integration

integration,

in U.S. history, the goal of an organized movement to break down the barriers of discrimination and segregation separating African Americans from the rest of American society. Racial segregation was peculiar neither to the American South nor to the United States (see apartheidapartheid
[Afrik.,=apartness], system of racial segregation peculiar to the Republic of South Africa, the legal basis of which was largely repealed in 1991–92. History
..... Click the link for more information. ).

Reconstruction to 1954

Segregation assumed its special form in the United States after the Southern states were defeated in the Civil War and slavery was abolished. Black codesblack codes,
in U.S. history, series of statutes passed by the ex-Confederate states, 1865–66, dealing with the status of the newly freed slaves. They varied greatly from state to state as to their harshness and restrictiveness.
..... Click the link for more information. that restricted the rights of the newly freed slaves were enacted in the South in 1865–66. These were abolished during ReconstructionReconstruction,
1865–77, in U.S. history, the period of readjustment following the Civil War. At the end of the Civil War, the defeated South was a ruined land. The physical destruction wrought by the invading Union forces was enormous, and the old social and economic
..... Click the link for more information. , but after Reconstruction white dominance was thoroughly reestablished in the South, partly by the terrorism of the Ku Klux KlanKu Klux Klan
, designation mainly given to two distinct secret societies that played a part in American history, although other less important groups have also used the name.
..... Click the link for more information. and other groups, but more by the persistence of social custom.

African Americans were prevented from voting by devices such as the poll tax and unfair literacy tests and by intimidation. They were denied any equal share in community life. Toward the end of the 19th cent. segregation laws—the Jim Crow lawsJim Crow laws,
in U.S. history, statutes enacted by Southern states and municipalities, beginning in the 1880s, that legalized segregation between blacks and whites. The name is believed to be derived from a character in a popular minstrel song.
..... Click the link for more information. —were enacted to codify white dominance. Blacks were forced to attend separate schools and colleges, to occupy special sections in railway cars and buses, and to use separate public facilities; they were forbidden to sit with whites in most places of public amusement. These laws were upheld as regards railroad facilities by the case of Plessy v. FergusonPlessy v. Ferguson,
case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896. The court upheld an 1890 Louisiana statute mandating racially segregated but equal railroad carriages, ruling that the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment to the U.S.
..... Click the link for more information. (1896), in which the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the so-called separate but equal accommodation. The period 1900 to 1920 brought full extension of segregation to all public transportation and education facilities, even hospitals, churches, and jails.

The tide of opposition across the nation began to rise just before World War II and was given impetus by the activities of civil-rights organizations. African Americans, enjoying a somewhat improved economic status, were in the 1930s more assertive of their rights. General opinion may have been influenced by the paradox of a nation urging war for democracy overseas while at the same time tolerating discrimination at home.

In 1948, President Harry Truman issued a directive calling for an end to segregation in the armed forces. The Supreme Court had also begun to move away from the earlier opinions and toward a principle of racial equality. The court struck down state enforcement of restrictive covenants as well as racial barriers leading to unequal treatment in state professional schools and in interstate transportation. In these rulings, however, the court still ruled only on whether facilities provided for blacks and whites were equal, and not on whether the separation of the races itself was unconstitutional.

1954 to 1963

School Desegregation

In 1954, the Supreme Court took a momentous step: In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans.Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans.,
case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954. Linda Brown was denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka because she was black.
..... Click the link for more information. the court set aside a Kansas statute permitting cities of more than 15,000 to maintain separate schools for blacks and whites and ruled instead that all segregation in public schools is "inherently unequal" and that all blacks barred from attending public schools with white pupils are denied equal protection of the law as guaranteed by the Fourteenth AmendmentFourteenth Amendment,
addition to the U.S. Constitution, adopted 1868. The amendment comprises five sections. Section 1

Section 1 of the amendment declares that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are American citizens and citizens of their state
..... Click the link for more information. . The doctrine was extended to state-supported colleges and universities in 1956. Meanwhile, in 1955 the court implemented its 1954 opinion by declaring that the federal district courts would have jurisdiction over lawsuits to enforce the desegregation decision and asked that desegregation proceed "with all deliberate speed."

At the time of the 1954 decision, laws in 17 southern and border states (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri) and the District of Columbia required that elementary schools be segregated. Four other states—Arizona, Kansas, New Mexico, and Wyoming—had laws permitting segregated schools, but Wyoming had never exercised the option, and the problem was not important in the other three. Although discrimination existed in the other states of the Union, it was not sanctioned by law.

