INTEREST IN JUSTICE IS A CONSTANT FOR MELLON PREDOC

Experiential learning programs like Bryn Mawr's Praxis expose students to the working world outside the classroom. For Mellon Predoctoral Fellow in the Social Sciences Carla Shedd, a Praxis internship she undertook as a Smith College undergraduate led her right back to the academic world: she decided that she'd rather pursue her interest in social justice as a Ph.D. than as a lawyer.

She is nearly there. Her year at Bryn Mawr is helping her ease the transition from graduate student to faculty member as she finishes a dissertation that examines perceptions of the criminal justice system among urban youth in Chicago. With five scholarly publications to her credit already, she expects to earn her Ph.D. in sociology from Northwestern University this June.

As an African American growing up in the heart of the Deep South, says Shedd, it was "easy to be immersed in and concerned about historical and contemporary issues of civil and human rights. I grew up wanting to be a Supreme Court Justice."

Born in Jackson, Miss., Shedd attended Mississippi's Piney Woods School, one of just a few historically black boarding schools remaining in the United States. The move to Smith required some adjustment in both culture and climate, Shedd says, "but I am grateful to have received my college education in an environment where the central focus is on women and their educational achievement." After spending her junior year in an exchange program at Spelman College, she went to Washington, D.C., for an internship sponsored by Smith's Praxis program. She worked at The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank that focuses on policy issues of concern to communities of color.

"While I was there, I was exposed to wonderful researchers who were doing work on race, law and injustice. I then knew I would have to get a Ph.D. in order to be able to pursue the same line of work. I continued to nurture my interest in law by taking my third year of coursework at Northwestern's law school and earning a certificate in Law and Social Science. However, I knew I did not want to practice law; I wanted to do research and teach about issues of race, crime and inequality."

Her dissertation uses survey data from 25,000 students at public high schools in Chicago, as well as about 40 in-depth interviews, to examine "the creation, cultivation and effects of youth perceptions of injustice."

"We asked them what they thought about the legitimacy of the law, whether the law is applied fairly, and how contact with the criminal justice system shapes those perceptions," Shedd says. "We also looked at the reciprocal effect perceptions of injustice have on the likelihood that they will act out or engage in delinquency."

Her findings tease out subtle differences in perceptions of injustice that correlate not only to students' race and their contacts with police, but to context — particularly the level of racial integration at their schools.

"We found that there is a racial gradient in perceptions of injustice," Shedd says. "Black students tend to have a greater perception of injustice than Latinos, who in turn have greater perceptions of injustice than Asians or whites."

"All students' perceptions of injustice are heightened by hostile contacts with police," she says, "but that factor tends to be considerably more important for Latinos than for African Americans. Thus police contact in general makes blacks' and Latinos' perceptions more alike."

An especially interesting finding relates to the racial composition of the students' schools. A certain level of integration intensifies African-American and Latino students' mistrust of the criminal-justice system.

Shedd says this finding is an example of what social researchers term "relative subordination."

"In a racially homogeneous context, students don't have a standard of comparison for the treatment they get from police, and harassment or hostility may be perceived as more or less the norm. But students in integrated settings can give anecdotal evidence of race-based differential treatment by teachers and local police. This heightens their perceptions of injustice."

As the proportion of white students rises, so do the black and Latino students' perception of injustice — up to a point. In the few Chicago schools where the proportion of white students was as high as about one-third to one-half, the perception of injustice began to decline, she found.

"This implies that the integration of whites into public schools must reach critical levels that approach parity before benefits are realized among both African-American and Latino youth."

Shedd is teaching one course during her tenure here. "Race and Place in Urban America," cross-listed in sociology and growth and structure of cities, "analyzes the relationship between race/ethnicity and spatial inequality, emphasizing the institutions, processes and mechanisms that shape the lives of urban dwellers."

"It exposes students to major sociological works dealing with race, segregation, gentrification and crime — lots of key points come together in this course," she says.

Shedd says that it is always a challenge to get people to talk openly about race and urban issues.

"People here are from all different kinds of backgrounds. They are in different positions relative to these issues, and they don't want to offend one another. But we have to grapple with issues like this for change to happen."

Shedd finds students at Bryn Mawr very highly motivated and bright, she says. Her professional training and all of her teaching experience have been in a large research university, and she appreciates the chance to have a "point of comparison" as she begins her career. "It's nice to have the experience of this very different setting as a faculty member," she says. She is, of course, familiar with the liberal-arts women's college as an undergraduate. Her memories of Smith, she says, "make my current experience at Bryn Mawr familiar, comfortable and all the more enriching!"

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