewin, notes: “To a considerable extent, personal feelings of worth depend on the social evaluation of the groups with which the person is identified. Self-hatred and feelings of worthlessness tend to arise from membership in underprivileged or outcast groups.” And Erik Erikson (1966:155) states: “There is ample evidence of ‘inferiority’ feelings and of morbid self-

hate in all minority groups;...” Awareness

Implicit in this line of reasoning is an assumption that is rarely questioned:

that the individual is fully aware of his own group’s rank in prestige. For the individual, however, this prestige rank is a matter of perception rather than a hard inescapable fact. The question is, then: Is the black child fully cognizant of his group’s actual standing?

In order to examine this issue, we asked our subjects the following questions: “I am going to give you the names of four different kinds of Americans, and I want you to tell me which kind MOST PEOPLE in America think 1s best: Jewish; white Catholic; Negro; white Protestant.” After responses were obtained: “That leaves three groups: ............222., -.---2eeeeeeeeey ANG -..2. Lees

(Interviewer reads remaining groups.) Which of these groups do most people in America think is best?” Then: “That leaves these two groups: ................

and ................. (Interviewer reads remaining groups.) Which of these two do most people in America think is best?” The remaining group was assumed

to be lowest in rank.

Here we were asking the children their interpretation of the cultural value

system (what most people in America think is best), not about their own preferences. Nevertheless, the black children show a startling tendency to elevate the status of their group. Table 4-1 shows that fully 43 percent of the blacks, but just one-half of one percent of the whites, rank blacks highest

in status. Indeed, fewer than 1 out of 20 whites, compared with 12 out of 20 blacks, place blacks in one of the two top ranks. Conversely, 72 percent of the former, but 22 percent of the latter, rank blacks as the lowest in prestige. Whites overwhelmingly put blacks at the bottom, but blacks’ perceptions appear radically different. TABLE 4-1

Children’s Opinions of “Most People’s” Ranking of Blacks, by Race

Blacks Whites

First , 43 1 Second 18 4 Third 17 23 Last 22 72 N = 100% (996) (557)

Of four racial-religious groups, “most people” rank blacks: % %

32 GROUP EVALUATION AND SELF-EVALUATION

This tendency to perceive one’s own group as possessing higher status than is in fact the case might be called “the inflation mechanism.” One reason the inflation mechanism operates effectively, we suggest, is the degree of

ambiguity in the ethnic ranking system. Groups are not actually better or worse; they are simply perceived that way. And what is dimly perceived in an unstructured situation may be misperceived to evoke a congenial view.' That the characteristic of unstructuredness plays a role in the inflation mechanism is strongly suggested by the-difference in the perceptions of older and younger children. It is reasonable to assume that society’s ethnic ranking system is relatively vague in the mind of the elementary school child. His ideas are still in process of formation and his exposure to society at large is limited; under these circumstances, the inflation mechanism is relatively free to operate. With increased awareness and social exposure, the older children cannot so easily evade a conclusion that is necessarily distasteful. In examining the relationship between race and racial ranking by age groups

(Table 4-2), we found, first, that the older children of either race are more likely than the younger to recognize and admit the low status of the black. The young black child seems relatively oblivious to the true state of prejudice in the nation, but this is no longer true at the high school level.. Among the voungest children, whites are 58 percent more likely than blacks to rank blacks at the bottom; in the middle age group. the difference is 48 percent; and among the oldest students, the difference is 37 percent.

Secondly, it is important to note that the inflation mechanism operates powerfully at all ages; at a comparable age the black child is far less likely than the white child to say that blacks are held in the lowest regard. In sum,

obliviousness to the actual state of the case is, to an important extent, a function of age; and, age aside, the inflation mechanism remains a powerful force.

All this amounts to a gross, but congenial, misperception of external reality. The fact is that “most people in America” do rank blacks much lower than all these other racial-religious groups. It should be recalled that

we have asked the children for their perception of the opinions of most Americans, not for their own ranking of the groups. The inflation mechanism, as a psychological phenomenon, appears to be an important factor in accounting for their erroneous reading of reality.

If the tendency to exalt the status of one’s ego-extensions were a general phenomenon, rather than one confined to the black children in our sample, then it should obtain among the white children as well. Consider religious groups, which also have differential prestige rank in the society. Do the white 1 That the inflation mechanism may be a general psychological process, rather than one employed solely with regard to racial ratings, is suggested by a well-known study of occupational rankings. In the North-Hatt study of occupational rank, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (1953:415, 419), the authors noted: “When a person rated his own job or one closely related to it, his evaluation was almost always

) considerably higher than the average evaluation of the position.” Similarly, in our

sample, the children tended to rate their own fathers’ occupations higher than others would rate them (see Chapter 6).

“In a well-documented article, Milner (1953) maintains that the full awareness of his social devaluation does not usually occur to the black child until early adolescence.

BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 33

TABLE 4-2

Children’s Opinions of “Most People’s” Ranking of Blacks, by Race and Age

8-11 years 12-14 years 15+ years Blacks Whites Blacks Whites Blacks Whites Of four racialreligious groups, “most people” rank blacks:

To Jo To Jo To To

First 63171 63226] 41514—1 Second

Third 9 24 20 24 26 17 Last 11 69 23 71 44 81 N = 100% (425) (172) (243) (212) (250) (149) Difference in percent ranking blacks “‘Last”’ 58 48 37 TABLE 4-3

White Children’s Opinions of “Most People’s” Ranking of Religious Groups, by Religious Affiliation Respondent’s Religious Affiliation:

“Most People’ rank...

Protestants: % % First 55 32

Protestants Non-Protestants

Second 38 56 Third 6 10

Last 1 2

N = 100% (314) (247)

First 80 45 Second 19 Third 1 485

Catholics:

Catholics Non-Catholics

Last — 2 N = 100% (132) (431) First 5 2 Second 21 8 Third 72 65 Last 2 25 N = 100% (43) (492)

Jews:

Jews Non-Jews

34 GROUP EVALUATION AND SELF-EVALUATION

ge TABLE 4-4

White Children’s View of “Most People’s” Ranking of Religious Groups, by Age

8-11 years 12-14 years 15+ years

NonNonProt. Prot. Prot.NonProt. Prot. Prot.

7o 7o To 7o To To First 6034156954 22 47 52 Second 38 66 45 38 Third 1 9 6 9 6 10

“Most people’ rank... Protestants:

Last | 7 2 2 2 — - Non- Non- Non-

N = 100% (125) (54) (125) (98 ) (64) (94) Cath. Cath. Cath. Cath. Cath. Cath.

“Most people’ rank...

First 88 94546937 46 57 44 Second 45 43 56 Third 3 7 — 7 — 1

Catholics:

Last — 3 — 2 — —

N = 100% (34) (148) (55) (166) (42) (117)

NonNonNonJew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew “Most people’ rank...

First 2 91829 19 3 32 Second— — 10

Jews:

Third — 63 73 62 74 73 Last — 26 — 27 3 — 22 N=100% (1) (171) (11) (202) (31) (118) children who are Protestant, Jewish, or Catholic also inflate the status of their own groups? Table 4-3 indicates that they do. The Protestants are more likely than the non-Protestants to believe their group ranks high; the Catholics are more likely than non-Catholics to think their group ranks high; and the Jews are more likely than Gentiles to think their group ranks high. Thus, the inflation mechanism operates strongly among whites as well as among blacks.

Age also seems to play a similar role among whites (Table 4-4). There can be no age comparisons in the case of Jewish children since only 12 in our sample are below high school, but both white Protestants and white Catholics are more likely to rank their group lower as they grow older. BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 35

Among white Catholics, the difference between their rating of themselves and others’ rating of them declines a great deal by the time they reach senior high school. Nevertheless, they still show a marked tendency to inflate their own group’s status, just as do the high school black and Jewish respondents.* The inflation mechanism thus appears to be a general phenomenon, common to both races. And, indeed, the same development prevails: the younger the child, the less aware is he of the reality of ethnic ranking, and the more does he infer inflated status for his group.

In sum, most theorists appear to have taken for granted that the group members will internalize society’s values and standards. The question is, however: Do members of minorities whose status is low clearly recognize how low that status really is? Whether a group is better or worse is, after all, a matter of judgment, not of objective fact; hence, on this point the general value system is likely to be somewhat ambiguous. Where such ambiguity exists, the individual will have an opportunity to misperceive the reality in such a way as to protect his group ego-extension. He cannot, to be sure,

shut out the facts completely, but the way is open for him to soften and modify the reality so that his group’s status will appear higher to him than it does to others. This is not meant to suggest that the minority group children do not inter-

nalize society’s general system of prejudice. On the contrary, they accept

the broad ranking system but they pull their own group out of its place in the order. Even though Jews and Catholics rank their own groups higher than others do, they overwhelmingly agree with the Protestants in locating blacks at or near the bottom. And the study by Laurence (1970) showed

that while black children “liked” blacks better than whites did, they felt about the same way as whites about Mexicans, Russians and Chinese. Apparently, these minorities share a common system of prejudice, each one deviat-

ing only to the extent of exempting its own group from low status. Racial Insulation and Status Perception

The concept of the inflation mechanism offers an explanation at the level of psychological motivation: children misperceive the reality of the ethnic ranking system because they are motivated by considerations of group pride and self-esteem. But, in addition, the social environment may play a role in determining the degree of misperception. The individual cannot employ the inflation mechanism if he is forced to realize just where his group actually stands. Under certain social conditions, the inflation mechanism operates easily; under other conditions, it may scarcely operate at all. One important social condition is the child’s racial environment.

It is reasonable to assume that a black child living in a black neighborhood, attending a black school, interacting with black friends will have less 3 The inflation mechanism, while strong in all groups, does seem to operate more powerfully among black children. This is, however, largely an artifact of the age distribution of the sample. Black children are disproportionately young in our sample, relative to whites. Examining the relationship between religion and inferred status within each age group, we find results very similar to those appearing among black children (Table 4-4).

