Forced integration backfires when higher-status groups make interlopers uncomfortable

Evidence

I do not mean to suggest here that segregation is an innate and therefore inevitable human tendency. It is surely true that among lower-status persons segregation is more likely to be imposed than preferred. Nevertheless, as recent attempts at school and neighborhood racial integration in the United States have demonstrated, the higher-status group can make life so uncomfortable for the “integrator” that being with one’s own-however despised one’s own may be-becomes psychologically preferable. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 1131

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Anti-hierarchical movement structures fail to integrate and educate new members