The struggle over desegregation now centered upon the school question. By the end of 1957 nine of the 17 states and the District of Columbia had begun integration of their school systems. Another five states had some integrated schools by 1961. The states mostly fell back on stopgap measures or on pupil-placement laws, which assigned students to schools ostensibly on nonracial grounds. Forced integration led to much violence. The most notable instance was the defiance in 1957 of federal orders by Gov. Orval FaubusFaubus, Orval
, 1910–94, governor of Arkansas (1955–67), b. Combs, Ark. A schoolteacher, he served in World War II and after the war became Arkansas's state highway commissioner.
..... Click the link for more information. of Arkansas, who called out the Arkansas National Guard to prevent integration in Little Rock. President Eisenhower responded by sending federal troops to enforce the court order for integration.

In 1958 Virginia closed nine schools in four counties rather than have them integrated, but Virginia and federal courts ruled these moves illegal. In 1960 desegregation began in Louisiana; whites boycotted the integrated New Orleans public schools at first triumphantly, later with diminishing effectiveness. In 1961 two black students registered at the Univ. of Georgia but were suspended because of student disorders; they were later returned under a federal judge's order.

In 1962–63 violence erupted in Mississippi, precipitating a serious crisis in federal-state relations. Against the opposition of Gov. Ross R. Barnett, James H. Meredith, a black who was supported by federal court orders, registered at the Univ. of Mississippi in 1962. A mob gathered and attacked the force of several hundred federal marshals assigned to protect Meredith; two persons were killed. The next day federal troops occupied Oxford and restored order. Meredith became the first African American to attend a Mississippi public school with white students in accord with the 1954 court decision.

In 1963, South Carolina's Clemson College became the first integrated public school in that state. Gov. George C. WallaceWallace, George Corley,
1919–98, governor of Alabama (1963–67, 1971–79, 1983–87), b. Clio, Ala. Admitted to the bar in 1942, he was active in the Alabama Democratic party, serving in the state assembly (1947–53) and as a district court judge
..... Click the link for more information. of Alabama stood in a doorway at the Univ. of Alabama in a symbolic attempt to block two black students from enrolling in 1963; the attempt failed. In the North attempts were also made to combat segregation. After a suit brought by black parents in 1960, the school system of New Rochelle, N.Y., was in 1961 ordered by a federal judge to be desegregated. Similar suits followed in other cities.

Public Transportation and Accommodations

The fight over education overshadowed efforts to achieve integration in other areas, but moves against segregation in public transportation did gain wide notice. In 1955–56, Dr. Martin Luther KingKing, Martin Luther, Jr.,
1929–68, American clergyman and civil-rights leader, b. Atlanta, Ga., grad. Morehouse College (B.A., 1948), Crozer Theological Seminary (B.D., 1951), Boston Univ. (Ph.D., 1955).
..... Click the link for more information. , Jr., led blacks in Montgomery, Ala., in a boycott against the municipal bus system after Rosa ParksParks, Rosa Louise,
1913–2005, American civil-rights activist, b. Tuskegee, Ala., as Rosa Louise McCauley. A seamstress and long-time activist-member of the Montgomery, Ala.
..... Click the link for more information. , a black woman, refused to give up her seat to a white man and move to the segregated section of a bus. The boycott was brought to a successful conclusion when, on Nov. 13, 1956, the Supreme Court nullified the laws of Alabama and the ordinances of Montgomery that required segregation on buses.

Mixed groups of whites and blacks, called Freedom RidersFreedom Riders,
American civil-rights demonstrators who engaged (1961) in nonviolent protests against segregation of public interstate buses and terminals in the South. From the 1940s several federal court decisions and an Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) order had ruled
..... Click the link for more information. , in May, 1961, undertook a campaign to force integration in bus terminals and challenge segregation in local interstate travel facilities. The buses were attacked by mobs in Anniston, Ala., where one bus was destroyed by a firebomb. There were riots in Birmingham and Montgomery when blacks attempted to use facilities previously reserved for whites; federal marshals and the National Guard were called out to restore order and escort the Freedom Riders to Mississippi. Many of them were arrested in Jackson, Miss., for infractions of the state's segregation laws, and a long series of court battles began. These protests led in 1961 to an Interstate Commerce Commission ban on segregation in all interstate transportation facilities.

