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Sarah Barfels "The Impact of School Racial Composition on the Occupational Integration and Occupational Attainment of African Americans: A Multilevel Modeling Approach" Recent court decisions have contributed to the large-scale abandonment of integration efforts and the rapid resegregation of African American students into often poor, predominantly minority schools (Orfield 2001). However, judgments about the success or failure of school desegregation are premature without first evaluating the long-term impact of school racial composition on the status attainment and integration of African Americans (Braddock, Dawkins, and Trent 1994; Wells and Crain 1994). This paper investigates whether, as predicted by perpetuation theory (Braddock 1980, 1985), integrated schooling increases the likelihood that African American students will enter 'traditionally' white occupations, work in more racially integrated workplaces, and enter higher socioeconomic status occupations. Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) on data from the sophomore cohort of the High School and Beyond (HS&B) survey, I find that both black men and black women are more likely to work in racially integrated organizations as a result of exposure to desegregated schooling. Further, the fact that the occupational prestige of black men increases as a function of school proportion white indicates that school desegregation may help reduce the perpetuation of institutionalized occupational stratification by race. The addition of school-level variables hypothesized to interact with school racial composition- busing to achieve racial balance and court-ordered desegregation- do not change the results. Future research should explore how relative rates of participation in extracurricular activities or academic tracks within schools may magnify or depress the positive impact of school racial composition on the occupational integration and attainment of African Americans. |