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C an men and women have equal levels of voice and authority in deliberation or does deliberation exacerbate gender inequality? Does increasing women's descriptive representation in deliberation increase their voice and authority? We answer these questions and move beyond the debate by hypothesizing that the group's gender composition interacts with its decision rule to exacerbate or erase the inequalities. We test this hypothesis and various alternatives, using experimental data with many groups and links between individuals' attitudes and speech. We find a substantial gender gap in voice and authority, but as hypothesized, it disappears under unanimous rule and few women, or under majority rule and many women. Deliberative design can avoid inequality by fitting institutional procedure to the social context of the situation.

George Bush opposes gun control and favors executing Hortons. I would guess Willy [sic] Horton doesn't. (A white focusgroup participant, Texas, October 1988) 1

Despite the heroic efforts and real achievements provided by the Civil Rights movement, the United States remains today a profoundly segregated society. Here we investigate whether racial isolation affects the extent to which prejudice becomes insinuated into the opinions white Americans express on matters of racial policy. Analyzing national survey data well suited to this question, we find that racial isolation generally enhances the impact of prejudice on opinion; that the political potency of prejudice increases insofar as racial isolation prevails in whites' everyday lives. In the conclusion of the article, we locate our results in the broader literature on segregation and draw out their implications for racial politics into the future. F'or all the substantial accomplishments of the Civil Rights movement, the United States remains today in many respects a profoundly segregated society. Jim Crow is gone, swept aside by federal legislation, Supreme Court decisions, and waves of protests and demonstrations. But in communities across the country, blacks and whites are separated more completely now than they were at the turn of the century (Farley and Allen 1987; Farley and Frey 1992; Massey and Denton 1993). Current levels of racial separation are striking: in large American cities, roughly 80% of black residents would have to resettle in other neighborhoods in order for racial balance to be achieved (Farley and Allen 1987). Segregation has diminished somewhat during the last 20 years (Farley and Allen 1987; Farley and Frey 1992), but even should this trend continue, it would take nearly a half century for the level of black-white residential integration to creep up to the level already attained by Hispanic Americans, themselves no strangers to segregation (Farley and Allen 1987; Farley and Frey 1992). With evidence of this sort in mind, Massey and Denton (1993) adopt, as we do, the provocative term "apartheid" to describe the racial segregation that is a central and continuing feature of contemporary American social life.

Although deliberation has a central place in democratic theory, scholars know little about how it actually works. Most deliberative theorists emphasize the many good consequences of deliberation. By contrast, Mansbridge suggests that deliberation in certain circumstances may exacerbate conflict. Scholarship on racial politics suggests that each hypothesis is complicated by implicitly racial language. Using a quasiexperiment, we contrast the rhetoric in two town meetings about school desegregation: a segregated meeting with homogeneous interests, in which segregated Whites unanimously argued against desegregation, and an integrated meeting with heterogeneous interests, in which segregated Whites argued against integrated Whites, Hispanics, and African Americans. We find that (a) deliberation at the segregated meeting maintained consensus among segregated Whites; (b) these citizens used coded rhetoric that appeared universal, well-reasoned, and focused on the common good, but in fact advanced their group interest; (c) deliberation at the integrated meeting maintained the conflict between segregated Whites and others; and (d) there, rhetoric that seemed universal to segregated Whites was decoded by the integrated audience as racist and group interested. We highlight the problem posed by the contested meaning of language and suggest ways to make deliberation more effective.Keyword s deliberation, implicit meaning, public discussion, school desegregation , race, racism Deliberation has been lauded as a central virtue of democracy by thinkers as diverse as Mill, Madison, the anti-federalists, and Calhoun (Fishkin, 1991). Many contemporary theorists closely link deliberation with healthy democracy. Yet, scholars know little about how deliberation in fact works. In this article, we focus on public meetings about school desegregation. Our aim is to understand how citizens publicly and collectively discuss a salient issue when the outcome directly affects their lives. We hope to find out how deliberative democracy operates on the ground, when citizens use it to resolve an issue that counts.Our analysis rests on a pair of contrasting town meetings in New Jersey, each attended by several hundred people. One meeting, in the town of Leonia, was composed entirely of White participants who opposed desegregation (the "segregated" meeting). The other meeting, in the town of Englewood, was attended by a racially diverse set of participants who had conflicting preferences on integration (the "integrated" meeting). The context of deliberation thus varies from common to conflicting interests and from an all-White Tali Mendelberg is Assistant Professor of Politics at Princeton University. John Oleske is a law student at New York University .Address correspondence to Tali Mendelberg, Department of Politics, Princeton University , Princeton, NJ 08544-1012, USA. E-mail: talim@princeto n.edu 170 Tali Mendelberg and John Oleske audience to a racially integrated one. We derive expectations about these meetings from deliberative theory and f...