Why not Limited Separation?

Reviewed by Louis Andrews
pinc, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 1997.

Preface                                                           ix

I  RACIAL INTEGRATION

1  Elementary and Secondary Education                             5

2  Higher Education                                               33

3  Housing                                                        47

4  Employment                                                     69

5  Voting                                                         84

6  Why Integration has Failed                                     104


II  TOTAL SEPARATON

7  Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois                       125

8  Marcus Garvey                                                  132

9  The Nation of Islam                                            143

10  Emigration to Liberia                                         156

11  Black Towns in the United States                              168

12  Intra-Racial Conflicts and Racial Romanticism                 185


III   LIMITED SEPARATION

13  The Case for a Policy of Limited Separation                   199

14  Elementary and Secondary Education                            214

15  Higher Education                                              235

16  Cultural Integration within the Community                     244

17  Economic Integration within the Community                     258

18  Political Power                                               276

Epilogue                                                          282

Notes                                                             289

Index                                                             339

Roy Brooks, Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of San Diego, argues forcefully in this, his latest work, that racial integration has failed blacks in the US and will continue to fail them on several levels. Written from a black viewpoint with virtually no mention of the impact of integration on non-blacks, it cites numerous sources, from critical race and feminist theorists to some black conservatives like as Thomas Sowell and Shelby Steele. Surprisingly for a book on this topic, no mention is made of either Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve nor D'Sousa's The End of Racism, two recent big sellers dealing with racial topics. The reason soon becomes clear however, since Brooks rejects any idea of group intellectual differences and looks on black culture as the solution, not the problem. Despite that, he is not blind to some of its weaknesses. He also views "white racism" as the main problem and sees it as pervasive, fundamental, often unconscious, and of such power and endurance that it must be accommodated within the social structure.

Brooks begins with a brief history of black education in America. He notes that blacks generally attended schools with whites in the 17th and 18th centuries in New England, but were verbally and physically mistreated by them. As a result, blacks (Brooks uses the term African American throughout) petitioned the Massachusetts Legislature in 1787 for an "African " school in Boston. This was rejected and black parents gradually pulled their children out of the public schools and sent them to private black schools - often held in a private home. Gradually the local government relented and by 1820 began funding a black public school. Separate education continued as the general rule throughout the nation and was supported by both races. Even as late as the 1940's, the NAACP was bringing equal funding lawsuits against public schools and colleges with no mention of school integration as the goal. Brooks credits Thurgood Marshall with changing the dominant black strategy from separate but equal funding to racial integration.

The purpose of school integration was twofold: to strengthen black identity (both personal and racial self-esteem) and to improve or equalize scholastic performance. He maintains that racial integration has failed on both counts.

The 1954 Brown decision comes in early for criticism from Brooks. He rightly argues that the now famous "dolls test" of Kenneth Clark was probably interpreted incorrectly and says that "[t]hese findings tend to contradict the Clarks' and the Supreme Court's conclusion that segregation (certainly more than integration) debilitated the African American child's sense of self worth" and that if it indicated anything, it was that black children had higher self-esteem in segregated schools than in integrated ones. Unfortunately, in his propensity to use only left and/or black sources, Brooks fails to give credit where credit is due. The truth about these tests was first revealed in the early 1960's by two well known "race realist" scholars, A. James Gregor and Ernest van den Haag.

Brooks does note that blacks generally tend to score higher on self-esteem tests than whites. He says "[t]he high level of personal self-esteem suggests that African American children in segregated environments derived their self-esteem from comparisons with children in their own group, not with whites." He further notes, "[c]learly the homogeneous community rather than the larger white society is the environment in which the personal self-esteem of African Americans develops positively."

He argues that black scholastic achievement has improved but that the improvement is minimal and that black kids often do better in de facto segregated schools than in ones with a significant number of whites. According to a Department of Education report on black scholastic achievement, "[b]etween 1978 and 1988, African American 13-year-olds attending integrated schools had lower rates of increase in reading and math scores than did children of the same age in de facto segregated schools. As Sociologist David J. Armour, remarks in his recent book, Forced Justice, "Not only has mandatory desegregation failed to produce educational and social benefits for most minority children but also research shows it can lead to adverse consequences for some." Clearly our current approach to racial issues is not well thought out.

Like most egalitarians, Brooks rejects entrance testing for higher education and feels that it is both biased against blacks and a poor indicator of future performance. He argues that cultural background has a big influence on the low scores of blacks and that college enrollment is artificially and unfairly lowered as a result. Unfortunately he never addresses how such tests can both be biased against blacks and yet slightly over-predict their college performance. While offering many reasons and excuses for poor black results, he never considers or even mentions the well supported and accepted 15 point group IQ difference between blacks and whites in the US.

Most black Americans, and many white ones, clearly expected racial integration to lead to equality. This has not happened. Ever the pragmatist, Brooks writes that "[t]here is nothing intrinsically good about racial mixing. Its appeal comes from its social utility." That in a nutshell is the emphasis of the book. He believes that integration has demeaned blacks and made them dependent. There is little hope that integration can change that since "'white racism' is defined not simply as a state of mind (that is, a belief system) but also as a state of being." It is the latter that Brooks believes cannot be overcome. This broad view of "white racism" comes from Feagin and Vera, White Racism: The Basics (NY, Routledge, 1995). They maintain that black racism cannot exist though prejudice against whites can and that white racism is far more than just individual prejudice or animosity toward blacks. He quotes Feagin and Vera: The latter [white racism] involves not just individual thoughts but also widely socialized ideologies and omnipresent practices based on entrenched racialized beliefs. The prejudices and myths used to justify antiblack actions are not invented by individual perpetrators, nor are they based only on personal experience. These patterns of highly racialized thought are embedded in the culture and institutions of a white-centered society.