36 GROUP EVALUATION AND SELF-EVALUATION }

exposure to the propaganda of prejudice which is so pervasive in the outside world. One would hardly expect him in such an environment to encounter solid consensus on the inferiority of his race, firm agreement regarding unfavorable stereotypes, or even sharp awareness of the low status of his group. It is only blacks who are more directly exposed to the white world in their personal relationships who would be expected to have these ideas brought with distressing clarity to their attention. Table 4-5 examines the relationship between the black child’s racial environment in school and his belief that ‘““most people in America” rank blacks

first, second, third or last. Elementary school children are again omitted because so few black elementary school children are in predominantly white schools. In both the junior and the senior high school, however, the results

are clear: the black children in the predominantly white schools are substantially more likely than those in the black schools to say that “most people in America” rank their group lowest.4 TABLE 4-5 Black Secondary School Students’ View of “Most People’s”

Ranking of Blacks, by Racial Composition of School Junior High School Senior High School School is predominantly:

Black White Black White

Zo Zo 7o 7o

First 26 16 17 2 Second 26 29 9 10 Third 28 19 28 26

“Most People’ rank Blacks:

Last 20 36 46 62 N = 100% (151) (31) (130) (50) The reasons are fairly evident. The black child in a white school is appar-

ently likely to have impressed on him from the outset just where his race stands in society and to learn about unfavorable racial stereotypes in a fairly direct fashion. Subtlety is not one of the strong points of childhood, and it must be difficult for a black child in such an environment to avoid the direct and clear-cut message. Whatever he may like to think, the black child sur-

rounded by whites almost inevitably must come to realize that his race is looked down upon by the society as a whole. In the consonant racial context,

on the other hand, it is much easier for the black child to deny, ignore, or misperceive his group’s standing in the outside world. In the predominantly black school, furthermore, the new ideologies of black pride and black power may flourish unchallenged (Keil, 1966). As we have seen, however (Chapter 3), the vast majority of black children

are in consonant contexts, i.e., in racially segregated settings. Hence, they 4 These findings are not altered if race of the interviewer is controlled.

BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 37

appear to be less fully aware of their low racial status than the outsider might assume. And this is most conspicuously the case among black elementary school children who are least likely to be exposed to contact with whites. In this way, too, the racial environment operates to buffer and protect the black child against the affronts of race prejudice.

Racial Status and Self-Esteem

The psychological mechanism of group inflation and the social condition

of segregation thus operate to reduce the black child’s awareness of the low status of his group. But many black children, of course, do know the facts. What effect does this awareness have on the child’s feeling of personal worth, his individual self-esteem?

Table 4-6 compares the self-esteem of black children who believe that “most Americans” rank their group “best” with those who think it is ranked second, third, or last. The results are striking: there is virtually no connection between status rank and self-esteem. How the black child sees society’s evaluation of his group and his personal feelings about himself appear totally independent. And this is true at each age level. TABLE 4-6 Self-Esteem by Black Children’s View of “Most People’s”

Ranking of Blacks View that “most Americans” rank Blacks:

First Second Third Last

To 7o To To

Low 21 15 20 22 Medium 33 37 31 33 High 46 47 49 45 N = 100% (412) (177) (157) (209)

Self-Esteem

This finding sheds additional light on the question of why black children

as a group do not appear to be lower in self-esteem than whites. Even if they are aware that white society holds their group in low regard, they do not thereby reach the conclusion that they personally have little worth. The psychological processes are not so simple.

The idea that low racial status tends to generate low self-esteem essen-

tially stems from the theories of Mead (1934) and Cooley (1912), who pointed out that the self is the product of reflected appraisals. In taking the role of the other, the individual comes to see himself as others see him and to evaluate himself accordingly. Thus, if the ‘“‘other” indicates that his group

is inferior, then he, as a member of the group, will also tend to see himself as “inferior.” Once this implicit assumption is made explicit, however, it is immediately evident that it is not entirely justified. Even if the black child is fully aware

38 GROUP EVALUATION AND SELF-EVALUATION

of the low repute in which his group is held, this awareness does not compel

him to concur. What the child may correctly conclude is that he lives in a bigoted, irrational society. But it is the white who is bigoted and irrational,

not the black race in general, nor himself in particular, who is at fault (Simpson and Yinger, 1965). To know what whites think about his race thus does not necessarily induce in the black child a sense of personal worthlessness or self-contempt. Discussion

On the surface, the assumption that the low social status of a group will generate low self-esteem in its members appears reasonable.® But the matter

is not so simple, for it fails to take account of the specific environment of the child and of the range of his possible responses to the outside world’s definition. People do not passively and inertly accept and internalize threaten-

ing communications about themselves. They react. Insofar as the social environment offers them the option, they selectively perceive, selectively remember, selectively interpret these communications to fend off the threat to their self-esteem (Rosenberg, 1967). Certain facts become salient; others are concealed from attention. Children do not simply accept every impression, unedited, that enters their purview.

, We have seen several reasons why the general negative evaluation of their race does not necessarily generate low self-esteem among the black children in our sample. First, many children—particularly the younger children—seem

to lack full and explicit awareness of the true position of their group. In view of the fact that ethnic stratification is in any case a matter of perception, and since many children are rather vague about it, the inflation mechanism may come into play. And this mechanism, we have seen, is widely employed by both black and white children.

Furthermore, even if the black child is aware of the low status of his group in society as a whole, this does not force him to believe that he personally is unworthy; his self-esteem appears to be unaffected by awareness of his group status. This, too, is understandable. He may know that whites consider his race inferior but this does not oblige him to agree. He may well attribute such a judgment to white irrationality rather than to black inadequacy.

But assume that both these defenses have been breached: the black child has become fully aware of how unfavorably his group is viewed in society at large and he agrees with the prejudiced white view that blacks in general are less worthy and that the disparaging traits attributed to them are true. Will this lower his own self-esteem? Not necessarily, for the individual black need not believe that these stereotypical traits characterize him personally. Indeed, he may even take special pride in being superior to the mass of other 5 Some doubt about the soundness of this assumption has already been cast by earlier research on the self-image. In an investigation of high school juniors and seniors conducted in New York State (Rosenberg, 1965), no evidence was found that the distribution of self-esteem in a racial or ethnic group is related to its social prestige in American society. When fourteen racial or ethnic groups were placed in rank order according to the hierarchy established by Bogardus (1959), no association was found between the prestige of a group in the society as a whole and the self-esteem of its members.

BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 39

group members who, in his view, actually do conform to the stereotype. While our data are limited in this regard, other studies have given evidence of just such a process (Noel, 1964; Rothman, 1960). These psychological responses, however, go on within a specific environment, an environment which may be either hospitable or hostile to their use. For the great bulk of these black children, it is a racially segregated environment—a consonant racial context. In terms of interpersonal interaction, this

may be viewed as an environment of experience and an environment of communication.

Consider racial stereotypes which characterize all members of a group in derogatory terms and see them as all alike. The experience of each individual

in his environment makes it virtually impossible for him to agree with this appraisal, for he personally has seen the actual heterogeneity of his people. Only someone at great physical or social distance from a group can hold to the sweeping views of homogeneity implied by racial stereotypes. At least equally important is the child’s communication environment. No one is ever exposed to the totality of a culture; he is exposed to it only as it is selectively filtered through his particular experience; and probably the major aspect of childhood experience is interpersonal communication. In the case of most black children, this occurs within a consonant racial context. Talking

and listening chiefly to blacks, what may be called to the attention of the black child are the distinctive sources of black merit. Thus, he is likely to hear much of his racial heroes—blacks who have achieved distinction, manifested conspicuous talent, elicited admiration—and one would expect him to take pride in them. In fact, each minority may tend to exalt its allegedly superior typical characteristics, and may exaggerate the extent to which others share that view. This selective communicative experience may thus have the effect of convincing individuals that their group stands higher than it actually does. The insulated racial environment of the black child may thus serve to buffer and protect him from the full force of hostile stereotypes and racial denigration which might await him in the wider world.

None of this is meant to suggest that inferior social status, prejudice, and discrimination are not abominable to the black. Our sole point is that they do not necessarily generate low self-esteem in him. Given the structure of his immediate environment and his psychological coping mechanisms, the individual may quite readily evade the distasteful conclusion that he personally

is unworthy. |

40 GROUP EVALUATION AND SELF-EVALUATION

CHAPTER 5

SKIN COLOR

The preceding chapters have examined the influence of certain aspects of white prejudice upon the black child’s self-image. Clearly, an additional and

central dimension of anti-Negro prejudice is the derogation of the black physical type by the larger culture. In discussions of blacks’ evaluation of themselves, few themes recur as regularly as the rejection of the Negroid physical model, not only by the whites but by the blacks as well (Davis and Dollard, 1940; Drake and Cayton, 1945; Hill, 1944; Reid, 1940; Sutherland, 1942). It has been averred, at least until recently, that the black has accepted the standard of beauty held by the white society; that, as a consequence, the black dislikes his own looks and, more generally, the looks of his race. In the words of Grier and Cobbs (1968:44): “The Negro woman’s black face, African features, and kinky hair are physical attributes which place her far

from the American ideal of beauty, and make her, with reference to the American ideal, ugly . . . In choosing a mate, the black woman is again faced with the undesirability of her blackness and with the fact that it is the rare black man who can resist the omnipresent presentation of the white ideal.”

Of the many aspects of racial physiognomy, the central focus in the literature has been on skin color. The lighter the skin color—that is, the closer to the white physical type—supposedly the more attractive the black. This patterr. BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 4]

was taken as indicative of racial “self-hatred” by Kurt Lewin (1948:189): “One of the better known and most extreme cases of self-hatred can be found among American Negroes. Negroes distinguish within the group four or five strata according to skin shade—the lighter the skin the higher the strata. This discrimination among themselves goes so far that a girl with a light skin may refuse to marry a man with darker skin.”

The same theme was echoed two decades later by Grier and Cobbs (1968:66): “Mothers have wanted fair girls for their sons and fair husbands for their daughters. Until very recent times, beauty among Negro girls has been synonymous with fair skin and a minimum of Negroid features. A goodlooking Negro man has traditionally been a fair-skinned or light-brown man.” Systematic studies in the past overwhelmingly have supported these more impressionistic reports. Among respondents in school (Marks, 1943; Seeman, 1946), lighter blacks were judged by black respondents as more attractive,

more popular, or more desirable in one way or another. Among younger research subjects, it has been customary to ask whether they prefer light- or dark-skinned dolls, pictures, or puppets (Stevenson and Stewart, 1958; Land-

reth and Johnson, 1953; Asher and Allen, 1969; Brody, 1964; Goodman, 1952; Clark and Clark, 1947; Greenwald and Oppenheim, 1968; Radke and

Trager, 1950; etc.). With rare exceptions, these studies have shown that black children prefer the doll with lighter skin: they consider it a “nice doll,”

they “like to play with it”; they think the brown doll “looks bad”; or they assign it inferior social status and roles. In the best known of these inquiries (Clark and Clark, 1947) two-thirds of the black children preferred the white - to the brown doll.! Precisely what these numerous doll studies show is still a matter of dispute,

since they have been interpreted as reflecting several distinct though related ideas: (1) a distaste for black physical features; (2) an unfavorable opinion

of the black race; or (3) a disidentification with one’s racial membership group. In any case, the clear tendency of black children has been to prefer the lighter doll, picture, or puppet. Skin Color Preference Among Blacks

Most of the research on skin color preference was conducted in the late 1940s and 1950s, but some work continued in the 1960s. In 1963, Isaacs presented some evidence that black standards of beauty might be changing. By 1968, when the present study was conducted, the Black Pride Movement had achieved considerable momentum and was stressing the theme that “black

is beautiful.” As Grier and Cobbs (1968:45) noted in their book published in that year: “With the new black movements under way, all that we have just said may assume merely historical significance. The contorted efforts to be white, the shame of the black body, . . .—all may vanish quickly. Negro women need only see that, truly, ‘black is beautiful.’”’ More recently, Udry et al (1971) have indicated that dark-skinned men are enjoying wider oppor1 One exception to this pattern is the recent study by Hraba and Grant (1970), who note that it is difficult to know whether their findings reflect genuine change or the special circumstances of their research.

