Gordon Allport's contact hypothesis is one of the most useful concepts for studying and understanding race relations. (Pettigrew. 1998). While at Harvard, Allport became interested in the contact hypothesis. It states that, under certain conditions, contact between whites and blacks can reduce the racial prejudice of whites. (Purcell. 2004) For the most part, past research on the contact hypothesis looked at interracial contact in residential, occupational, or military settings. Allport believed that prejudice, although hard to change, was not impossible to change. In the military…
