Critical Response

Kenneth and Mamie Phipps-Clark's primary research on racial identification and preference in black school children, published from 1939 to 1950, was replicated and extended by the work of various social scientists in the 1940s and early 1950s. The Clarks' conclusion that segregated schools cause psychological damage to black children was a view shared by 90% of social scientists surveyed in a 1948 study by M. Deutscher and Isador Chein, titled "The Psychological Effects of Enforced Segregation: A Survey of Social Science Opinion." The study also revealed that 83% of social scientists surveyed believed that racial segregation also has detrimental psychological effects on members of the privileged group.

The same year as the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, Gordon Allport published The Nature of Prejudice. Allport observed that contact between groups...