Desegregated housing projects reduced White residents’ prejudice toward Black neighbors.

Evidence

In a notable example of this work, Deutsch and Collins (1951) interviewed White housewives across different public housing projects with a design that Campbell and Stanley (1963) later labeled “quasi-experimental.” Two housing projects in Newark assigned Black and White residents to separate buildings. Two comparable housing projects in New York City desegregated residents by making apartment assignments irrespective of race or personal preference. The authors found that White women in the desegregated projects had far more optimal contact with their Black neighbors. Moreover, they held their Black neighbors in higher esteem and expressed greater support for interracial housing. — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Linda R. Tropp, A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup…, 16

Categorization

• QUESTION: How did the Newark segregated projects compare to New York desegregated ones controlling for neighborhood characteristics? Worth checking the original Deutsch and Collins design.
• ADDENDUM: This is a classic empirical foundation for intergroup contact theory, adjacent to the Grafting & Growth article’s treatment of infrastructure, though via social rather than physical infrastructure.
• SHARE: A colleague working on housing policy and segregation would find this 1951 natural experiment fascinatingly relevant today.