Integration or Separation?: A Strategy for Racial Equality

INTEGRATION OR SEPARATION?

Integration or Separation? A STRATEGY FOR RACIAL EQUALITY

Roy L. Brooks

Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 1996

Copyright © 1996 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brooks, Roy L. (Roy Lavon), 1950Integration or separation? : a strategy for racial equality / Roy 1. Brooks. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-674-13295-5 1. Afro-Americans-Civil rights. 2. United StatesRace relations. 3. Black nationalisn1- United States. I. Title. EI85.615.B729 1996 323.1' 196073 -dc20 96-16935 CIP

To George Cole, Joel Kupperman, Wayne Shannon, and Arnold Taylor

Contents

I

Preface

ix

RACIAL INTEGRATION

1

1 Elementary and Secondary Education 2 Higher Education 3 Housing 4 Employment 5 Voting 6 Why Integration Has Failed II

TOTAL SEPARATION

7 Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois 8 Marcus Garvey 9 The Nation of Islam 10 Emigration to Liberia 11 Black Towns in the United States 12 Intra-Racial Conflicts and Racial Romanticism III

LIMITED SEPARATION

13 The Case for a Policy of Limited Separation 14 Elementary and Secondary Education 15 Higher Education 16 Cultural Integration within the Community 17 Economic Integration within the Community 18 Political Power

5 33 47 69 84 104

117 125 132 143 156 168 185 189 199 214 235 244 258 276

Epilogue

282

Notes Index

289 339

Preface

Two persons-one white, the other black-are playing a game of poker. The game has been in progress for some 300 years. One player-the white one-has been cheating during much of this time, but now announces: "from this day forward, there will be a new game with new players and no more cheating." Hopeful but suspicious, the black player responds, "that's great. I've been waiting to hear you say that for 300 years. Let me ask you, what are you going to do with all those poker chips that you have stacked up on your side of the table all these years?" "Well;' said the white player, somewhat bewildered by the question, "they are going to stay right here, of course." "That's unfair!" snaps the black player. "The new white player will benefit from your past cheating. Where's the equality in that?" «But you can't realistically expect me to redistribute the poker chips along racial lines when we are trying to move away from considerations of race and when the future offers no guarantees to anyone;' insists the white player.