As an example of this inability of whites to overcome "white racism," he cites cognitive psychologists who argue that bias is integral to the way the brain works. That high "on the list of possible reasons for racial integration's failure is its inability to conquer personal bias, a psychological phenomenon which liberals, with their Rousseauist romanticism, have never been able to full acknowledge or understand. In the state of nature, people are biased."

In one telling paragraph, Brooks reveals the depth of his belief in "white racism" as the cause of black failure. Color discrimination among African Americans runs both ways: the rejection of dark-skinned African Americans by light-skinned African Americans, and the rejection of light-skinned African Americans by dark-skinned African Americans. Color prejudice of both sorts is rooted in 'white racism" and can be more harmful psychologically to African Americans than white prejudice.

Clearly this is nonsense since the desire for lightness is pretty well universal and is noted among Orientals and Indians as well; but just as clearly Brooks is an unusually pragmatic man who while willing to blame everything on whites, is still willing to put his rage aside and look for rational solutions.

According to Brooks, whites may mean well, but they will never be willing to do what is necessary to actually ensure the success of integration. Putting aside the difficulty of measuring such success, he argues that it would require a substantial change in human nature and this reviewer is inclined to agree with him.

Throughout the book he is clearly concerned about what he calls "dignity harms" to blacks as an inevitable result of living in an integrated society. He writes "[t]hey are as permanent as taxes…While a few enlightened whites would be willing to submit to re-education or pay reparations, most whites (who have less control and more fear in their lives) would not." From these comments, it's clear that Brooks looks on whites as those who have lost a war they started, and must now be taught the truth about their past crimes and pay damages. Still it's hard to see how that extreme measure would even be enough, given the supposed nature of "white racism".

Brooks examines six separatists - all black - in looking at separation as a solution to our racial problems. These are the usual, from Garvey to Farrakhan; but the most interesting is W. E. B. DuBois, one of the founders of the NAACP and someone who is usually thought of as a staunch integrationist. Though not well publicized, DuBois switched to a separationist stance later in life. He wrote "Any planning for the benefit of American Negroes on the part of the Negro intelligentsia is going to involve organized and deliberate self segregation…if the economic and cultural salvation of the American Negro calls for an increase in segregation and prejudice, then that must come." Brooks says "[i]t is of no small moment that this great scholar, at the forefront of the integrationist movement for over thirty years, chose racial separation in the end."

In one of the more historically interesting chapters, Brooks discusses the rise and fall of black towns in the US. About sixty of these developed after the Civil War, but little history remains. Brooks is able to flesh out a little of the details about a few from Mississippi to California. Several of these were based in Oklahoma, and there was even a black led effort in the 1890's to make Oklahoma a black state which would become a Mecca for all blacks. According to Brooks, most of the towns were based on a rural agrarian economy which ensured their eventual failure in an increasingly industrialized America; however, he doesn't explain why thousands of other rural towns across the nation have managed to survive. For example, Lincolnville (not mentioned by Brooks), near Charleston, SC, was founded by blacks still exists as a black town while many old white and mixed rural small towns dot the American landscape.

While Brooks sees total separation as a romantic ideal, he rejects the possibility of pure integration just as well. His middle course is what he calls limited separation. This is not legally enforced segregation, but voluntary separation or as he describes it "cultural and economic integration within African American society." The purpose is to create a nurturing environment where "dignity harms" from whites are not possible or at least lessened. It would be based on individualism, not the group. Limited separation does not require whites to give up their poker chips; it simply starts another game. In this way, limited separation avoids the Rousseauist type of romanticism that underpins our traditional civil rights policy - racial integration and its crown jewel, affirmative action - in which it is naively expected that whites will act more nobly than African Americans or any other group would act under similar circumstances…Limited separation, then, is a civil rights policy for ordinary people, one that will allow the average white to keep his poker chips.

Brooks strongly supports voluntary separation on college campuses as "a form of separation that neither subordinates nor stigmatizes." Separate black dormitories and even classes are perfectly fine as long as they are a response to black desires and not white exclusion.

As if he hasn't offended the sensibilities of most liberals and conservatives enough, Brooks rejects their mutual first love, color-blindness, as merely another method of discounting the African American world view. "The subordinating quality of the color-blind principle is precisely why the principle is so myopic, so unfair to African Americans. It is also why we cannot measure racial progress, as so many whites do, by the extent to which society transcends race-consciousness."

Brooks argues that color-blindness was never the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment since the Congress passed specifically race oriented legislation in the same year. The Amendment only outlawed governmental subordination or stigmatization of blacks, not an awareness of and provision for their racial and cultural differences. He points out that it was not until 1989 and the Croson decision that a majority of the Supreme Court adopted the color-blind principle. Brooks devotes considerable space to legal and constitutional arguments on the acceptability of limited separation which will not be addressed here.

Professor Brooks is clearly not overly optimistic about the future. If the three civil rights strategies discussed in this book do not work individually or in combination, then Americans must face the unhappy prospect that the problem of equality in our society is without a real solution; that African Americans...will have no choice but to live in quiet desperation or open confrontation.

Brooks is a pragmatic Machiavellian in the best sense of the word. He takes the world and human nature as he sees it, warts and all, and argues for a plan that will work with the system, not one that requires some magic token like so many liberal and conservative approaches. Those of us who see the causes of the racial divide entirely differently than Brooks and do not think equality is even a rational goal, can still applaud Brooks' honest attempt at a resolution.