This research studies how the status characteristics of adults and children affect adults' ability to raise a child's expectations of his own performance at school-like tasks. White adults are effective at raising expectations of white children or black children in mixed racial work groups; black adults are effective with black children but apparently not with white children in mixed groups. These results, both consistent and inconsistent with previous findings for homogeneous groups, are interpreted in light of the children's relative position in SES with respect to members of their own race. Unlike most research related to the effects of desegregation, this research examines both black children's and white children's reactions to black adults.