Does Anyone Really Want Integration? A Discussion on the Desirability of Integration as a Mitigation Goal

Abstract

The purpose of the chapter is to evaluate the desirability of integration as the end goal of desegregation. The research of Mallach (Inclusionary Housing Programs: Policies and Practices. Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, 1984), Patterson (The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America’s “Racial” Crisis. Civitas Books, New York, 1998), Ogbar (Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (Reconfiguring American Political History). The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2004), Bloom and Martin (Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party. University of California Press, Oakland, CA, 2012), Ivery and Bassett (Reclaiming Integration and the Language of Race in the “Post-Racial Era.” Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, 2015), Jabobus (Inclusionary Housing: Creating and Maintaining Equitable Communities (Policy Focus Reports). Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, MA, 2015) and Stanley (An Impossible Dream? Racial Integration in the United States, Oxford University Press, New York, 2017) informed this focus group agenda. The topic was also shaped by primary source material that included the writings of Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X. The conversation had five main themes. One, while the civil rights legislation of the 1960s has been beneficial to individual African Americans, it has been detrimental to many black communities. Two, the nature of community life is changing for both whites and blacks. Three, the impact of design in bringing about segregation is limited. Four, while there are also constrains on what policy can accomplish, it is the optimal tool in achieving desegregation. Five, true integration is still the desired ultimate goal, yet America lacks the commitment to realize it. In the accompanying essay, “Unity of Research and Social Action: Models for Praxis in St. Louis,” Kenneth Jolly examines the black-nationalist writings in Proud, a St. Louis Black Studies journal published in the 1970s, to showcase the complex relationship between the concept of integration and black self-determination.