‘Color-blind' and ‘color-conscious' leadership: A case study of desegregated suburban schools in the USA

Leadership and diversity are invariably connected, as US schools are under pressure to educate an increasingly diverse population. Creating an inclusive school requires school leaders to respond to any intergroup conflict that may occur among an ethnically-diverse group of schools' participants. The study on which this article is based examined European–American and African–American administrators' responses to intergroup conflict arising from cultural incongruities in desegregated suburban US schools. The researchers employed intergroup theory to understand how both African–American and European–American school leaders perceived and negotiated sources of intergroup conflict and how this affected their potential for creating an inclusive school environment.