Negro Self‐Esteem in a Transitional Society

The focus of the study was on the self‐esteem of Negro adolescents in Southern communities where desegregation of public facilities and schools is occurring. The major emphasis was Negro self‐evaluation in a period of increasing social and academic integration. The Tennessee Self Concept Scale, a standardized Likert‐type instrument, was administered to 134 Negro and 176 Caucasian senior high school students. On 12 of 17 self‐evaluation dimensions the Negro subjects obtained scores significantly below those of whites and on all 17 scales obtained mean scores below the corresponding normative means. Generally, the findings indicated that the Negro students were low in self‐confidence, defensive in their self‐descriptions, confused concerning their self‐identity, and similar in their performance to neurotic and psychotic individuals. Negro students attending integrated schools did not differ significantly from those in segregated settings.