Black and White Self-Esteem: The Urban School Child. by Morris Rosenberg; Roberta G.SimmonsReview by: Carol S. WeismanSocial Forces, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Mar., 1974), p. 424Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2576909 .

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424 / SOCIAL FORCES / vol. 52, mar. 1974

handles by developing several measures of migra- tion intent. Given the quality of the dependent variable and the problematic state of various cross-national indicators of political, social, and economic development, the correlations are quite good. The data consistently show that rates of migration are highest for the more-developed countries, a finding which runs counter to conven- tional wisdom. Other work on the problem, using different samples of countries and indicators of development, shows the same pattern. The Peruvian case study depended too much on two variable analyses; it would have benefitted from an attempt at multivariate analysis. The data are there; how- ever, the intellectual context of the work (econom- ics of education) did not lead to the kind of causal modeling which sociologists have found so useful. The application of explicitly economic variables (e.g., alternative expectations about earn- ings in Peru and the United States) did not explain much of the variation among students. This too is consistent with other sources, which have shown that income variations are not terribly good allo- cators of manpower.

The immediate policy question posed by the brain-drain may have been "solved," at least for the short run, by the sorry state of the Ameri- can research and development enterprise in the 1970s. The long-term intellectual issues persist, and are significantly clarified by the book.

Studies in Social Psychology

BLACK AND WHITE SELF-ESTEEM: THE URBAN

SCHOOL CHILD. By Morris Rosenberg and Roberta G. Simmons. Washington: Ameri- can Sociological Association, Rose Mono- graph Series, 1972. 160 pp. $2.75 (ASA members); $5.00 (non-members).

Reviewer: CAROL S. WEISMAN, Johns Hopkins University

The concept of self-esteem (or its opposite, self- denigration) has enjoyed much attention in the race relations literature, but only recently have researchers begun to investigate it quantitatively, using representative samples of normal popula- tions. The evidence emerging from such investiga- tions reveals two surprises: (1) blacks as a group do tIot consistently score lower than whites on measures of self-esteem, despite the classic social- psychological position describing self-attitudes as reflections of social evaluations; (2) blacks appear to employ other blacks as reference points, rather than evaluating themselves in terms of white norms. Rosenberg's and Simmons' data on 1,988 elementary and secondary school pupils in Balti- more City provide further documentation of the

first point and some important clarification of the second.

On a six-item measure of general feelings of self-satisfaction, blacks tended to score slightly higher than whites of comparable age with the greatest racial difference occurring among senior high school students. The authors successfully con- struct a partial explanation of this finding using three concepts bearing on the question of social comparisons: (1) consonant vs. dissonant racial and social contexts, (2) membership vs. non-mem- bership reference groups, and (3) the perceived attitudes of "significant others." The basic argu- ment is that blacks are more likely than whites to be exposed to relatively homogeneous environ- ments in their schools and neighborhoods. This racial and social homogeneity fosters comparisons with "membership" reference groups only. Since black students therefore tend to evaluate them- selves in terms of people like themselves, oppor- tunities for unfavorable comparisons are decreased, thus inflating self-esteem scores. Further, those factors which are found to be associated with whlite self-esteem (e.g., higher socioeconomic status, stable families, higher grades in school) show little or no relationship to black self-esteem. The strongest correlate of black self-esteem in the study is the students' perceptions of what their significant others (parents, friends, teachers) think of them. And black students are as likely as white students to attribute favorable attitudes to their significant others.

Within this framework, then, the finding that school integration at the senior high level depresses black self-esteem (for example) is explained not only in terms of increased exposure to racial ten- sions, but also in terms of the child's perceptions of his status relative to whites. Sustained social interaction with whites in school is presumed to facilitate cross-race comparisons. The precise con- ditions under which a membership or non-member- ship reference group operates still require specifica- tion, but this study is a step in that direction. I strongly recommend it to anyone with a research interest in this area, and, as a further inducement, I should mention that it is very clearly written.

DISCRIMINATION, PERSONALITY AND ACHIEVE-

MENT: A SURVEY OF NORTHERN BLACKS. By Robert L. Crain and Carol Sachs Weisman. New York: Seminar Press, 1972. 225 pp. $9.95.

Reviewer: MORRIS ROSENBERG, National Insti- tute of Mental Health

It is well known that blacks in northern ghettos are more likely than whites to have low-income, low-status jobs, high-arrest rates, high rates of marital instability, and other manifestations of personal distress or social pathology, but the

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