Racial prisms: experimental evidence on families’ race-based evaluations of school safety

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Abstract Racial segregation is an enduring social reality in the United States. Since safety is central to residential and educational decisions, one explanation is, when choosing neighborhoods and schools, individuals use racial composition to signal safety. However, few studies have focused on race-based perceptions of school safety. To examine racialized school safety beliefs, I leverage an original survey experiment with 995 White, Asian, Latine, and Black eighth-grade parents and students. Respondents examined school profiles with randomly varied racial compositions, school and neighborhood safety ratings, metal detector presence, and graduation rates. Among Whites, Asians, and Latines, school racial composition shapes their beliefs about school safety, even when schools have identical safety ratings and security measures. White and Asian respondents believed that Black and Latine schools were less safe than White schools; Latine respondents believed that Black schools were less safe than all other schools; and school racial composition did not influence Black respondents’ beliefs about school safety. Non-Black respondents, with stronger anti-Black and anti-Latine personal racial biases and more knowledge of cultural stereotypes of Black violence, were more likely to express race-based beliefs about school safety. Non-Black respondents’ anti-Black perceptions of school safety contributed to their avoidance of Black schools. These findings suggest that anti-Blackness undergirds the public imagination of physical spaces and has implications for understanding contemporary segregation, discrimination, and racial inequality.