42 SKIN COLOR

tunities for mate-selection now than in the past, but that light-skinned women still have the advantage.

Do our data also suggest changed standards of physical attractiveness among blacks toward the end of the 1960s? On the overt level, there is little indication that one or another color of skin is considered preferable by black

children. When the children are asked if their parents prefer light skin or dark skin, or if, instead, they “don’t care,” three-quarters of them say that their parents don’t care. Furthermore, when the children were asked first to describe how dark or light their own skin was and then: “Does this make you feel good, bad, or don’t you care,” over half claimed they did not care, and only 3 percent said their particular shade of skin made them feel bad. But when we look behind this overt, explicit level, a very different picture emerges. The black respondents were asked: “Who in your family has the nicest skin color?” The children answered in terms of their mothers, fathers, older or younger brothers or sisters. They were then asked: “Is he (she) lighter than you, darker than you, or the same as you?”

The results are striking. Seventy-four percent of the children said the family member with the “nicest skin color” was lighter than himself. In contrast, only 6 percent said such a family member was darker. Twenty percent said the color was the same. While skin color may not be held as an explic-

itly stated criterion of physical attractiveness in the black community, in reality the preference for lighter skin color remains overwhelming. There are other indications that black children continue to consider light skin more aesthetic. The interviewers were asked: “What is the child’s skin color? Very dark brown or black; medium brown; light tan; almost white or white?” (The very small number of children who were classified as “almost

white or white” have been combined with the “light tan” group.) What is the connection between the child’s skin color, as judged by the interviewer, and the child’s own judgment of how good-looking he is?

Table 5-1 indicates that the darker the child’s skin color, the less likely is he to consider himself good-looking. Fifty-three percent of the dark children, but only 30 percent of the light children, felt they were relatively unattractive. Furthermore, if we ask the child to describe his own skin color, 57 percent of those who say they are “very dark,” but only 20 percent of those describing themselves as “very light,” believe they are not good-looking.

The interviewers’ ratings of the child’s skin color and the children’s selfratings are, incidentally, very closely related. There can be little question but that, in the black community, the child with lighter color has more frequently been admired for his looks, and that he has internalized this judgment in his self-image.

It thus appears that among black children light skin is still held to be aesthetically superior, even in the late 1960s, at a time when the Black Pride Movement can be described as fully developed. We do not know, of course, 2 As a matter of fact, toward the end of the 1960s, Asher and Allen (1969) reported a somewhat stronger white color preference than did Clark and Clark (1947). These findings are also consistent with Seeman’s (1946) earlier study of black children in the third through sixth grades.

BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 43

TABLE 5-1

Child’s Judgment of Own Looks by Interviewer’s Judgment of Child’s Skin Color Interviewer’s judgment of child:

Dark brown MediumLight ortan

or black brown almost white

“How good-looking are you?”

To To Jo

Very or pretty good-looking 47 65 70

Not very or not at all good-looking 53 35 30

N = 100% (226) (727) (182) whether this is true also of the adult community, but there is some interesting evidence to suggest that it is from our own interviewers.

The interviewers were asked not only to describe the color of the black child’s skin but also to present their own assessments of his looks (Table 5-2). Of the interviewers who rated the children as dark (i.e., very dark brown or black), only 17 percent described these children as good-looking or very good-looking, compared with 31 percent of those who described them

as medium brown and 42 percent of those who said they were light (light tan or almost white ) .*

This is not a case of white interviewers imposing their own standards on blacks. Most of the interviewers of black children, it will be remembered, are themselves black. But even among black interviewers alone, there is a striking tendency to describe the lighter children as more physically attractive.

Although the data are limited in some categories, this tendency appears to be even stronger among the black than among the white interviewers (Table 5-2). Of course, the interviewers are in most cases middle class and thus not necessarily representative of the total community; but it does seem likely that

the children’s assessment of light skin as more attractive has been largely learned from the adults around them.

Lighter skin color, and perhaps associated physical features, apparently continue to be considered generally more attractive by blacks in the late 1960s. The essential question, however, is the interpretation to be assigned to this conclusion. Many research workers take it to mean that blacks have internalized the prejudiced white’s definition of them as inferior, and that, therefore, individual blacks suffer from low self-esteem. Others have interpreted the finding to indicate that blacks fail to identify with their racial 3 It has been suggested (Simpson and Yinger, 1965:Ch. 6) that extremely light children, particularly those called “high yaller,” are considered unattractive in the black community. Since only seven children were described by the interviewers as “almost white or white,” our data cannot test this assertion. In our analysis, these seven children were combined with those described as “light tan.”

44 SKIN COLOR

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54 SKIN COLOR

10) the attitudes of significant others have an important bearing on the child’s self-esteem. TABLE 5-11

Child’s Opinion of Value Parents Attach to His Looks by Child’s Judgment of Own Skin Color Child’s judgment of own skin color:

Very little light A littlelight Very darkAdark

7o Yo To Zo Very much 23 28 36 46 Pretty much 23 37 35 Not much or not at all 54 35 2931 23

How much do your parents care about whether you are good-looking?

N = 100% (44) (468 ) (418) (26) It is not the case, incidentally, that the children who believe they are very dark are entirely unaware of how their parents actually see them, for when asked: “How good-looking do you think your parents would say you are?” 30 percent of those describing themselves as very dark, but only 4 percent of those saying they were very light, believe their parents consider them unattractive. The darker children are thus considerably less likely than the others to believe that their parents consider them good-looking, but are much more likely to feel that their parents care little about their looks.

It is not entirely certain, incidentally, how much the dark children are distorting their parents’ values; there may, in fact, be some measure of accuracy in their perception. By this we do not mean that parents of darker skin children do not accept the general cultural preference for lighter skin. But it should be noted that parents, like children, may also indulge in value selectivity, not simply in regard to themselves but for their children as well. The child is, after all, an important extension of the parent’s ego; the parent’s self-esteem is in some measure tied up with the child. As James (1950:290-

291) noted in 1890: “In its widest possible sense . . . a man’s self is the sum total of all that he CAN call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children [emphasis supplied], his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and

horses, and yacht and bank account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down—not necessarily in the same degree for each thing, but in much the same way for all.”

One of the reasons a parent may take pride in his own child, then, is because of the contribution the child may make to his own self-esteem. If the parent has so internalized the cultural norms that he cannot evade the conclusion that his child is unattractive (as is apparently the case with the parent of a darker child), he can still retain his positive attitude toward his BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 55

child by deciding that looks do not matter very much—that what really counts is, say, a sweet disposition or good behavior or success in school. As a matter of fact, in response to an open-ended question on what their parents care about most, the dark children are more likely than the lighter-skinned to say that their parents care about how “nice” they are. Thus, the parent may have rearranged his values for the child in the light of the child’s manifest

virtues. Hence, his positive attitude toward the child is maintained at the same time that his own self-esteem is protected.

Thus, when the “very dark” child tells us that his parents do not consider him very good-looking but at the same time that they do not care deeply about his looks, he may, on the whole, be right. Perhaps he underestimates how unattractive they actually consider him or overestimates their indifference to looks, but there is good reason to expect his parents to see the matter in this way. But, whether the very dark child is indulging in selective perception and wishful thinking, on the one hand, or making an accurate appraisal, on the other, the point is that his perception serves to protect his self-esteem. Summary

Much of the early research on self-esteem among black children involved asking the children to indicate their preferences for lighter or darker dolls, puppets, or pictures. Whatever the varying interpretations of the data, it at least appeared clear that the dolls with the lighter skin were considered more attractive and were generally preferred. During the 1960s the rise of ideologies fostering black consciousness and black identity sought to induce blacks to embrace a physical model which was more distinctively black, more centered in the group. Whatever may be the ultimate outcome of this development, our data suggest a continued preference for lighter skin color in 1968. Overwhelmingly, the black children say that the family member with the nicest skin color is lighter than they; the children described as darker are much less likely to consider themselves good-looking; and even the black interviewers consider the darker children

less physically attractive. The aesthetic preference for lighter skin color apparently continues to persist in the black community. In view of this preference for lighter skin among blacks, and in view of the fact that their skin is darker than whites, why is their self-esteem not lower? It is certainly not because they are indifferent to their physical attrac-

tiveness; the black child’s judgment of his physical attractiveness is very clearly related to his global self-esteem, just as is the white child’s. The answer is, rather, that as a group black children are at least as likely as whites to consider themselves good-looking and to be happy with their looks. We have suggested that black children use blacks, rather than whites, as their “comparison reference group.” Comparing themselves with other blacks in terms of a common preference for lighter skin color, the mean and the dis-

tribution of satisfaction with looks turns out to be similar among the black and the white groups.

But if the black children show a preference for a lighter physical model, then we would at least expect the darker children to suffer by comparison with other blacks. Several coping mechanisms apparently help the darker children to protect their self-esteem. One device is to minimize the distinction

56 SKIN COLOR

between themselves and others. While these children are aware that they are dark, most of them conclude that they are only “a little” dark. Furthermore,

children who see themselves as a little dark are not much less likely than those who see themselves as a little light to believe they are good-looking. This self-assessment obviously serves to protect the dark child’s self-esteem. Nevertheless, there are some children who cannot evade the conclusion that they are very dark. But the self-esteem of even these children is just as high as that of the “little dark” and “little light” groups, though somewhat lower than the small number of children who consider themselves very light. Certain coping mechanisms are also employed by these children to protect their self-esteem. One of these involves the selectivity of self-values. Though decidedly less likely than others to believe they are good-looking, these self-designated “very dark” children are more likely to say that physical attractiveness does not matter to them; they display a weaker tendency to stake themselves on this quality. As a matter of fact, certain evidence suggests that those “very dark” children who care a great deal about good looks do have somewhat lower self-esteem than their lighter peers; but among those who care less the finding does not hold. Similarly, the very dark chi'dren are both less likely to believe

that their parents consider them attractive and more likely to believe that their parents consider good looks unimportant. In part, this is probably a reflection of selective perception, but there is also theoretical reason to think that it may reflect some measure of reality. As a consequence, the self-esteem

even of the children who believe themselves to be very dark is no lower than that of most of their peers.

BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 57

CHAPTER 6

SOCIAL CLASS

Derivative Consequences

Prejudice is often thought of as a direct affront to the individual; on grounds of his group membership alone, he is treated with disrespect and derogation. If this type of treatment were the sole consequence, it would seem a severe enough stress. But the consequences are, in fact, far more pervasive; they reach out to embrace a wide range of aspects of the individual’s life. Even when the individual is personally spared the direct impact of discrimination, he is still subject to a multitude of disprivileges which issue from it; and these disprivileges, in turn, may have self-esteem implications. If prejudice were to vanish overnight, but nothing else changed, then the social conditions of blacks would still appear conducive to low self-esteem. One might expect the indirect or “derivative” consequences of discrimination—which will occupy us for the next four chapters—to be as damaging to a child as direct expressions of prejudice or as the realization that his race is held in low regard generally. Social Class

The most significant derivative consequence of prejudice and discrimination, of course, is economic. Poverty, poor food, crowded quarters, dilapi-

58 | SOCIAL CLASS

dated housing, poor health, inadequate medical care, menial jobs, and other types of economic and cultural deprivation are the lot of a disproportionate number of American blacks. Beyond challenge or dispute, the evidence has been overwhelmingly documented time and again (Fein, 1965; Moynihan, 1965a; St. Clair Drake, 1965; U. S. Department of Labor and U. S. Department of Commerce, 1969:Ch. II-VI; Banfield, 1970:68-69 ). The data in our sample show the same bleak economic picture. Baltimore City, like most large American cities, has experienced the exodus of the middle class to its suburbs, so that the remaining population, both black and white, is in large proportion working and lower class. Yet even within Balti-

more City, as late as 1968, the class differences between the races were enormous. According to the Hollingshead scale, 44 percent of the blacks, but only 17 percent of the whites, were in the lowest class; conversely, only 15 percent of the blacks, in contrast to 37 percent of the whites, were in one of the top three classes (Table 6-1). TABLE 6-1

Social Class of Baltimore Children and Nationwide Male Adults, by Race Kohn-Schooler Nationwide

Baltimore children Male Adults

Blacks Whites Blacks Whites

To Zo Zo 70 Class (Upper) 15 ClassI* IT 3 9 l46 12

Social Class

Class IV III 11 22 10 31 Class 42 46 41 37 Class V (Lower ) 44 17 43 15

N = 100% (1138) (675) (344) (2720) * Hollingshead (1965) social class categories are used in all relevant tables in this chapter.

Yet even these data underestimate the immense socioeconomic differences between the blacks and the whites in our society. Table 6-1 shows the class

distributions of a nationwide representative sample of 3101 adult working males collected by Melvin Kohn and Carmi Schooler, classified by the same Hollingshead scale.! The socioeconomic distribution of black children in our sample is almost identical to that of the black adult working males in the Kohn-Schooler study, but the socioeconomic distribution of whites in our sample is well below that of white adults through the nation (63 percent of the Baltimore whites and 52 percent of the nationwide whites are in the lowest social classes). Despite the fact that the black children in our sample are at about the average for blacks, while the white children are considerably 1'We wish to thank Dr. Kohn and Dr. Schooler for providing the special tabulations

from their data reported in this chapter. See Kohn (1969) and Kohn and Schooler (1969).

BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 59

below the average for whites, the black children in our sample have vastly inferior socioeconomic status.

The implications for self-esteem have appeared obvious, and have been well-expressed by Langner and Michael (1963:395):

- An hypothesis has been suggested that attempts to find the origins of the poor resistance and weak ego strength of the low SES [socioeconomic status group] in their low position in the society. The hypothesis says, in short, that our self-image is determined by what others (the larger society )

think of us. If they think we are inferior, we also consider ourselves inferior.

Furthermore, the individual may assess his own worth in terms of his objective accomplishments. According to the American creed, each man has

an equal chance to get ahead, unequal success is due to unequal talent, ingenuity, and drive, the successful are more worthy and meritorious (e.g.,

Lynd and Lynd, 1937; Horney, 1937:Ch. 15; Cuber and Harper, 1948; Merton, 1949; Williams, 1951). Hence, the extremely low economic status of the parents of these black children—their menial jobs, positions of low regard and little responsibility, the lack of respect with which the family is treated, the low income and the insecurity—might be expected to have detrimental consequences for the children’s conception of themselves. Despite their much lower economic status, however, the blacks as an entire group do not show lower self-esteem than do the more fortunate whites. Are there factors at work protecting the self-esteem of the lower-class black child against the potential stress of his low rank? In this chapter we shall explore some of these factors. There are clearly several different aspects of lower class life that constitute disadvantages for the child. Following Weber’s tripartite distinction of class, status, and power (Gerth and Mills, 1946:Ch. VI-VII), the lower-class child is seen to suffer from economic deprivation, to come from a family with little power over its destiny, and to rank low in social prestige. But these three aspects of the class experience would not be expected to bear equally upon the child’s self-esteem. Lack of money to buy needed goods and services

might have little effect on feelings of self-worth unless it is perceived that others, who are socially superior in some evaluative sense, do have enough money. It is thus the status dimension of social class—the experience of being treated as socially inferior and accepting this evaluation—that should have the strongest effect on self-esteem. It is this prestige dimension, therefore, upon which we shall focus. The Perception of Socioeconomic Status

While black children have markedly lower socioeconomic status than whites, the question is: Do they see it that way? Are children who rank low in the socioeconomic hierarchy aware of their objective status in the society? Four questions in our study bear centrally on the child’s perception of his location in the stratification system.

First is the familiar class-conscicusness question originally developed by Centers (1949): “If you were asked to use one of these four names for your social class, which would you say you belong in? Would you belong in the

60 ~ SOCIAL CLAss

upper class, middle class, working class, or lower class?” We asked this only of children who first said they had ever heard the term, “social classes.”’ Since

74 percent of the blacks and 64 percent of the whites were unacquainted with the term, this question was of limited value with this age sample (see Simmons and Rosenberg, 1971).

The other questions do not employ the term “social class.” They are: (1) How proud are you of your family’s social position in the community? Do you feel very proud, pretty proud, not very proud, or not at all proud of your family’s social position in the community? (2) How well do you think your parents have done in life? Would you say they have done very well, pretty well, not very well, or not at all well?

The final question involves a somewhat complex set of instructions as follows:

This is a ladder with five steps. (CHILD IS GIVEN PICTURE OF A LADDER) The TOP step means that most people think a job is the best kind of job, an excellent one. (POINT)

The SECOND step means that most people think a job is a good job. (POINT)

The THIRD step means that most people think a job is in the middle, that is, is a fair job. (POINT) The FOURTH step means that most people think a job is not so good a job. (POINT) The BOTTOM step means that most people think a job is the worst kind of job, a poor job. (POINT) (The child is asked to rate 15 jobs. ) On what step would most people say your father’s job belongs?

It is interesting to note that, with but one exception, black children are at least as likely as whites to believe that their families have done well and are socially respected. We find, for example, that 40 percent of the blacks claim to be “very proud” of their parents’ social position, compared to only 30 percent of the whites; 57 percent of the blacks say their parents have done “very well” in life as opposed to 49 percent of the whites; 26 percent of the black children rate their father’s job as having the highest prestige in comparison to 22 percent of the whites. It is only among the rather special group of children class-conscious enough to understand the term “social class” that the whites are more likely to rate themselves higher (Table 6-2). These findings are strikingly reminiscent of our earlier findings on racial evaluation. It will be recalled that in propitious environments the black children perceived their race as enjoying a higher social evaluation than was in

fact the case (Chapter 4). They “inflated” their racial status. The same inflation mechanism appears with regard to their perception of their family’s socioeconomic status. Though the facts unequivocally indicate that the black children’s objective socioeconomic position is very substantially below that

of whites, they are at least as likely as whites to believe that their family position is well regarded. This relative obliviousness to their objectively low BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 61

TABLE 6-2

Perceived Family Social Status, by Race

Blacks Whites Perceived social status of family:

Percent “very proud” of family social position % 40 30 in the community * N (383) (321) Percent who say parents have done “very well’’ % 57 49

in life ** N (1192) (679 ) Percent rating father’s job as “best job” + Go 26 22

N (1065) (625 ) Percent who say they belong to “upper” or % 67 83

“middle” class + N (256) (229)

* Among secondary school children only, since pretests showed many elementary school children do not understand the term “social position.” ** Standardized on age, total sample. + Standardized on age, among children with fathers.

¢ Among children over 11 years who have ever heard of the term “social classes.”

position would appear to be a highly effective mechanism protecting their self-esteem.

This is not to suggest, incidentally, that the white children do not inflate their status. We have seen that white Protestants, Catholics, and Jews generally regard their own religious group as commanding higher prestige than they are actually accorded. As a matter of fact, the white children also appear to inflate their socioeconomic position. Our data, unfortunately, are limited to the question on social-class identification, and the children who were able to answer it are probably not typical of the sample as a whole. Nevertheless, the working-class white children in our sample are more likely than workingclass male adults in the Kohn-Schooler sample to describe themselves as

upper or middle class. Seventy-four percent of white elementary school working-class children, 70 percent of similar junior high school students, and 66 percent of senior high school working-class students, but only 46 percent of working-class adults, inflate their status in this way. Similar findings were

reported in a study by Centers (1950) comparing high school students to adults.

Differential inflation—Thus, both black and white children tend to elevate

and exaggerate the respect accorded their families in the community or society, but this inflation is substantially greater among blacks. Even if black

and white children had assigned equal status to their families, the blacks would be inflating more since their actual average status is lower. Indeed, it is likely that blacks elevate their status precisely because it is so low, since people in low positions will have the strongest motive to misperceive reality. A child in the highest social class, after all, has no special need to evade the recognition of where he stands; accurate awareness of his position is likely to enhance his feeling of self-regard. It is only those at the bottom of the Status hierarchy who need to protect their self-esteem by inflation.

