“A Mirror of the School”: Representation, Interracial Interaction, and Stereotyping in High School Yearbooks

• In Event: Racial Integration, Belonging and Gaps Across States, Districts and Schools

Abstract

We use data from high school yearbooks published between 2000 and 2010 in a large urban public school district to generate a new longitudinal measure of school racial climate. By coding yearbook photographs representing groups of students and aggregating those codes, we measure the extent to which students of various racial/ethnic groups are represented in the yearbook, the degree of interracial interaction depicted in the yearbook, and the presence of racial stereotyping. Our preliminary analyses seek to validate these measures of school racial climate and investigate the degree variation in climate over time and across schools.

Authors

• Emma Britton Miller, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Thurston Domina, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Deven E. Carlson, University of Oklahoma