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The individual and “the general situation”: The tension barometer and the race problem at the University of Chicago, 1947–1954
Author(s) -
Gordon Leah N.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
journal of the history of the behavioral sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1520-6696
pISSN - 0022-5061
DOI - 10.1002/jhbs.20408
Subject(s) - race (biology) , oppression , injustice , sociology , individualism , gender studies , barometer , white (mutation) , social science , political science , politics , law , biochemistry , chemistry , physics , quantum mechanics , gene
This article explains how social theories that posited white attitudes as the root of racial injustice gained traction in postwar social thought. Examining the production of a “tension barometer,” an attitude survey that scholars from the University of Chicago's Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations created to predict interracial violence, I chart vigorous debate over the nature and causes of racial oppression in the critical postwar decades. Available—and unavailable—social scientific frameworks, activists” interests, and emerging anticommunism, the Committee's history shows, created an environment where individualistic conceptions of the race problem won out, despite critique. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.