62 SOCIAL CLASS

If this is so, however, then it follows that it is those at the very lowest end of the status hierarchy—the lower-class black children—who would have

the greatest incentive for inflating their standing. In order to examine this assumption, we have compared the black and white children’s status perceptions at each class level (Tables 6-3 and 6-4). While no single statement covers every case, the following tendency does appear: It is in the lowest classes that particularly large differences in inflation between blacks and whites generally appear. Thus, for example, the Class 5 black children are considerably more likely than the Class 5 whites to be “very proud” of their family’s social position in the community and to feel that their parents have done “very well” in life. Similarly, children of black semi-skilled or unskilled workers are more likely than similarly-placed white children to believe that “most people” would rate their fathers’ jobs as “best” or “very good.” With regard to social class identification, we saw earlier, white children are more likely to consider themselves middle-class. This holds true in each class except Class 5 where the relationship is slightly reversed.

The data with regard to the highest classes (Class 1 and 2 or “Professionals” and ‘“Semi-Professionals”) are highly inconsistent; in some cases they show the most inflation, in others the greatest deflation. Several of these results are quite unreliable because of the tiny number of black children in the upper classes who answered certain of the questions. If we leave aside the children in Class 1 and 2, confining our attention to those children in the middle, working, and lower classes, we generally find that it is the blacks at the lowest end of the socioeconomic scale who, relative to whites, are especially likely to inflate their status.

Thus, although it is true that blacks are much more likely than whites to be in the lowest social class, it is precisely the lower-class black children who appear to have erected the most successful defenses against the recognition of their own low status. The self-esteem of blacks as a total group, then, is probably considerably enhanced by this mechanism of inflation.

Perceptual accuracy—These observations lead to a more general considera-

tion of the broader issue of accuracy of perception. When we speak of accuracy, we are referring to the relationship between the individual’s actual

location in the stratification system and where he thinks he stands. While children of both races appear to inflate their socioeconomic status, the degree

of inflation is considerably greater among blacks, particularly those in the lowest class. The question is: Do black children in general have a less accurate awareness of their actual location in the socioeconomic hierarchy than whites?

Table 6-5 examines the relationship between the children’s position on the Hollingshead Scale and their responses to the four questions dealing with their perception of their families’ standing. (For conciseness of presentation, we have used the statistic gamma.) We find that, among black children, the

relationship between a child’s actual standing and his assessment of his family’s position—how proud he is of their social position, how well he thinks

they have done in life, or what social class he belongs to—is either very small or even negative (—0.09, 0.04, and 0.05). Among white children it BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 63

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90 PERFORMANCE IN SCHOOL

examining the impact of school marks on self-esteem, then, we will confine our attention to children in secondary school.” School Achievement and Self-Esteem

One reason for expecting a child’s marks to influence his self-esteem, as we observed earlier, is that the grades on his report card are actually one of the very few objective bases for assessing his worth. In his marks on tests and on his report card, he stands out sharply and conspicuously as a judged and evaluated object. In clear and fairly precise terms, the report card indiTABLE 8-2 Self-Esteem of Secondary School Children, by Marks in School

and by Race Total Secondary School Sample Marks in School

A B C D To To To To Low 17 25 26 39 Medium 12 32 35 22 High 71 43 39 39

Self-Esteem

N = 100% (24) (279) (387) (87)

ABCD Blacks

Low (—) 183017 30 Medium (—) 39 24 High (—) 51 44 46

Self-Esteem

N = 100% (4) (125) (237) (67) Gamma = —0.1156

} Whites

ABCD Low 21 30 42 70 Medium 16 33 29 15

Self-Esteem

High AS N = 100%63 (19)37 (152)30 (147) (20) Gamma = —0.2871

2A “more complete rationale of this analytic procedure appears in Rosenberg (1968:132-136).

BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 91

cates just how “good” or “bad” he is; and this process of assessment continues throughout his school years.

Table 8-2 (first section) testifies to the importance of school marks as a factor in the formation of self-esteem. Although there is not much difference

in self-esteem at the middle levels of performance, it is plain that highly successful secondary-school students score substantially higher in self-esteem.®

Among the A students, for example, 71 percent have high self-esteem compared with 39 percent of those with D or F grades. There thus seems little question that the child’s global feeling of self-worth is strongly related to his success or failure in school. Since black children in secondary schools have substantially lower marks than comparable whites, however, why is their self-esteem not lower? Part of the answer appears when we look at the relationship between marks

and self-esteem for black and white children separately (Table 8-2, second and third sections). While grades make a difference for the self-esteem of children of both races, it seems to make less difference in the case of blacks. For

blacks, for example, gamma is —0.1156, whereas for whites it is —0.2871. The true relationship remains somewhat uncertain because our sample from secondary schools contains insufficient cases of black pupils with A averages. Still, the percentages clearly show that the self-esteem of black children who are near failing is only somewhat lower than that of their classmates who are

doing well, whereas the self-esteem of white children who are failing is dramatically lower. In sum, it appears that one reason why secondary-school black children, despite their considerably poorer average performance, do not score lower in self-esteem than whites is that performance in school makes less of a difference for their self-esteem. But this finding, while helping to answer one question, at the same time raises another: Why should school performance have

less effect on the self-esteem of black children? One way to approach this issue is to consider the question of defense or coping mechanisms. Selectivity

Gordon Allport (1961:155) argues that the full range of defense mechanisms is fundamentally directed toward one objective—the defense and protection of the self. In the present discussion, the protective mechanism upon which we shall focus is selectivity. This theme, it will be recalled, was introduced in the earlier discussion of skin color (Chapter 5). There it was shown that children who believed they were “very dark” were less likely to perceive their parents as caring about their physical attractiveness (selective perception), and were themselves less likely to say that they were concerned with the quality of looks (selectivity of values). In this chapter, we shall consider

how these and other mechanisms may operate to protect the black child against the self-esteem consequences of poor school grades. Three types of selectivity will be considered: (1) selective interpretation; 3 The same general pattern holds among elementary school children, although the relationship is not quite as strong. In elementary school, however, the black children’s marks are not much lower than the whites’.

92 PERFORMANCE IN SCHOOL

(2) selective perception; and (3) selectivity of values.4 Our hypothesis 1s that black children are more successful than white children in mobilizing these defenses against the potentially devastating consequences of inferior performance in school. To remove this idea from an exclusively psychological framework, we might amend it to say that black children find themselves in environments which more easily permit them to bring these defenses into play. White children, too, are eager to protect their self-esteem, but their social environments are less hospitab!e to the functioning of these mechanisms.

Selective interpretation—In judging himself, the individual must take account of the “facts.” But facts, as everyone knows, are amenable to highly varying interpretations, and these are likely to be selected in the interests of psychological comfort. Marks in school, for example, are real and objective, but the meaning of grades is a matter of interpretation. While the child may interpret his school marks as reflecting his level of intelligence, it is also possible for him, especially if he does poorly, to conclude instead that grades tell nothing of real intelligence, that they simply reflect rote learning, docile conformity to authority, being a “greasy grind” or “apple polisher,” and the like. Recognizing, in addition, that grades are attained by effort as well as ability, a poor performer may conclude that he could get top marks “if he wanted to.” Furthermore, intelligence has many facets. In-an earlier study, for example, it was found that grades were closely related to whether the adolescent thought he was “a good student in school,” but only slightly related to whether he believed himself to be “clear-thinking and clever” or “imaginative and original” (Rosenberg, 1965: Ch. 13). Grades are unequivocal, but their meaning

is not.

Is selective interpretation effective as a mechanism for evading the implications of poor school performance? Specifically, do children with low marks

conclude that, after all, grades really have little to do with intelligence? Apparently not. Whether he be black or white, the child’s grades in school turn out to be closely related to “how smart” he thinks he is (Table 8-3), but the relationship among blacks, while strong (gamma = 0.3609), is still weaker than among whites (gamma = 0.7134). White children who do well in school are more likely than blacks who do equally well to think they are “very” or “pretty” smart, and white children who do poorly in school are more likely than comparable blacks to think they are “not very” or “not at all” smart. The black child, apparently, is less likely than the white to “‘interpret” his marks as indicative of his intelligence. This may help to explain in part—but only in part—why poor school performance damages the selfesteem of the black child less than it does that of the white. Selective perception—To learn something about the child’s view of the opinions of his significant others, we asked him how smart his parents considered him. One might be disposed to dismiss such data as unimportant since they reflect merely what the child thinks his parents’ attitude is rather than their actual views. But it was Cooley (1912) who so forcefully called to our attention the importance of the individual’s perception of the attitudes of the other 4For a more detailed discussion of a wider range of selectivity mechanisms, see Rosenberg (1967).

BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 93

_ TABLE 8-3 Secondary School Children’s Self-Ratings of “Smartness” by Marks in School and Race Blacks

A B C D 7o 7o To 7o Marks in School

“How smart’ do you think you are?

Very smart (—) 5 1 3 Pretty smart (—) 82 77 63

A Notlittle at allsmart smart(—) (—)12 — 22 — 34 —

N = 100% (3) (129) (242) (67) Gamma = 0.3609

ABCD Whites

“How smart” do you think you are?

Very 408710762455 Pretty smart smart 55

A little smart 5 3 22 30 Not at all smart — — — 20

N = 100% (20) (154) (152) (20) Gamma = 0.7134 to his feeling of self-worth. Subsequent empirical research (Miyamoto and Dornbusch, 1956; Reeder, Donohue and Biblarz, 1960; Sherwood, 1965, 1967) has strikingly supported Cooley’s insight.

What, then, is the connection between the child’s school performance and his perception of his parents’ judgment of his intelligence? Table 8-4 shows

that the poorer his grades, the less likely he is to believe that his parents consider him intelligent. This is true of both black and white children, but here again the effect appears to be stronger among whites than among blacks (gamma = 0.2652 for blacks, 0.6043 for whites). It is particularly striking to note that 45 percent of the white pupils with D averages said their parents considered them either “not very” or “not at all” smart, compared with only 24 percent of the black children with equally poor grades. It is, of course, not certain how much these responses actually reflect the parents’ view of the child and how much they reflect selective perception. It

may be the case that parents of those black children with poor records in school think their children are smarter than do parents of white children with equally poor performance. However, since inferring the attitudes of others

94 PERFORMANCE IN SCHOOL

TABLE 8-4

Inferred Parental Rating of Secondary School Child’s “Smartness,” by Marks in School and by Race

Blacks —

A B C D 7o Zo 7o To Marks in School

“How smart do your parents say you are?”

Very smart (—) 16 10 10 Pretty smart (—) 75 78 66 Not very smart (—) 9 11 22

Not at all smart (—) — 2 2 N = 100% (4) (129) (236) (68) Gamma — 0.2652

ABCD Whites

“How smart do your parents say you are?”

