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Improving Inter-group Relations Among Youth
The Workshop on Research to Improve Intergroup Relations Among Youth highlighted the findings of 16 research projects on intergroup relations among youth, each of which received initial funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1996, as part of its research initiative on race and ethnic relations. This appendix, drawn from the principal investigators' own materials, describes each project in more detail. The study of interethnic and interracial interactions and relationships among youth, also called intergroup relations, has become a critical, complex, and challenging field in recent years. America's changing demographic profile has forced a redefinition of the dynamics of diversity. Although a substantial amount of research on relations among people of different backgrounds was conducted in the late 1960s and the 1970s, most of this work slowed down in the 1980s due in part to a shift in funding priorities. A large proportion of the research on intergroup relations from the 1960s and the 1970s focused exclusively on relations between whites and blacks. Although work on black-white relations is still relevant and extremely important, recent demographic changes make it equally important to understand relations among a much wider variety of groups, including those among different minority groups. As Schofield suggests, even if demographic change had not occurred, earlier research would be outdated because of the substantial shifts in racial attitudes that have occurred during the past 20 years on the part of both majority and minority group members. According to Schofield and workshop participants, the current literature needs to be updated and expanded (Schofield, 1989). |
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