<p>"Several recent studies, at Ohio State and elsewhere, have found that having a roommate of a different race can reduce prejudice, diversify friendships and even boost black students academic performance. But, the research found, such relationships are more stressful and more likely to break up than same-race pairings.</p>
<p>As universities have grown more diverse, and interracial roommate assignments are more common, social scientists have looked to them as natural field experiments that can provide insights on race relations....</p>
<p>Russell H. Fazio, an Ohio State psychology professor who has studied interracial roommates there and at Indiana University, discovered an intriguing academic effect. In a study analyzing data on thousands of Ohio State freshmen who lived in dorms, he found that black freshmen who came to college with high standardized test scores earned better grades if they had a white roommate even if the roommates test scores were low. The roommates race had no effect on the grades of white students or low-scoring black students. Perhaps, the study speculated, having a white roommate helps academically prepared black students adjust to a predominantly white university...."</p>
<p>My son’s high school was like the United Nations. I can truly say my son is ‘color blind’ when it comes to peoples skin color and/or nationality.</p>
<p>OTOH, my HS was nick named “ivory snow”, I think there were 2 black kids out of nearly 2K kids. I think that 30+ years later, that has changed significantly (average SAT scores have consistently gone down at this school as well over the past 30 years)</p>
<p>This is new to me: " In a study analyzing data on thousands of Ohio State freshmen who lived in dorms, he found that black freshmen who came to college with high standardized test scores earned better grades if they had a white roommate — even if the roommate’s test scores were low."</p>
<p>I wonder if the researchers were able to look at SES as part of the study. I associate higher test scores with a higher socioeconomic status. It doesn’t surprise me that people from a higher SES would earn higher grades; they likely came from better funded school districts.</p>
<p>On a side note, living in an incredibly diverse suite has been one of the big pluses of my son’s first year of college.</p>
<p>The reason I didn’t think the idea was new was because I sent my kids to a pre-school that specialized in multi-culture and extreme range of SES. I did that because I had learned somewhere that it benefitted child development and learning. My observation from the pre-school experience was that it was the low SES and minorities who benefitted most from the experience.</p>
<p>I would expect the same situation to apply at any level of learning.</p>
<p>My twins were hoping to go to a college where they would be around a multi-cultural group although they know they can never duplicate their neighborhood/school. We lucked out being on a street with old/young, Asian, Black, White, Jewish (Hasidic and Reform)Indian and 1 gay couple. Growing up like this, little had to be said, they just “lived it” and with no one telling them racist things, they were hurt to listen to others do it later in life. It shows that “bubbles” aren’t always harmful, but they do harbor views from that bubble sometimes. My daughters just met a young woman from a neighboring town that said she never really talked to one minority her whole life, her school/camps etc. were all white.
Maybe she will have a more well-rounded experience in college.</p>
<p>“I wonder if the researchers were able to look at SES as part of the study. I associate higher test scores with a higher socioeconomic status. It doesn’t surprise me that people from a higher SES would earn higher grades; they likely came from better funded school districts.”</p>
<p>It’s typical for high scoring blacks to be high SES just like is typically the case with whites, so it’s likely the high scoring blacks in the study were high SEs. The below was interesting, too. </p>
<p>"The roommate’s race had no effect on the grades of white students or low-scoring black students. "</p>
<p>I suspect that the effects, if any, apply only to entering freshmen.</p>
<p>Upperclass roommates tend to be either people who are already good friends or people who don’t know each other at all and have no particular desire to get to know each other because they have friends elsewhere but weren’t able to arrange to live with them for one reason or another.</p>
<p>For me it was merely attending college that changed my perception of others. I grew up in a small town in the midwest which had almost no diversity (pretty much 100% white, european descent and Christian) and the first time I actually had an opportunity to meet people of other races,religions,cultures etc was when I attended college.</p>
<p>It’s different now for my kids. We live in the DC suburbs in a very diverse area, and their friendships already reflect that.</p>