Very smart 60 28 11 15 Pretty smart 40 71 80 40 Not very smart — 1 9 40

Not at all(20) smart —(151) — 1(20) S N = 100% (155) Gamma = 0.6043 toward ourselves always entails some uncertainty, it is likely that selective perception plays some role in the matter. In any case, one reason why poor grades in school may have a less devastating effect on the self-esteem of black children is that blacks are less likely than whites to believe that their parents consider them dull. The resulting perception of their parents’ attitudes is thus protective of the self-esteem of black children.

Value selectivity—Just as people hold values regarding, for instance, politics or religion or the family, so do they hold values regarding themselves; and these values essentially represent criteria for self-judgment. For it is apparent that the individual’s self-esteem is based not simply on his judgment of his

particular qualities but rather on the qualities that matter to him. The issue of values was best posed by William James (1950) when he said in 1890 that our self-esteem depends upon what we back ourselves to be and do. The question then becomes: What has the individual staked himself on being? These are the things that count to him. We saw earlier that the “very dark” child, believing himself to be less good-looking than others, was more likely to say that good looks do not matter to him. Similarly, we may BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 95

ask: Does the child who does poorly in school, admitting that he is less intelligent, also conclude that intelligence is not an important quality? If he successfully changes his value priorities, then his self-esteem will be protected.

In order to examine their values, we presented our respondents with the following rather elaborate set of instructions: Now I’m going to read you a list of words. I would like to know which of

these things are important to you and which are not important to you. In other words, which of these things do you care about VERY MUCH and which of these don’t you care about AT ALL. It doesn’t matter whether you think you are, or are not, smart, for example.

| I want to know how much you CARE about how smart you are.

First, how much do you care about how SMART you are? Do you care very much, pretty much, not much, or not at all? By means of these repetitions and elaborations, we sought to hammer home the idea of valuation of the trait as distinguished from estimation. If value selectivity operates effectively, we would expect children who do

poorly in school to say that they do not care about “smartness” whereas those who do well would say that it matters a great deal. And this is just what happens. But the protective mechanism of value selectivity operates more successfully among black students who perform poorly than among equally poor white students (Table 8-5). For, among the blacks the relationship between grades and the value attached to “smartness” is fairly strong (gamma = 0.1795) whereas among whites it is weaker (gamma = 0.0727). The matter becomes clearer if we focus on children whose performance in school is especially poor. Black children with D averages are considerably less likely than the other blacks to care very much whether they are smart. But this is not at all the case with the academically incompetent white children; if anything, they appear to care slightly more than the rest of the white children about their intelligence. To view it from a different angle: If we compare only black and white children with D averages, we find that 55 percent of the whites, but only 35 percent of the blacks, say that they care “very much” about “being smart.” Is it any wonder that the self-esteem of the poorly performing white suffers more than that of the comparable black?

The issue of values and their significance for self-esteem can also be approached by inference. If the individual’s judgment of one of his qualities

has a strong bearing upon his global self-esteem, it seems likely that this quality would be very important to him. If it is true that white children who obtain poor grades care about “being smart” more than do comparable black

children, then their estimates of their “smartness” should have a greater impact on their global self-esteem. Table 8-6 shows the relationship between the pupil’s estimate of his intelligence and his global self-esteem among children who have done well enough in school to achieve A or B averages, and those, in contrast, whose marks

average C or D. Some of these data are unreliable because of the small number of cases in certain columns; nevertheless, the findings are suggestive.

Among the good pupils (A or B) the relationship between their estimates of their “smartness” and their global self-esteem is about the same for black and white children. But when we turn to the poorly performing pupils (C or D average), a different picture emerges. As a group, of course, these children

96 PERFORMANCE IN SCHOOL

TABLE 8-5 Secondary School Child’s Valuation of “Smartness” by

Marks in School and Race Blacks

A B C D Te Yo Yo 7o Marks in School

Very much (—) 58 56 35 Pretty much (—) 35 37 56 Not much (—) 7 6 9

Value being “smart”:

Not at all (—) 1 1 — N = 100% (4) (132) (245) (68) Gamma = 0.1795

ABCD Whites

Very much 40 54 44 55 Pretty much 55 37 45 35 Not much 5 8 9 10

Value being “smart:

Not at all — 1 2 — N = 100% (20) (157) (153) (20) Gamma = 0.0727

do not have as high a view of their intelligence as those with better grades. However, the effect of how bright or dull they think they are appears to have a greater effect on the self-esteem of the whites than of the blacks. For white children who perform poorly in school, the relationship (gamma) between estimate of intelligence and global self-esteem is —-0.4864; for blacks, —0.2265.

This analysis, although somewhat complex, is still far simpler than the psychodynamic reality. Given the nature of our data, we have been compelled to proceed in terms of the dominant directions of influence, though we are fully aware of certain reciprocal influences in some of the reported relationships. We are thus able to present only some rough approximation of the complex and developing forces at play. And, of course, limitation of numbers frequently permits us to draw only tentative conclusions. In sum, we suggest three ways in which the mechanism of psychological selectivity might enable the less adequate pupil to protect his self-esteem: (1) he could conclude that his marks in school really do not indicate that he is unintelligent (selective interpretation); (2) he could “perceive” that other people whose opinion matters to him (in this case, his parents) believe he is

“smart” (selective perception); and (3) he could decide that the trait of intelligence really is not an important one to him, thus enabling him to BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 97

TABLE 8-6

Self-Esteem and Self-Rated “Smartness” by Marks in School and by Race

- Blacks 7 Whites A and B Pupils Child believes he is:

Very Pretty Not very Very Pretty Not very

smart smart smart smart smart smart

7o Yo To To To To

Low (28) 17282150222231 Medium (14) 32(17) (50)

Self-Esteem

High (57) 55 29 56 37 (33) N = 100% (7) (105) (14) (23) (140) (6) Gamma of blacks = —0.2312 Gamma of whites = —0.2121 C and D Pupils

Very Pretty Not very Very Pretty Not very

smart smart smart smart smart smart

Low (—) 18342540(—) 40 63 Medium (60) (50) 26 27 High (40) 49 35 (50) 34 10

Self-Esteem

N = 100% (5) (220) (75) (4) = (120) (41) Gamma of blacks = —0.2265 Gamma of whites = —0.4864

admit lack of intelligence in himself without a reduction in self-esteem (selectivity of values). Our data indicate that all three mechanisms are in operation but that they are more effectively employed by black students with low marks than by comparable white students. The white student who does poorly in school is more likely than the corresponding black to conclude that he is not “smart” and to believe that his mother considers him unintelligent; but he is at the same time more likely to say that he cares about how “smart” he is. Furthermore, if he concludes that he is not smart (which he is more likely to do), it apparently has a more deleterious effect on his self-esteem. In sum, whites as a group do better in school than blacks, but we can also

see why the white child who does receive low marks may be expected to Suffer a sharper loss of self-esteem than the corresponding black child.

The fact that the unsuccessful white students seem relatively unable to defend themselves by the protective mechanisms of selectivity suggests that certain broad aspects of the social environment are at work. The white child who does poorly in school is, after all, just as eager to protect his self-esteem

98 PERFORMANCE IN SCHOOL

as is the corresponding black child. No one—black or white—takes pleasure in experiencing negative feelings toward himself. Why, then, are academically

unsuccessful white students less able to protect themselves by the psychological mechanisms we have just described? Possibly their social environments are more explicit concerning the importance of school marks and intelligence

and thus prevent the child from employing these evasive devices. Probably

the white child’s parents make it fairly clear that low marks mean he is relatively dull, and his self-picture suffers accordingly. Finally, his society may not permit him to say that “smartness” really does not matter, that what counts perhaps is, say, moral character, or manual skill, or human kindness. So long as men seek social acceptance, they must be concerned with the qualities that society considers important, not simply idiosyncratic traits chosen by the individual himself. Thus, value selectivity, like any kind of selectivity, cannot operate without limit but is dependent upon hospitable social conditions. Social Context and School Performance

Thus far we have talked about school performance and of the rather com-

plex set of psychological mechanisms that come into play to protect selfesteem. But there is a more conspicuous issue of great relevance today, with important implications for both performance in school and for self-esteem: this is the issue of racial segregation or integration in the school. It thus ts

valuable to look more closely at this matter, not simply because it bears directly on our central theme but also because it has widely ranging consequences. On the average, we have seen, black children do more poorly in school than whites, particularly at the secondary level. The black child, however, is apparently better able to dampen the impact of poor grades upon his self-esteem through the use of certain defense mechanisms. But performance in school may have consequences extending far beyond its effects upon self-esteem; it may, indeed, affect the entire future course of the child’s life. And one of the factors which may bear upon his academic achievement is the racial context of his school.

One might anticipate that black children, facing the competition of whites in integrated schools, might attain lower marks than blacks competing with other blacks in segregated schools. But Table 8-7 suggests that this is not the case. At the junior and senior high school levels, black children in racially integrated schools actually do better than blacks in segregated schools. It is relevant to observe that other studies, employing standardized tests, yield results similar to these data based on report cards. These studies all agree that integration appears to help the school performance of black chil-

dren; the only question is how much (cf., Coleman, 1966:28-30 and the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1967). Even when studies control on such variables as family background, track placement, classroom assignment and early school achievement, black children in integrated classrooms are shown to be significantly in advance of the blacks in segregated classes (McPartland, 1969).

While from the perspective of integration these are highly encouraging findings, from the viewpoint of self-esteem they are puzzling. Since children BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 99

TABLE 8-7 School Marks of Black Secondary-School Pupils, by

Racial Context of School

Junior High School Senior High School School is predominantly:

Black White Black White

A 1 — 1 — B 31 39 22 32 C 51 52 58 57 D 17 9 19 11

Marks in School

To 7o 7o 7e

N = 100% (167) (44) (144) (65) who do well in school tend to show higher self-esteem, and since black children in predominantly white secondary schools have somewhat higher marks than those in black schools, we might expect the self-esteem of the integrated blacks to be higher. But, as we have seen, their self-esteem is not higher; on the contrary, it is lower (Chapter 3, Table 3-2). Why should black children in white schools do somewhat better in school and yet score lower in selfesteem than those in black schools?

