We examine the effect of the school racial composition of teachers and the school racial composition of students on the job satisfaction, school commitment, and career commitment of teachers in 405 schools in a large urban school system. We rely on arguments from relational demography theory, racial prejudice literature, and status characteristics theory, which identify variables that mediate this observed relationship between racial composition and satisfaction and commitment. Consistent with the nonsymmetry argument, racial composition effects are found for White but not Black teachers. The most support is found for the relational demography and racial prejudice claims that White teachers “mismatched” to contexts where their race is not dominant experience greater role conflict, less autonomy, inadequate resources, and reduced coworker support. These work conditions then reduce their job satisfaction and school commitment. Commitment to one's teaching career is not affected by school racial composition, however.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.