RESEARCH REPORT

The Evidence on Busing

DAVID J. ARMOR

he legal basis of the national policy of integration-and of the school busing issue today-is the declaration of the Supreme Court in 1954 that

to separate [black children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.

Few decisions of the Court have provoked so much controversy for so long, or have had so much impact on the way of life of so many persons, as the case of Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, where this doctrine is stated. Policy makers have used it to restructure political, economic, and social institutions. Groups have rioted and states

Rarely can an unpublished academic article have attracted as much attention and publicity as has this analysis of busing. Professor Armor, a sociologist who specializes in research methods and social statistics, played a leading role in research on the Boston METCO study, which was one of the earliest evaluations of the effects of busing on black students. In this article he reports the detailed findings of that study plus those of several other comparable studies. While his manuscript was being copy-edited in our office, its findings were being “reported" in the national press (e.g., New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe), and they have even been denounced publicly by critics who have never seen the results of the studies themselves. We are publishing the full text of this academic article -all the graphs, footnotes, and references are included at the end -because we think that, in so controversial a matter as busing, it is important to be as precise as possible, even at the risk of pedantry. Inevitably, findings such as those of Professor Armor give rise not only to public but also to scholarly controversy. In our next issue we shall print comments on Professor Armor's article by other scholars. -Editors

have divided over actions, direct and indirect, that have flowed from this ruling. And social scientists have proudly let it stand as a premier axiom of their field-one of the few examples of a social theory that found its way into formal law.

Few persons, perhaps, know of the role played by the social sciences in helping to sustain the forces behind desegregation. It would be an exaggeration to say they are responsible for the busing dilemmas facing so many communities today, yet without the legitimacy provided by the hundreds of sociological and psychological studies it would be hard to imagine how the changes we are witnessing could have happened so quickly. At every step-from the 1954 Supreme Court ruling, to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to the federal busing orders of 1970-social science research findings have been inextricably interwoven with policy decisions.

And yet, the relation between social science and public policy contains a paradox in that the conditions for adequate research are often not met until a policy is in effect, while the policy itself often cannot be justified until supported by the findings of science. In consequence, the desire of scientists to affect society and the desire of policy makers to be supported by science often lead to a relation between the two that may be more political than scientific. Further, this can mean that the later evaluation research of a social action program may undo the very premises on which the action is based-as is the case somewhat in the Coleman Report on the effect of schools on achievement. There are obvious dangers for both social science and public policy in this paradox. There is the danger that important and significant programs -which may be desirable on moral grounds-may be halted when scientific support is lacking or reveals unexpected consequences; conversely, there is the danger that important research may be stopped when the desired results are not forthcoming. The current controversy over the busing of schoolchildren to promote integration affords a prime example of this situation.

The policy model behind the Supreme Court's 1954 reasoning-and behind the beliefs of the liberal public today--was based in part on social science research. But that research did not derive from the conditions of induced racial integration as it is being carried out today. These earlier research designs were "ex post facto"-i.c., comparisons were made between persons already integrated and individuals in segregated environments. Since the integration experience occurred before the studies, any inferences about the effects of induced integration, based on such evidence, have been speculative at best. With the development of a variety of school integration programs across the country there arose the opportunity to conduct realistic tests of the integration policy model that did not suffer this limitation. While it may have other shortcomings, this research suffers neither the artificial constraints of the laboratory nor the causal ambiguity of the crosssectional survey. The intent of this essay is to explore some of this new research and to interpret the findings. What we will do. first, is to sketch the evolution of the social science model which became the basis of public policy, and then review a number of tests of this model

as revealed in recent social science studies of induced school integration and busing.

'The Integration Policy Model: Stage I

The integration model which is behind current public policy is rooted in social science results dating back to before World War II. The connections between segregation and inequality were portrayed by John Dollard (1937) and Gunnar Myrdal (1944) in the first prestigious social science studies to show how prejudice, discrimination, segregation, and inequality operated to keep the black man in a subordinate status. Myrdal summarized this process in his famous "vicious circle" postulate: White prejudice, in the form of beliefs about the inferior status of the black race, leads to discrimination and segregation in work, housing, and social relationships; discrimination reinforces social and economic inequality; the resulting inferiority circles back to solidify the white prejudice that started it all. The vicious circle theory was the integration policy model in embryonic form.