Other Fields

Passive resistance was undertaken by groups to eradicate discrimination in other fields. In 1960 black college students staged a sit-in at segregated public lunch counters in an effort to force desegregation; similar demonstrations were made in other cities. Other campaigns were waged with some success for the desegregation of beaches, restaurants, theaters, and libraries. In 1957, New York City adopted the first law forbidding racial or religious discrimination in private rental housing. During the summer of 1963 thousands of blacks demonstrated in Birmingham, Ala., and were attacked by police using cattle prods and dogs. Nationwide revulsion to these attacks was expressed when over 200,000 people marched on Washington, D.C., and pressed for further civil-rights legislation.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act to the Present

An attempt to deal with the increasing demands of blacks for equal rights came in 1964 when President Lyndon Baines Johnson asked for and received the most comprehensive civil-rights act to date; the act specifically prohibited discrimination in voting, education, and the use of public facilities. For the first time since the Supreme Court ruled on segregation in public schools in 1954, the federal government had a means of enforcing desegregation; Title VI of the act barred the use of federal funds for segregated programs and schools. In 1964 only two southern states (Tennessee and Texas) had more than 2% of their black students enrolled in integrated schools. Because of Title VI, about 6% of the black students in the South were in integrated schools by the next year.

Early in 1965 the Voting Rights Act was passed, but it did not prevent the rising tide of militance among blacks; Watts, a black slum in Los Angeles, erupted in violence, leaving 34 dead. The next year was marked by riots in practically all major U.S. cities as blacks began shifting to an independent course expressed in the concept of black power; the term originated with Stokely CarmichaelCarmichael, Stokely,
1941–98, African-American social activist, b. Trinidad. He lived in New York City from 1952 and graduated from Howard Univ. in 1964. Carmichael participated in the Congress of Racial Equality's "freedom rides" in 1961, and by 1964 was a field organizer
..... Click the link for more information. , leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, an organization that dropped whites from membership the following year.

Meanwhile, integration of southern school districts was progressing; by 1967, 22% of the black students in the 17 southern and border states were in integrated schools. However, the continuing separation of blacks and whites in most areas was emphasized in 1968 when the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (the Kerner Commission) issued a report that said, "our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal." The assassination of Martin Luther KingKing, Martin Luther, Jr.,
1929–68, American clergyman and civil-rights leader, b. Atlanta, Ga., grad. Morehouse College (B.A., 1948), Crozer Theological Seminary (B.D., 1951), Boston Univ. (Ph.D., 1955).
..... Click the link for more information. , Jr., that summer set off riots in 125 U.S. cities. The issue of segregated housing was faced in the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which contained a clause barring discrimination against blacks in the sale or rental of most housing.

Although integration proponents received a setback in 1970 when President Nixon announced that the desegregation of schools would be left to the courts and that his administration would de-emphasize strong desegregation procedures, real successes had already been achieved. Black college students were enrolling in previously white colleges at a greater rate; in 1964, 51% of black students had been in predominantly black colleges, but by 1971 only 34% were. At the secondary and primary levels the South had begun to move ahead of the North, despite a system of tax-exempt, segregated private schools that had been developing in the South since the 1960s. By the fall of 1972, 44% of the black students in the South were in predominantly white schools, while only 30% were in predominantly white schools in the North.

The early 1970s were characterized by the controversial issue of busing as a tool to promote integration. The Supreme Court continued, in the early 1970s, to back busing plans. By 1974, however, a more conservative court had moderated its position, allowing in Miliken v. Bradley (1974) the predominantly white Detroit suburbs to be excluded from a desegregation plan. By the mid-1970s, however, only about 12% of black students in the United States remained in completely segregated schools; the number of students still in such schools remains very low. Nonetheless, in the late 1990s about one third of all black students were in schools that were 90% nonwhite. Moreover, studies showed that from the mid-1980s through the 1990s American classrooms in grades K to 12 had become increasingly segregated, a trend linked to court decisions limiting and reversing desegregation as well as to a decline in federal support for desegregation and to enduring de facto segregation in housing. Nonetheless, in 2007 a significantly more conservative Supreme Court ruled that the degree to which school districts could use race in order to avoid resegregation was limited.

