Integration,Desegregation and the Work of the Past

Segregation Today

The image of George Wallace, delivering his inaugural address from the portico of the Alabama capitol fifty years ago, recalls a time when segregation was legal, openly defended and Southern. Of course, segregation was never only a matter of legal codes and crudely painted signs, and it certainly was never only Southern; but Wallace's declaration that ‘I draw the line in the dust’ and his warnings about ‘communistic amalgamation’ seem safely archaic in an age that is fiercely post-racial, the age of Obama. It is easy today to miss the fact that when Wallace looked forward to ‘segregation tomorrow’ and prophesied ‘segregation forever', his appeal to the worst impulses of his constituents contained as much prescience as bluster (Wallace, 1963). But it did. Today, as Elizabeth Anderson demonstrates, racial segregation affects citizens from one end of the US to the other. No longer written into law or celebrated as part of a cherished culture, ¹ segregation is nonetheless sustained by color-blind legal norms and public discourse. It defines where Americans live, what they do and what resources are available to them. It is ‘the linchpin of categorical inequality’ (Anderson, 2010, p. 16).

A masterful contribution to the growing body of scholarship on the entrenchment and disastrous consequences of post-civil rights era racial segregation, Anderson's The Imperative of Integration more than lives up to its title. Anderson is both methodical and passionate in laying out her case for the necessity of pursuing integration as a democratic ideal. Her book inspires – both in the range of materials it weaves together, and in its capacity to excavate and revive an aspiration that has been buried in ‘the grave of the Civil Rights Movement’ (Anderson, 2010, p. 1). For anyone who approaches integration as a largely accomplished fact or dismisses it as an unrealistic dream or rejects it as assimilation-in-disguise, Anderson requires that we think again. I cannot do justice to the force of her argument as a whole or to the wealth of evidence she marshals in its support, and I will not try. Instead, I will highlight very briefly two of the ways in which Imperative presses readers to think differently about racial justice, and linger somewhat longer on two reservations about integration as a democratic ideal.

Reviving Integration

Ranging across political science, economics, sociology, psychology, policy studies, legal studies, philosophy and other disciplines, Imperative exposes how segregation produces staggering (and, in many domains, growing) levels of material inequality between black and white Americans. Where desegregation, assimilation and color-blindness fall short, or even prove counter-productive, racial integration offers an avenue for the democratic reconstruction of American society. Desegregation, Anderson remarks, is necessary but not sufficient; it entails the removal of legal barriers, but not ‘the full participation on terms of equality of socially significant groups in all domains of society’ (Anderson, 2010, p. 113). Although sensitive to concerns about integration as an assimilationist project, Anderson's argument emphasizes the degree to which it is the habits of the privileged that must be changed, and she notes that integration does not require the destruction of racial identity per se or the elimination of black institutions and communities. Anderson also sharpens our understanding of the dangers of color-blindness, showing with intricate care why it is ‘conceptually confused, empirically misguided, and lacking a morally coherent rationale’ (Anderson, 2010, p. 155).

Of the book's many accomplishments, the first I want to consider is how Anderson lays out her case. It is not sufficient, she shows, to claim to engage in non-ideal theorizing; what is needed is a careful, empirical account of that non-ideal world, an account grounded in close study of the most pressing social problems and the consequences of different approaches to those problems (Anderson, 2010, p. 180). In this regard, Imperative is exemplary. For example, the chapter on ‘racial stigma and discrimination’ both complicates dominant understandings of how discrimination works and reorients democratic thinkers to reckon with discrimination as a ‘tool of segregation’ (Anderson, 2010, p. 64). Patiently, Anderson tracks the intricate connections whereby discrete acts and attitudes interact with established structures of opportunity and power to reinforce the subordination of black citizens. Imperative also balances the brief for integration with an acknowledgment of its costs – especially those that must be borne by African Americans. As she notes: ‘Every advance in the history of the struggle for black equality has been divisive, in the sense of arousing white resentment’ (Anderson, 2010, p. 170; emphasis in the original). Not only can integrative policies be stressful, but they can be violent and even deadly. In this sense, racial integration is not a minimalist requirement or an end that will happen naturally over time, but an ideal that is deeply threatening to many Americans (especially white Americans), and that must be fought for and won and fought for again.

