Fighting alongside Black soldiers at the Bulge changed White soldiers’ racial attitudes

Evidence

In 1949, Stouffer et al.’s extensive study of “the American Soldier” provided the first massive field test of intergroup contact’s effects. Using an ingenious quasi-experimental design, Stouffer showed that the experience of fighting side-by-side with African American soldiers in the desperate Battle of the Bulge during the winter of 1944–5 sharply changed the attitudes of White American soldiers. Though limited to the fighting situation, these altered attitudes were found among southerners as well as northerners, and among officers as well as enlisted men. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1662

Categorization

• SHARE: A striking historical finding worth sending to someone interested in military history or integration studies — that battlefield proximity shifted racial attitudes even among southerners.
• QUESTION: What exactly made the Bulge experience different? Could the extreme shared peril be the operative variable rather than mere contact?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1662