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I think both the title of this thread and the summary are extremely misleading.</p>
<p>For one, it completely ignores that previous research found “…decreased prejudice among students with different-race roommates — but those who roomed with Asian-Americans, the group that scored the highest on measures of prejudice, became more prejudiced themselves.” That’s a direct quote from the article, and that no one else has quoted this in three pages leads me to suggest that people either didn’t experience any cognitive dissonance between that statement and the title or simply didn’t bother to read the actual article.</p>
<p>As a sidenote, the Times article itself is a bit misleading on that research finding. According to the one of the study’s authors, Dr. James Sidanius, “Exposure to Asian roommates does not increase prejudice against Asians. Rather, the data show that exposure to Asian roommates increases prejudice against blacks and Latinos, and decreases friendship heterogeneity and intergroup comfort among students of all ethnicities.”
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<p>As an Asian, I know about this, and this is often a cultural thing. Our cultures often prize homogenity, and having a roommate of another race is anything but homogenous. I know, for example, that my parents still use the n-word when referring to African-Americans, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.</p>