One of the surprises of Anderson's book is its demand that democratic theorists reconsider affirmative action. While debates about affirmative action seemed omnipresent in philosophical and legal literatures on racial justice in the late twentieth century, the evisceration of race-conscious policies by the courts, the passage of anti-affirmative action referenda and the broad cultural power of post-racialism have undercut the appeal of affirmative action as a vehicle for democratic aspirations. Anderson explains why we need to think again. Distinguishing her model for integrative affirmative action from compensatory, diversity and discrimination-blocking models, Anderson (2010, p. 148) insists that an inclusive citizenry depends on Americans’ capacity to ‘practice racial integration'. This practice, she argues, reduces stigmatization, improves citizens’ ability to interact across racial lines and heightens the accountability of individuals who would otherwise dismiss or evade issues of racial justice. By envisioning an integrated polity as its goal, Anderson's model takes race into account explicitly and encourages creative thinking about how to shift from a defensive posture, which has largely focused on saving some semblance of affirmative action in higher education or tepid efforts to encourage diversity in employment, to an expansive vision of racially mixed institutions in all domains of American life.

‘Do I Really Want to be Integrated into a Burning House?’

Racial segregation is clearly wrong, but there may be reasons still to ask whether integration is as obviously right as Anderson contends. James Baldwin's skepticism on this point, although articulated in the age of Wallace rather than Obama, raises two kinds of questions about Anderson's case for integration today (Baldwin, 1963, p. 94). First, dramatic though his language may be, Baldwin's ‘burning house’ metaphor presses readers to think hard about the national ‘we’ that is a repository of Anderson's hopes for a more just future. Second, by formulating the idea of integration as a personal dilemma, Baldwin gestures toward what is missed when we approach segregation as a problem to be solved.

According to Anderson (2010, p. 184), successful racial integration depends on the development of a ‘superordinate group identity, a “we,” from the perspective of which cooperative goals are framed, and appropriate policies selected and implemented'. She criticizes ‘black nationalists’ and ‘left multiculturalists’ who play into the hands of conservatives by persisting in the naïve belief that ‘racial identities [are] inherently more authentic and worthy of emotional investment’ than national identity (Anderson, 2010, p. 2 and 188) and envisions a future in which racial justice and self-segregation can coexist. ‘Identity politics, in the form of ethnoracial nationalism, was a necessary moment in the struggle for racial equality’ (Anderson, 2010, p. 188), but that moment is over. If The Imperative of Integration is attentive to the dangers of subnational and diasporic identifications, however, it remains curiously silent about the perils of national identification. One need not be a black nationalist or a left multiculturalist to raise serious questions about the work that the national ‘we’ is supposed to do. Furthermore, while Imperative offers evidence of the constructive effects of local forms of interaction, it provides no account of how national identification will generate cross-racial solidarity or enable whites to reckon more fully with black humanity. The historical record offers at least as much reason for wariness as support for this hope. The idea of cultivating a sense of belonging to a single ‘in-group’ (Anderson, 2010, p. 165) also triggers concerns about the production of out-group identities. These might include forms of secondary marginalization, distinctions within marginalized groups that enable the integration of the most respectable members of the group at the expense of the most vulnerable (Cohen, 1999); they might also involve heightened antagonism toward immigrants, non-citizens and anyone seen as ‘foreign'. Finally, prioritizing a national identity effaces the historical importance of race as a political concept – both as an instrument of oppressive power and as a source for liberationist thinking and action.

Baldwin's formulation also registers a worry about what gets lost when segregation is approached as a problem to be solved. Without minimizing the force of Anderson's arguments about the relationship between specific forms of segregation and measurable harms or suggesting that Americans do not desperately need policy measures designed to dismantle those forms, I want to explore how his literary approach, with its openness to insoluble dilemmas and tragic inheritances, puts pressure on Anderson's pragmatism. One way to illustrate what I mean is to consider the gap between W. E. B. Du Bois’ 1898 inquiry into the causes and possible solutions to ‘the Negro Problems’ and his famous query in 1903: ‘How does it feel to be a problem?' ² Where the former lays out an agenda for scientific study of the grim situation of African Americans after Reconstruction, the latter troubles that agenda. Writing not only about problems but as a problem, Du Bois evokes a unique history of degraded labor and human devaluation that is continually reproduced in the everyday existence of black citizens. Where integration emphasizes the positive, forward-looking project of constituting an egalitarian, multiracial citizenry, ‘How does it feel to be a problem?’ interjects an alternative temporality and a phenomenology of racialized experience that exceeds and disturbs the project of enfolding the descendants of slaves and the children of slavery's beneficiaries into a national whole. Against Anderson's concern that focusing on injustices of the past is a distraction and likely a counter-productive one (see the discussion of reparations, Anderson, 2010, p. 229, n.19), Du Bois’ question intimates why looking backward is essential to looking ahead. It also forces a reckoning with the slippage through which problems of racial justice are refigured so that African Americans are mistaken for the problems they have had to confront. As David Brion Davis observes, this slippage has a long lineage and is fundamentally tied to American identity:

