It seems as if the article answers the question pretty comprehensively in the opening paragraphs:
There is no real integration, and there never was.
Wise Son you have a point. I think the racial climate in America has changed from less empathy for AA and more of making a mockery of AA.
Integration was, and still is, a wrong headed strategy. What's with the preoccupation with being a part of white institutions? Think about it. A guy, or gal, goes to a black college and then fights for the right to go to a white college? Here is another one: A guy plays in a black baseball league only to fight to play in a white baseball league. We have forsaken black institutions in order to be absorbed by white institutions.
The integration mindset constitutes a HUGE irony: A strategy that claims to empower black people by destroying their institutions. That makes no sense at all. Strange how its greatest advocates (DuBois and MLK) attended black colleges. What's even stranger is the fact that DuBois's alma mater (Fisk) is in dire financial straits.
Its time to change strategy. We must first repudiate integration and remember that the likes of Alvin Poussaint are idiots. I'll even go so far as to say that DuBois and MLK screwed up. Let's be honest with ourselves and assess success of this strategy. Integration, the hallmark of the Civil Rights movement, has been a miserable failure.
Instead of continuing with the DuBoisian approach, which has de-evolved into the incarnations of Jesse and Al, we need to switch to the Booker T., Garvey, Elijah Muhammad track. I'm not advocating the black nationalist aspect of this philosophy but rather the self-help ideas with constitute the foundation of that approach.
If we look at Black America's current situation, we can conclude that things should be much better than they are. Its time to part ways with the Civil Rights/ Integrationist philosophies AND acknowledge them for the failures they are. And let us not forget the legions of white liberals who come among us that talk that tolerance and diversity game (which is nothing but another form of Civil Rights/ Integrationist rhetoric) only to use and commandeer us (Black people and their resources) for their movements. And I am sure that many of us can recall a white liberal or two who talks "that talk" only to display a bizarre and racist condescension to black folks. If you doubt me, just consider how white liberals use their money to control the NAACP.
i live in the south and i can say that i don't think integration is all that successful, where i live it's almost like the black community self segregates.
of course there are those of us who are friends with people of other races and actually even *gasp* go to each others homes for dinner... but it's really not that common. it's a shame really.
and the most segregated day of the week seems to be Sunday morning. churches are notoriously either white churches or black churches.
i don't think the integration experiment was very successful.
Intergration has worked well. I never experienced a black bustop or violence from the KKK. There is more opportunity now for African Americans than ever without racist laws. The real problem is self destruction. The white man cannot make a man start a marajuanna habit or make a man get his gilfriend pregnant before he is married. I work for 10 dollars an hour but I am very happy and I take care of my children who live with me. One of my children is adopted because her mother was addicted to drugs. Her African American mother and father abandoned her. This is the self destruction I talk about. Black millionares, Polititions, Increacing Interracial marriage and Interracial adoption are sighns that the White suprimacy of the past is decreacing. However many people are self destucting in the richest ghettos on the face of the earth. American Blacks are the worlds riches Blacks. What we lack is thankfulness and taking advantage of our opportunities. That includes myself. Racism is real however integration is diminishing White racist from holding us back. Self destruction is not cured by intergration. The African
Americans of the past were much less self destructive. In twenty years Most White Americans I predict will be related to African Americans by blood or marriage. This interracial power will decreace racism however I pray that the current self destructive mode that many African Americas have will be reduced also. Barak OBamma for president. Interracial Power!
Integration as a policy to move African American people forward has been an abysmal failure-so flawed as a concept that it could only fail. Individual success stories can not erase the fact that the masses of Black people in this country-in terms of education, employment, opportunity, and virtually every other measurable category-remain untouched by the "successes" of the civil Rights Movement. Now, I am glad that people are free to define their own social relationships without regard to race and-IN THEORY-can go to whatever schools they want. A society can not call itself civilized without those freedoms being acknowledged and protected. But progress in those areas of INDIVIDUAL choice does not magically transform integration AS A STRATEGY FOR THE COLLECTIVE ADVANCEMENT of Black people into something that ever made sense .
It is really simple nothing more than a clash of two different cultures and styles of thinking: one magic the other sceientific.
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