Grades are an ordinal concept having no absolute significance. They refer to a ranking which orders a given population along a continuum of superiorityinferiority. A particular grade thus has meaning only with reference to other

grades with which it is compared. If three-quarters of the children get an A, then B is a poor grade within that group. The crucial issue then, is: With whom does the child compare his grades and relevant aspects of his performance in school? The most reasonable interpretation is that his comparison

reference group is the other children in his class or, at the widest, in his school. The child observes whether he is at the top, middle, or bottom of his school class. He compares his test grades or homework marks with other children taking the same test. He judges his ability to answer the teacher’s oral questions in terms of the ability of the other children in his class. How, then, does the black child in a predominantly white school compare with the whites around him? The answer is that, despite his relatively high grades, he still suffers by comparison (Table 8-8). In integrated junior high schools, black children attain grades slightly lower than those of their white classmates; and in integrated senior highs, black children attain grades considerably lower than whites in the school. In other words, black children in integrated schools obtain somewhat better marks than blacks in segregated schools, but poorer marks than whites in the integrated schools. 5 It is possible that certain subgroups in the school might serve as the major comparison group but such subgroups cannot shut out the general body of evidence in the class or school.

100 PERFORMANCE IN SCHOOL

TABLE 8-8 }

Children’s School Marks in Predominantly White Secondary Schools, by Race

Junior High School Senior High School

Blacks Whites Blacks Whites

A — 3 — 9 B 39 40 32 51 C 52 57 35 D 9 52 6 11 5

Marks in School

Yo To To 70

N = 100% (44) (202) (65) (117) Since the black child in a white school appears less likely than the black in a black school to score high in self-esteem, we might also expect him (1) to be less likely to consider himself “very smart’; (2) to be less likely to believe that his parents see him as intelligent; and (3) to be less likely to value “smartness” highly. But none of these expectations is supported. At the same time, neither is the reverse the case. Though he does obtain somewhat higher grades than the segregated, black child, he is not more likely to think himself “smart,” nor to think his parents consider him so, nor to care about “smartness.” These data suggest that the effect of the surrounding white children upon the integrated black children is an inhibiting one; that is, the integrated context inhibits the relatively good marks of the black children from raising their self-esteem higher than that of the segregated blacks.® This is not the same as saying that integrated blacks have lower self-esteem than segregated blacks because they compare unfavorably with their white schoolmates. Our point, rather, is that their higher grades do not raise their self-esteem because the unfavorable comparison with their white classmates does not allow them to take particular pride in their academic achievements. They consider them-

selves just as “smart,” but no smarter, than black children in segregated schools who obtain poorer grades than they. The reason seems plain: A black child with a B average is more outstand-

ing in a black school than in a white school; in the white school, this grade average is more common. In black junior high schools, 32 percent of the students have A or B averages, compared with 42 percent in white junior high schools; and at the senior high school level, the corresponding proportions are 23 percent and 50 percent. Thus, although black children in integrated settings are more likely than those in segregated schools to have A or B averages, they do not experience a corresponding elevation in self-esteem. If this reasoning is sound, we can understand why the self-esteem of the integrated black children is not higher despite their higher grades. But this 6 A fuller discussion of conditions inhibiting or facilitating a relationship appears in Rosenberg (1968: 136-143).

BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 101

does not explain the fact that their self-esteem is lower than that of the segregated children. Some of the reasons why this should be so have already been presented in the foregoing chapters: greater exposure to racial teasing, a more

vivid awareness of the low status of their race, greater exposure to more well-to-do children in their school, the stigma attached to having parents who are separated or never-married, and so on. It is thus unfortunate that one factor which might help their self-esteem relative to that of segregated black children—higher marks in school—does not have this effect because the white children in their schools, on the average, do even better than they. This conclusion, of course, should not obscure the fact that in each group— blacks in black schools, blacks in white schools, and whites in white schools— higher grades are associated with higher self-esteem.

Nonetheless, at the secondary level, the school achievement of integrated black children is superior to that of segregated black children. Since we see no reason to think that grading standards in white schools are lower than those in black schools, this finding, seen in conjunction with certain findings using standardized tests, suggests that blacks in integrated schools may be getting an education, in the traditional sense, somewhat superior to that of black children in black schools. This conclusion cannot yet be considered definitive, but it is an important finding whose implications will be discussed

at a later point. Summary

School is an important part of the child’s life, and school marks an overt

assessment of a certain aspect of his worth. It is therefore reasonable to think that the child’s performance in school should bear in a direct way on his global self-esteem.

In agreement with other studies employing standardized tests, our data showed that black children’s marks are, on the average, lower than those of whites. The differences are trivial at the elementary school level but become quite substantial in secondary school. The question we therefore confronted was: In view of their poorer school performance, why is the self-esteem of secondary school black children not lower than that of whites? Part of the answer, it appears, is that school grades seem to make less difference for the self-esteem of black children. This is especially striking among the near-failing pupils; the self-esteem of such white pupils is vastly lower than that of other whites whereas the self-esteem of such black children is only moderately lower than other blacks. This suggested that blacks, particularly those whose school achievement is low, may more successfully employ certain defense mechanisms. Three mechanisms of “selectivity” protective of self-esteem were considered: selective interpretation, selective perception, and selectivity of values. We found that the black child who did poorly in school was less likely than the cor-

responding white to feel that his school marks represented an accurate appraisal of his intelligence, to believe that his parents considered him unintelligent, and to care strongly about the quality of intelligence. It was suggested that the black child’s social environment was more hospitable to the use of these protective mechanisms.

102 PERFORMANCE IN SCHOOL

Turning to the effects of school integration and segregation, the data indi-

cated that black children in white schools had higher school marks than those in black schools; this finding accorded with other research employing standardized tests. The result, however, was puzzling since it had been demon-

strated earlier that the dissonant racial context had the effect of reducing self-esteem. The reason appeared to be that, although the integrated black children had higher grades than blacks in segregated schools, they had lower

marks than the whites in the integrated schools. The net result was that, despite their higher grades, the integrated blacks were no more likely than the segregated blacks to believe they were highly intelligent, to believe their parents considered them intelligent, or to value the trait of intelligence. Their lower self-esteem was probably attributable to the various effects of contextual dissonance noted earlier. The effect of contextual dissonance in the present case was probably not to lower their self-esteem but to inhibit their relatively high marks from raising it.

BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 103

CHAPTER 9

ASPIRATIONS

In our earlier analysis of social class, the discussion centered on what the child is, i.c., where he is currently located in the stratification system. But, for the child, this is unequivocally an ascribed status: it is dependent upon the achievement of the head of his household, not upon his own accomplishments. The individual’s later self-esteem level will probably depend more on how well he eventually does in life than on his family of origin. The child’s occupational accomplishments, however, can only occur in the

future, and thus can have no bearing upon his current self-esteem. This chapter, then, will contain no data on the child’s self-esteem but will provide data which may be relevant to self-esteem at some future time. His economic and occupational aspirations can be neither realized nor frustrated until he enters the labor market, and even then it may take many years before he can determine whether he has reached his goals. But by studying the child’s current aspirations and by making a judgment of his probable future accomplishments, we may suggest certain possible consequences for his self-esteem in the future.

The implications for self-esteem of aspirations and achievements are nowhere better expressed than in William James’ Principles of Psychology (1950:310-311):

104 ASPIRATIONS

With no attempt there can be no failure; with no failure, no humiliation. So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back our-

selves to be and do. It is determined by the ratio of our actualities to our supposed potentialities; a fraction of which our pretensions are the denominator and the numerator our success: thus, Self-esteem — _ Success _ Pretensions

Such a fraction may be increased as well by diminishing the denominator

as by increasing the numerator. To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them gratified... Success—An understanding of the future self-esteem of blacks and whites,

_ then, requires information on both the numerator (‘success’) and denominator (‘pretensions’). Let us first consider the numerator, success, i.e., the probable accomplishments of these children when they attain adulthood and enter the world of work. In the absence of an effective crystal ball, of course, no one can speak to this matter with certainty. Yet, if experience and logic are any guides, one may be virtually certain that the blacks’ levels of success will be considerably below those of whites. For one thing, the rate of black unemployment is close to double the white rate: black income, moreover, is about two-thirds of the white; black college attendance is about half the white; and so on. Every study of black socioeconomic status shows it to be extremely low judged by white standards (Fein, 1965: Drake, 1965; Moynihan, 1965a, 1965b; U. S. Department of Labor, 1969, 1970; Killingworth, 1969). Though the economic position of blacks has improved since World War II, the chances that our cohort of school children will achieve actual economic equality seem extremely remote.

Pretensions—If the numerator, success, is almost certain to be relatively small, the only way to attain a sizeable self-esteem quotient is for the denominator, pretensions, also to be relatively small. From all indications, however, black children do not appear to have lower aspirations than whites (Rosen, 1959; Coleman, 1966:280-281; Baughman and Dahlstrom, 1968:446). On

the basis of a number of surveys, one must concur with Proshansky and Newton’s (1968) general conclusion that, when social class is controlled, black children certainly do not appear to have lower aspirations than whites (Boyd, 1952; Gist and Bennett, 1963; Lott and Lott, 1963; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 1968; Gordon, 1969a; Bachman, 1970). Our own data also show that black children’s aspirations are as high as whites’ (Table 9-1). Essentially, we have 11 items of information focussing on three closely-related aspects of aspiration:

Wealth and fame in general—How rich do the children want to be? How much do they care about wealth and fame? How eager are they to outstrip their family’s income? Occupational Status—Do the children aspire to professional positions? Do they seek to surpass their parents occupationally? Do they want and expect to be highly successful in their eventual occupation?

Educational goals—Do the children want and expect to complete high school? Do they want and expect to go to college?

BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 105

Because age is connected with aspirations in a rather complex fashion (a

point to be considered in the next section), the results in Table 9-1 have been standardized on age. Specifically, Table 9-1 indicates the following: with regard to wealth and prestige aspirations, black children are at least as likely as whites to want to be “very” rich, to expect to be richer than their parents, to care “very much” about being richer, to wish strongly to be richer, and to want to be “very famous.” With regard to occupational aspirations also, black children are at least as likely as whites to want to be highly successful at their work and, indeed, to expect to be highly successful at their work; they are as

likely to expect to outstrip their parents occupationally although they are somewhat less likely to aspire to “professional” positions. And, finally, when TABLE 9-1

Aspirations of Black and White Children (Standardized on Age)

Blacks Whites Aspirations Wealth, fame: 1. How rich would you like to be as a grownup? *

To To

Say “very” rich 23 19 Say “‘yes”’ 62 47 Say “care a lot” 38 26

2. Do you wish you were richer than you are now?

3. Do you care about being richer? *

grow up * 32 29

4. Expect to be “richer” than parents when you

Say “very” famous 24 15

5. How famous would you like to be as a grownup? * Occupation:

6. Want professional or executive job 15 22

7. Aspire to higher occupation than parent ** 76 66

8. How good do you want to be at your job? *

Say “at the very top” or “better than most” 67 66

9. How good do you think you will be at your job? *

Say “at the very top” or “better than most” 43 39

Education: 10. Do you want to go to college?

