The Economy Of Racial Inequity
Difference Between Integration and Desegregation
Deborah Venable
07/20/10
In
polls being conducted all over the country right now, folks are being asked to
identify the top priority issue in America today. Hands down, the answer is usually the state of the economy. Bottom line – the economy is what will
either save us or sink us according to the current mindset.
This
leads me to believe that most people tie their very freedom directly to their
access to economic stability. I can buy
that.
In
this economy, which is in such decline (if we are to believe what we are told)
where is the economic benefit of continuing to fund racial inequity? Believe me, if there were not some sort of
economic advantage to pushing racial inequity, the issue would have long ago
died out. If true freedom were more
important than anything else, our society would have accepted homogenous
harmony and marginalized every organization that sought ANY race advancement.
James
Farmer
put forth some very interesting thoughts, authored in 1965, (Freedom – When?)
in a chapter called “Integration Or Desegregation.” I doubt seriously if most people on the cutting edge of the race
issue today has taken the time to think through the issue with as much depth as
he used to explain the difference.
The
end of this excerpt is beautiful, especially if you keep in mind when it was
written:
Is it divisive of
me to suggest that all parties to the movement will not share identical
perspectives? Some think so. But I believe that one cannot be all men at all
times and remain himself. There is a two-ness, to use Du Bois’s term, in the
movement as there is in the Negro, and no synthesis, as far as I can see now,
is possible. Perhaps ultimately, God willing. We should not be frightened by
slight ambivalences. They are a sign that we are becoming free, for freedom
eludes simple definitions.
Make no mistake, James Farmer started out as a revolutionary
socialist and his name was associated with the most famous organizations in the
civil rights movement, from CORE to the NAACP, but he was undoubtedly brilliant
in his thought processes about race inequities. (Some might not know that he ran for congress in 1968 (as a
Republican) but was defeated by Democrat, Shirley Chisholm. He went on to serve in the Nixon
administration as Assistant Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare.)
The thing that sets James Farmer apart from so many more famous
people associated with the whole civil rights movement is that he was a true
visionary that knew what it would take to achieve stability in integrated
communities. He had distanced himself
from the emerging militancy of black nationalism as early as 1966 when he
resigned as the director of CORE, (Congress On Racial Equality.) I would say that by the time he earned his
Medal Of Freedom Award from Bill Clinton in 1998, he had probably done a lot
more to earn it than most of his era.
Now if you look up a textbook difference between integration and
desegregation, you may still find some disagreement in terms, but generally the
definitions will include these two distinctions: desegregation (legal) mandate, and integration (social)
mandate. As the man said, “freedom
eludes simple definitions.”
Many in the civil rights movement recognized this difference, and
while they demanded one, ultimately rejected that they be mandated to accept
the other. In other words, they
embraced “freedom” through choice. The
fact that equal opportunity could not always result in racial equity baffled
many in the past and is still at the root of many of our problems today.
The
biggest trap most people who demand racial equity can fall into is that they
really cannot define “racial equity” and therefore cannot realize when they may
already have it. If they were being
truthful with themselves, they could admit that racial equality is NOT necessarily their goal at all, but rather racial
superiority. As long as that attitude
exists in anyone, racial inequity
will continue to rot the soul of racial harmony.
Michelle Obama’s recent
address to the NAACP meeting is a real eye opener if you realize that
the whole theme of her speech was woven around racial inequity. From her first declaration that she and her
husband “would not be standing where they are today” without the NAACP, to her
lament that “African-American children are significantly more apt to be obese
than white children,” and “a black child is far more likely to go to prison
than a white child” - but she even erroneously used the term “inequality”
instead of “inequity” – she insists on living in a world of racial
inequity.
Is it any wonder that so many Americans are still looking to the
government to fix the economic and
racial problems in this country through mandate, (both legal and social?)
So, while we flail around in an unstable economy, desperately try
to regain our American exceptionalism, reject an overbearing and enslaving
government that seeks only to subvert individualism with dependence on public
redistribution, convince a spoiled, and ungrateful populace that our freedom is
being squandered daily, the true value of freedom is all too often ignored.
If we can ever get a handle on this economy of racial inequity,
an awful lot of our problems would evaporate.
It would have certainly prevented the election of the current Obama
power cabal, which has done anything but unite us OR lead us to economic
stability. If there is nothing to be
had from exploiting race to gain money or power, we will come to realize that
racial equality is the real
prize, and that, God willing, we will “become free” and get back to the
business of running an economy that does not try to artificially demand racial
equity.