Intergroup Attitudes of European American Children Attending Ethnically Homogeneous Schools

Intergroup attitudes were assessed in European American 1st-grade (M = 6.99 years, SD = 0.32) and 4th-grade (M = 10.01 years, SD = 0.36) children (N = 138) attending ethnically homogeneous schools to test hypotheses about racial biases and interracial friendships. An Ambiguous Situations Task and an Intergroup Contact Assessment were administered to all participants. Unlike previous findings with European American children attending heterogeneous schools, children rated minority perpetrators more negatively than majority perpetrators, and friendship as less likely when a minority than a majority perpetrator was portrayed. These findings suggest that intergroup contact contributes to racial bias in children's interpretations of peer dyadic encounters and to judgments about interracial friendships.