Affirmative actionaffirmative action,
in the United States, programs to overcome the effects of past societal discrimination by allocating jobs and resources to members of specific groups, such as minorities and women.
..... Click the link for more information. , which seeks to overcome the effects of segregation and other forms of past discrimination by allocating jobs and resources to African Americans and other affected groups, began in the 1960s. The use of racial quotas as part of affirmative action, however, led to charges of reverse discrimination in the late 1970s. In the 1980s the federal government's role in affirmative action was considerably diluted, and in 1989 the Supreme Court gave greater standing to claims of reverse discrimination. The Civil Rights Act of 1991 reaffirmed a government commitment to affirmative action, but Supreme Court decisions have placed limits on the use of race in awarding government contracts and in achieving educational diversity. In the late 1990s, California and other states banned the use of race- and sex-based preferences.

The various civil-rights acts and the diminishment of prejudice produced changes in the political arena; African Americans became increasingly elected to public office. In 1966, Edward BrookeBrooke, Edward William, 3d,
1919–2015, U.S. senator (1967–79), b. Washington, D.C. A decorated World War II veteran, he was admitted to the bar in 1948. A Republican, he served (1963–66) as attorney general of Massachusetts, where he gained a reputation as a
..... Click the link for more information. became the first African American to be elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction, and, in 1967, Carl StokesStokes, Carl Burton,
1927–96, American political leader, b. Cleveland. A 1956 graduate of the Cleveland-Marshall School of Law, Stokes began his political career as a Democratic member of the Ohio general assembly (1962–67).
..... Click the link for more information. became the first African American to be elected mayor of a major American city (Cleveland). Many major cities, among them New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, have since elected black mayors. In 1984 and 1988, Jesse JacksonJackson, Jesse Louis,
1941–, African-American political leader, clergyman, and civil-rights activist, b. Greenville, S.C. Raised in poverty, he attended the Chicago Theological Seminary (1963–65) and was ordained a Baptist minister in 1968.
..... Click the link for more information. campaigned for the Democratic nomination for president, becoming the first black to contend seriously for that office. Douglas WilderWilder, L. Douglas
(Lawrence Douglas Wilder), 1931–, American political leader, b. Richmond, Va. The grandson of slaves, Wilder studied law at Howard Univ. A Democrat, he was elected a state senator in 1969, becoming the first African American to serve in the Virginia
..... Click the link for more information. became first African American to be elected governor of a state in 1989. Gen. Colin PowellPowell, Colin Luther,
1937–, U.S. army general and government official, b. New York City, grad., City College (B.S., 1958); George Washington Univ. (M.A., 1969). The son of Jamaican immigrants, Powell was the first African American and the youngest person to chair
..... Click the link for more information. , the first African American to head the Joint Chiefs of Staff and serve as secretary of state, was the popular choice of many Republicans for the 1996 presidential nomination, although he declined to run. A little more than a decade later, Illinois senator Barack ObamaObama, Barack
(Barack Hussein Obama 2d), , 1961–, 44th president of the United States (2009–17), b. Honolulu, grad. Columbia (B.A. 1983), Harvard Law School (J.D. 1991).
..... Click the link for more information. became (2008) the first black major party candidate for the nation's highest office. The son of a white American mother and a Kenyan father, he was nominated by the Democratic party and won the election.

Although a number of blacks have achieved real prominence in business, education, government, and other fields, and many more have achieved solid, though less stunning successes as a result of integration, race remains one of the most intractable problems in the United States, in large part because personal biases and racial stereotyping (by and of all races) cannot be altered by legislation or lawsuits. This lingering prejudice fosters interracial tension and other social problems that are often ignored by the larger society unless a public outcry or worse results, as in New Jersey in the late 1990s when public controversy erupted over the use of racial profiling by the state police. Even in the last decade of the 20th cent. and the first years of the 21st, race riots have occurred; the most violent was in Los Angeles following the acquittal (1992) of the police officers accused of brutality in the Rodney King case. Images of police violence against African Americans increasingly heightened racial tensions in the mid-2010s, as did white extremist support for 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who had often challenged President Obama's citizenship before becoming a candidate and made racially provocative statments during his campaign.

Bibliography

See M. R. Konvitz, A Century of Civil Rights (1961, repr. 1967); R. L. Green, Racial Crisis in American Education (1969); R. Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality (1976); G. Orfield, Public School Desegregation in the United States, 1968–80 (1983); D. G. Nieman, Promises to Keep: African Americans and the Constitutional Order, 1776 to Present (1991); J. T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (2001); C. Polsgrove, Divided Minds: Intellectuals and the Civil Rights Movement (2001); P. Irons, Jim Crow's Children: The Broken Promise of the Brown Decision (2002); C. V. Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (4th rev. ed. 2002); C. Carter et al., ed., Reporting Civil Rights: American Journalism 1941–1973 (2 vol., 2003).