Along with these broad sociological studies there also appeared a number of psychological experiments which were to play a crucial role in the policy decisions. The most notable were the doll studies of Kenneth and Mamie Clark (1947). They found that preschool black children were much less likely than white children to prefer dolls of their own race. Though this tendency tapered off among older children, the Clarks concluded that racial awareness and identification occurred at an early age and that the doll choices suggested harmful and lasting effects on black self-esteem and performance. Other studies confirmed these early findings (Proshansky and Newton, 1968; Porter, 1971). These studies added a psychological dynamic to explain the operation of the vicious circle: Prejudice and segregation lead to feelings of inferiority and an inability to succeed among the blacks; these sustain inequality and further reinforce the initial white prejudice. In other words, segregation leads to serious psychological damage to the black child; that damage is sufficient to inhibit the kind of adult behavior which might enable the black man to break the circle.

How could the circle be broken? This question plagued a generation of social scientists in quest of a solution to America's race problems. Of a number of studies appearing after the war, two which focussed upon the effects of segregation and integration upon white racial attitudes had especial impact. The first was a section of Samuel Stouffer's massive research on the American soldier during World War II (1949). Stouffer found that white soldiers in combat companies with a black platoon were far more likely to accept the idea of fighting side by side with black soldiers than were white soldiers in nonintegrated companies. The second was the study by Morton Deutsch and Mary Evans Collins (1951) of interracial housing. Comparing residents of similar backgrounds in segregated and integrated public housing projects, they found that whites in integrated housing were

and to have positive attitudes towards blacks in general than were whites living in the segregated projects. Though neither of these studies could ascertain the beliefs of these individuals prior to integration, neither author had reason to believe that the integrated whites differed from the segregated whites before the former's experience with blacks. They concluded, therefore, that the positive results were due to the effect of interracial contact and not to prior positive belief.

The culmination of this research was Gordon Allport's influential work, The Nature of Prejudice (1953). Using the work of Stouffer, Deutsch and Collins, and others, he formulated what has come to be known as the "contact theory":

Contacts that bring knowledge and acquaintance are likely to engender sounder beliefs about minority groups.... Prejudice... may be reduced by equal status contact between majority and minority groups in the pursuit of common goals. The effect is greatly enhanced if this contact is sanctioned by institutional supports (i.e., by law, custom, or local atmosphere), and if it is of a sort that leads to the perception of common interests and common humanity between members of the two groups. The clear key to breaking the vicious circle, then, was contact. By establishing integrated environments for black and white, white prejudice would be reduced, discrimination would decline, and damaging effects upon the black child's feelings and behavior would be reduced. While the Supreme Court based its 1954 decision upon the narrower relationship between legally sanctioned segregation and psychological harm, it is clear that the modus operandi by which the damage would stop is implied by the contact theory. With the 1954 decision, then, contact theory became an officially sanctioned policy model, and the Southern public school systems became prime targets for its implementation.

The Integration Policy Model: Stage II

In the eyes of the Northerner, segregation had always been a Southern problem. The Supreme Court's action at first reinforced this belief, since state-sanctioned school segregation was rare outside the South. But events in the 1960's changed this for good. While the modern civil rights movement began in the South, its zenith was reached in the March on Washington in the late summer of 1963. Organized to dramatize the failure of court action to end segregation in the South, the March brought together 250,000 persons in the most impressive organized protest meeting in the history of the United States, and showed President Kennedy and the Congress the deep and massive support for anti-discrimination legislation.

The Congress answered this appeal by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the strongest such act since the Reconstruction period. The Act included strong sanctions against discrimination in education, employment, housing, and voting (the last supplemented by the Vot