Say “yes” 85 77

11. What do you think your chances of going to college are? *

Say think they will “definitely go to college” 29 29 * This was a multiple choice question. ** The occupation to which the child aspired and his father’s present occupation were

classified according to the Hollingshead rating system (1965) and compared with each other.

106 ASPIRATIONS

it comes to educational aspirations, there are no appreciable racial differences

in aspirations regarding the completion of high school; but black children are somewhat more likely than white to want to attend college and about equally likely to expect to attend college. Overall, the black children’s aspira-

tions appear to be as high as, or higher than, those of the white children. ~ Many writers have been surprised at the unexpectedly high level of aspiration found among blacks, and their explanations have been extremely varied.

Gordon (1969a), Coleman (1966), and Baughman and Dahlstrom (1968) think the blacks are more unrealistic; Lott and Lott (1963) think they are more realistic; the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (1968) suggests that blacks stress education more because it is the only

way for them to get ahead (while whites have other ways); Gould (1941) suggests these aspirations reflect insecurity; Boyd (1952:195) thinks it is an adjustment mechanism, i.e., that blacks develop better defense mechanisms; Katz (1967) sees it as a wishful or defensive technique. It is not our aim to evaluate these explanations or to add one more ad hoc explanation to this growing list. Our immediate concern is with self-esteem. And from the viewpoint of self-esteem, we are faced with the following problem: Black children’s occupational and educational achievements are certain to be substantially below those of whites, but their occupational and educational aspirations

appear to be just as high. At first consideration, the implications of these . facts for the self-esteem of black children in the future appear serious. Since, relative to whites, a very high proportion of the blacks are almost certain to

be failures in the light of the goals they have set, one might expect their self-esteem to suffer considerably in adulthood. Yet, the one study we have

of adults today (Kohn, 1969) does not indicate any major difference in self-esteem between blacks and whites (see Chapter 1). Are our children likely to turn out very different from these adults in Kohn’s study, or are there certain factors that will protect their future self-esteem despite the apparent discrepancy between their high aspirations and their low achievement?

We shall deal with this issue by focussing on three such factors which appear to be implicated in the matter: (1) the erosion of children’s aspira-

tions over time; (2) the issue of absolute and relative aspirations; and (3) the range of occupational satisfaction. The Erosion of Aspiration

One characteristic of studies of children’s aspirations is that each selects a different age group, varying from elementary school children (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 1968) to high school students (Coleman, 1966; Lott and Lott, 1963) with several points in between

(Boyd, 1952; Gordon, 1968; Bachman, 1970). The point is, however, that aspirations are not necessarily fixed for good and all; they may change. The

question, then, is whether a developmental trend in aspirations may be detected and extrapolated to a future when the aspirations and the accomplishments actually meet head-on. For it is only at this future point that the aspiration-achievement discrepancy may actually appear. Our data on aspirations ends before information on achievement begins.

In the absence of further facts, the best guess as to how aspirations will BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 107

develop later is a continuation of the trend line established earlier. Three general trends in aspirations may be considered: a level, a rising, and a declining trend. On the whole, as we have seen, black children’s aspirations do not appear

to be lower than those of white children. The question is: Do the races _ show different trends in their aspiration patterns? Such trends, of course, cannot be viewed in absolute terms, but only as relative to one another. Some

aspirations, for example, simply rise with age for both races. But do they rise more sharply among whites than among blacks? Other aspirations decline with age. Do they decline more sharply among blacks than whites? Or certain aspirations may remain steady for whites but decline somewhat for blacks; or rise somewhat for whites but remain steady for blacks. Our analysis here will be strictly comparative: relative to whites, do the aspirations for blacks decline in various areas? In order to see how aspirations change with age, we shall compare three age groups within each race: elementary school children, junior high-school children, and senior high-school sophomores and juniors.! Table 9-2 presents the replies to eleven questions on aspirations. The num-

ber in each cell represents the percentage of each group indicating a high aspiration response to each question (e.g., the percent wanting to be “very” rich, to be “very” famous, and so on). Column A shows the difference among

blacks between the proportion of senior high-school and the proportion of elementary-school children indicating a high aspiration. (A positive figure represents a rise in aspirations, a negative figure a decline.) Column B presents the corresponding figures among whites. Column C is calculated by subtracting Column A from Column B. If the number in Column C is positive, black children’s aspirations, relative to whites, have fallen; if the number is negative, they have increased. Of the eleven items in Table 9-2, nine show an erosion of black children’s

aspirations, relative to whites, and only two show an increase. These two exceptions are of special interest, and consideration of them will be deferred until the next section. For the remainder of this section, we will discuss only the nine aspirations items which show this erosion among blacks.

The general developmental trend suggested by Table 9-2 is roughly as follows:

Aspirations to wealth and fame: As children of both races grow older, they show a generally reduced concern with extravagant wealth or fame—want-

ing to be “very rich” or “very famous,” caring “very much” about being rich. While this is true of both races, the decline with increasing age is much stronger among black than among white children. Occupational aspirations: Occupational aspirations generally tend to rise with age, reflected in an increased desire for a professional occupation and a desire for and expectation of outstanding job performance. This, too, is

generally true of both races, but the increase in aspirations is much less among black children than among whites. 1 Seniors are omitted from this part of the analysis because the school dropout rate is much higher among blacks by the senior year. As far as the general conclusions of this study are concerned, they are essentially the same whether or not seniors are included. See the final section of this chapter for an analysis focussing nn seniors.

108 ASPIRATIONS

Educational aspirations: As children grow older, there is some tendency for their desire and expectation of college attendance to rise. But this is true only among white children. Among black children there is a modest decline. In each area, then, black children suffer an erosion of aspirations, relative

to whites. In the case of wealth and fame, they show a sharper drop; in the case of occupation, they reveal a more modest rise; and in the area of education, they show a modest decline at the same time that the whites indicate a substantial rise. Thus, the black children, whose achievements are likely to be lower, expe-

rience a relative decline in aspirations as well as they grow older. But will the decline continue after they leave high school? There is every reason, in fact, to expect the trend to accelerate, for scarcely half as many black as white children will find themselves in college, and many of these will be in schools whose prestige is low. And the large remainder who directly enter the labor market will find themselves economically by far the most disadvantaged group in the entire society. Year after year, the highest rate of unemployment has been among black teenagers. These successive blows of reality in

all likelihood will hasten still more the decline in the aspirations of blacks relative to those of whites. Thus, by the time the black becomes firmly established as a fullfledged adult in the economic hierarchy, his aspirations, compared to those of whites, will probably have been undergoing continuous erosion extending over many years. In sum, black children, like their white counterparts, tend to internalize the general American value system, and, at least at an early age, they want to be rich, famous, successful, to go to college, etc. to the same extent as whites. However, with advancing age, while they are still in school, there comes an increasing adjustment to reality. College costs money (or at least a deferment

of earnings); not everyone who applies is admitted; wealth and fame may come to be seen as pleasurable fantasies rather than serious ambitions; prospects of outstanding achievement are recognized as remote. And when they actually enter the job market, one would expect this decline in aspirations to continue at a still faster rate. Thus, when the black children finally become established in the occupational hierarchy, the gap between aspiration and achievement is probably smaller than would be expected on the basis of their aspirations when younger. This is not to imply that there will be no discrepancy between aspiration and achievement among blacks, but that it will not necessarily be that much greater than among whites. As Coleman (1966) notes, both black and white high school students have unrealistically high educational and occupational aspirations. But as long as the discrepancy among blacks is no greater than it is among whites, no racial differences in self-esteem are to be expected. In James’ terms, the ultimate ratio of ‘success’ to ‘pretensions’ may be the same, or at least closer than one would assume if one overlooked the developmental trends. Absolute and Relative Aspirations

There is a curious vagueness about much of the terminology surrounding the idea of vertical social mobility. One hears references to “doing well,” “getting ahead,” “moving up the social ladder,” “being successful,” and the BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN SCHOOL CHILD 109

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like. It is plain, however, that one cannot judge whether aspirations are “high” or “low” without first asking about the base, or reference point, from which one starts. In the previous section, our focus was on absolute aspirations—how rich

the child wants to be, how far he hopes to go in school, what occupational level he aspires to, and so on. Compared to the white children, we have seen, blacks’ aspirations show a regular decline as the children grow older. But the sociologist, in talking of vertical mobility, often has in mind intergenerational

mobility, that is, how well one has done relative to the family in which one | grew up (Lipset and Bendix, 1959).

It is frequently implied that these types of aspirations—absolute aspirations and relative (intergenerational) mobility desires—are, if not identical, at least highly correlated. Yet a moment’s reflection makes it clear that they may be completely independent. Take an upper and lower-class child, both of whom end up in the middle class. From the absolute perspective, they are equally successful. But from the relative (intergenerational) viewpoint, the first is downwardly mobile while the second is upwardly mobile. Empey’s (1956) study of high-school seniors is a good case in point. In absolute terms, he found a strong and direct relationship between the child’s social class and the level of both his desired and expected occupations—the higher the family status, the higher the student’s aspirations. But from a relative viewpoint, he found precisely the reverse: the lower the child’s family status, the more he desired and expected to surpass his father. What are the relevant findings in our study? We began this general discussion with 11 indicators of mobility aspirations. Black aspirations, relative to whites’, declined on nine of these. All nine dealt with absolute aspirations. But there were also two exceptions where the opposite pattern prevailed. Both of these, it turns out, refer strictly to relative aspirations, that is, how they expect to do compared to their parents. The first exception involves the following question: “When you grow up,

do you think you will be richer than your parents, poorer than your parents, or about the same as your parents?” Both black and white children, as they grow older, increase their expectations of surpassing the wealth of their parents.? As Table 9-3 indicates, however, among black children the proportion expecting to exceed their parents increases with age by 45 percent, whereas among white children the increase is 30 percent. The second exception refers to occupational mobility aspirations. Originally, we found that 75 percent of the blacks and 65 percent of the whites hope to enter occupations of a higher status than that of the family breadwinner. But Table 9-3 shows that these intergenerational mobility aspirations are rising for blacks at the same time as they are declining for whites. Thus,

by the time the children are in high school, 82 percent of the blacks but 57 percent of the whites aspire to be upwardly mobile occupationally, a difference of 25 percent. While the matter is complex, and may lead to different conclusions depending on the point of reference, there is some reason to think that these high intergenerational mobility aspirations among black children are not unreal2 This is chiefly due to an increasingly realistic appraisal of their parents’ achievements.

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