Integration

An essential concept in sustainable building. Viewing a building as a system allows the discovery of synergies and potential trade-offs or pitfalls with design choices. An integrated design approach helps maximize synergies and minimize unintended consequences.

integration

the extent to which an individual experiences a sense of belonging to a social group or collectivity by virtue of sharing its norms, values, beliefs, etc. Integration is a key concept of Emile DURKHEIM's sociology, and is one of the two main variables which he used in his seminal explanation of variations in rates of SUICIDE.
the extent to which the activity or function of different institutions or subsystems within society complement rather than contradict each other. For example, the family is integrated within the economic systems of advanced industrial societies to the extent that it sustains and reproduces labour power (but no other commodity), while acting as a unit of consumption (rather than production).
the presence of specific institutions which promote the complementary and coordinated activity of other subsystems of society. The development of institutions of integration of this kind (such as written language, formal legal systems) is one of the FUNCTIONAL PREREQUISITES OR FUNCTIONAL IMPERATIVES of all social systems, and a key to social development in neoevolutionary theory (see NEOEVOLUTIONISM).

The use of the concept of integration in all three senses is a characteristic of FUNCTIONALISM, and especially of the work of Talcott PARSONS. Malintegration simply implies a lack, or absence of, integration or integrative mechanisms. For example, egoistic suicide is, for Durkheim, a result of the malintegration of the individual within the group; economic growth may suffer if the educational system fails to integrate its activity and goals with those of the economy; the important evolutionary advance (see EVOLUTIONARY THEORY) of the separation of power from office represented by the democratic association cannot survive without the supremacy of the integrative mechanism represented by the rule of law. See also SOCIAL SOLIDARITY, MECHANICAL AND ORGANIC SOLIDARITY, SOCIAL INTEGRATION AND SYSTEM INTEGRATION.

Integration

in biology, the process of ordering, coordinating, and uniting the structures and functions of an integral organism, a process that is characteristic of living systems at every level of organization.

The concept of integration was introduced in 1857 by the English scientist H. Spencer, who connected it with differentiation of tissues in the process of evolution and with specialization of functions of primitively homogeneous, diffusely reacting living matter. The following are examples of integration: on the molecular level—integration of amino acids in a complex protein molecule, and integration of nucleotides in a nucleic-acid molecule; and on the cellular level—the shaping of a cell nucleus and the autoreproduction of cells as a whole.

Integration attains its highest level in a multicellular organism, expressing itself in the processes of ontogenesis; here the interconnection between the parts and functions of the organism increases with progressive evolution; the system of correlation becomes more complex and regulatory mechanisms are created tht ensure the stability and integrity of the developing organism. On the level of communities—populations, species, and bio-cenoses—integration is manifested in the complex and mutually conditioned evolution of these biological systems. The degree of integration of a living system may serve as an index of its level of progressive development.

In physiology, integration is the functional unification of specific physiological mechanisms into the complexly coordinated adaptive activity of the integral organism. The elementary unit of integration—the functional system—is the dynamic unification of the central-peripheral formations that ensure autoregula-tion of a particular function. The principles of physiological integration were revealed in 1906 by the English physiologist C. Sherrington, using as an example the coordination of the reflex activity of the spinal column (convergence, reciprocity, common terminal pathway). These principles function on all levels of the nervous system, including the cortex of the large hemispheres of the brain. A higher manifestation of physiological integration is the conditioned reflex, in which mental, somatic, and autonomic components combine in effecting an integrated adaptive activity of the organism.

REFERENCES

Shmal’gauzen, I. I. “Integratsiia biologicheskikh sistem i ikh samoregu-liatsiia.” Biulleten’ Moskovskogo obshchestva ispytateleiprirody: Otdel biologicheskii, 1961, vol. 66, issue 2, pp. 104–34.
Anokhin, P. K. Biologiia i neirofiziologiia uslomogo refleksa. Moscow, 1968.

I. V. ORLOV and A. V. IABLOKOV

Integration

a concept in system theory referring to a condition in which certain differentiated parts are combined into a single whole; also the process leading to such a condition.