Although Anderson's argument attacks this logic from multiple angles, it cannot entirely evade the undemocratic effects, sedimented over generations, of efforts to remedy ‘the Great American Problem'.

Conclusion

I would like to close with a few comments about the acquittal of George Zimmerman. Regardless of one's views about what happened in February 2012 or in the courtroom the following summer, the killing of Trayvon Martin both testifies to the urgency of Anderson's argument and suggests reasons for caution about integration as an ideal. That the history and ongoing practices of residential segregation contributed to Martin's death is hard to deny. Whatever his own racial views or background, Zimmerman inhabits a world in which the presence of an unarmed black male teenager in a middle-class suburb could be interpreted as a legitimate cause for alarm and in which he could reasonably expect to be shielded from punishment for taking violent action. As Anderson's argument discloses so effectively, segregation is implicated in the development of the stigmatizing stereotypes that enabled Zimmerman to see a criminal – or claim to have seen one – when he encountered Martin. Imperative also deepens our understanding of what happened after the killing, alerting readers to the causes and consequences of a jury that included no African Americans. Integrated juries, Anderson argues, are not only epistemically more competent to deliberate about cases in which race is at issue, but they are more likely to address racial questions as matters of serious concern (Anderson, 2010, pp. 129–31).

If segregation played a crucial part in the killing of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of George Zimmerman, how well does integration serve as a response? In an essay entitled ‘Why the Zimmerman Jury Failed Us', Lawrence Bobo (2013) provides a possible answer. Like Anderson, Bobo advocates racially diverse juries; and like her, he calls on his readers to organize politically and to engage in the kinds of tough, cross-racial conversations from which segregated lives too readily protect most Americans. But there are notable points of contrast. First, Bobo's declaration that the jury ‘failed us’ is generatively nonspecific. Does he mean African Americans? All Americans? Citizens concerned about injustice? Human beings more broadly? Bobo does not say. By invoking an ambiguous ‘we', however, he leaves open the possibility of speaking at multiple levels of identification – and he leaves open the conflicts between them. Further, while he is reluctant to endorse Derrick Bell's conclusion that racism is a permanent feature of American life (Bell, 1993) Bobo's deep consciousness of the ways that the past lives on in the present and of the vulnerability of African American citizens to anti-black violence – both official and unofficial – indicates why blackness remains a vital political category. ³ His reading of the acquittal joins it to other events from 2013: the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, the possible elimination of affirmative action in higher education, and the continuing practice of stop-and-frisk. Bobo, in other words, sustains the tension between Anderson's imperative and Baldwin's burning house.

By disclosing the mechanisms through which segregation perpetuates racial inequality and undermines democracy in the US, Anderson may succeed most brilliantly in building a case for a political project that she does not pursue: a politics of desegregation. Where Imperative defines ‘desegregation’ narrowly as the abolition of legal forms of racial division (Anderson, 2010, p. 113), I want to suggest that a broader definition might serve Anderson's ends in a way that keeps past and present more fully in view. By lingering in the negative, desegregation heeds the caution expressed by generations of African American political activists and social critics, who have ample reason to be skeptical about whether Americans are capable of remaking ourselves as an integrated whole. To resist the ideal of integration, furthermore, is not to undermine the importance of ending segregation or of imagining alternative forms of social and political life. The case for desegregation is compatible with the non-ideal theorizing Anderson enjoins and the experimental spirit her work embodies so beautifully. Heeding the imperative of desegregation, finally, may enable American citizens to revive both the utopian energies and the bitter insights that animated the Civil Rights Movement.