title: The individual and "the general situation": the tension barometer and the race problem at the University of Chicago, 1947-1954.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Stanford University, USA.
authors.forename: Leah N
authors.initials: LN
authors.lastname: Gordon
mesh_terms: D001741:Black or African American / Q000266:history*; D001290:Attitude; D002641:Chicago; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D011287:Prejudice; D011822:Race Relations / Q000266:history*; D044469:Racial Groups; D012919:Social Behavior; D012931:Social Environment; D012938:Social Perception; D014495:Universities / Q000266:history*; D044465:White People / Q000266:history*