Social integration refers to the existence of orderly relations between individuals, groups, organizations, or states. The analysis of integrated systems takes into account the various levels of such systems, for example, the level of integration of a personality, of a group, and of a society. The term “integrated” has different meanings in these different cases. If the analysis is that of personality (in psychology), the term “integrated personality” is understood to mean an individual with an integral mental structure free of inner contradictions. The same term, when used in analyzing a social system, refers to a personality that is well integrated or merged into the social system, that is, a conforming personality.

In political science and economics, the concept of integration is used to characterize the internal condition of a society or state or to refer to a state that is integrated into a larger international community. The integration of a society or particular state may be accomplished through force, on the basis of mutual advantage, as a result of a similarity of social and economic structure, or as a result of a communality of interests, aims, or values on the part of various individuals, social groups, classes, or states. Under present conditons, there is a growing tendency toward integration among states in economic and political respects under both socialist conditions and capitalist conditions. However, the common objective preconditions for both socialist and capitalist integration (the scientific and technological revolution and the tendency toward internationalization) do not mean that the process is the same in both cases. On the contrary, the social and economic nature, the forms and methods, and the economic and political results of integration are profoundly different for the two systems.

The term “integration” is also used to charadterize the process of convergence and conjunction that goes on in the sciences simultaneously with the process of differentiation.

L. A. SEDOV

integration

[‚int·ə′grā·shən] (genetics) Recombination involving insertion of a genetic element. (mathematics) The act of taking a definite or indefinite integral. (systems engineering) The arrangement of components in a system so that they function together in an efficient and logical way.

integration

(programming)Combining software or hardware components orboth into an overall system.

integration

The combining of hardware and software components so that they work together. Different types of hardware may be integrated with other hardware. Software may be integrated into hardware, but integrating software is the integration that takes place most of the time in the IT world. See software integration.

Integration

Related to Integration: Integration by parts

Integration

The bringing together of separate elements to create a whole unit. The bringing together of people from the different demographic and racial groups that make up U.S. society.

In most cases, the term integration is used to describe the process of bringing together people of different races, especially blacks and whites, in schools and other settings. But it is also used to describe the process of bringing together people of different backgrounds. A primary purpose of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) (42 U.S.C.A. § 12101 et seq.), for example, was to more fully integrate disabled individuals into U.S. society. The House Judiciary Committee's report on the ADA described it as "a comprehensive piece of Civil Rights legislation which promises a new future: a future of inclusion and integration, and the end of exclusion and segregation" (H.R. Rep. No. 485, 101st Cong., 2d Sess., pt. 3, at 26 [1990], reprinted in 1990 U.S.C.C.A.N. 445, 449.7).

The term integration is most commonly used in association with the efforts of African-Americans in the United States to eliminate racial Segregation and achieve equal opportunity and inclusion in U.S. society. Often, it has been used synonymously with desegregation to mean the elimination of discriminatory practices based on race. However, although similar, the terms have been used in significantly different ways by the courts, by legal theorists, and in the context of the Civil Rights Movement. In general, desegregation refers to the elimination of policies and practices that segregate people of different races into separate institutions and facilities. Integration refers not only to the elimination of such policies but also to the active incorporation of different races into institutions for the purpose of achieving racial balance, which many believe will lead to equal rights, protections, and opportunities.

Throughout the civil rights movement in the United States, black leaders have held different opinions about the meaning and value of integration, with some advocating integration as the ultimate goal for black citizens, and others resisting integration out of concern that it would lead to the assimilation of black citizens into white culture and society. In 1934, a disagreement over the value of integration versus segregation led W. E. B. Du Bois—a cofounder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a leading scholar, writer, and civil rights activist—to resign from the NAACP. Du Bois rejected the NAACP's heavy emphasis on integration, calling instead for black citizens to maintain their own churches, schools, and social organizations, and especially to develop their own economic base separate from the mainstream white economy.

After Du Bois's resignation, the NAACP adopted a full-fledged campaign to eliminate segregation and to promote integration. In 1940, NAACP leaders sent to President franklin d. roosevelt, the secretary of the Navy, and the assistant secretary of war a memorandum outlining provisions for the "integration of the Negro into military aspects of the national defense program." This was the first instance in which the NAACP had specifically used the term integration in a civil rights policy pronouncement. After World War II, the term racial integration became commonly used to describe civil rights issues pertaining to race.

On the legal front, the NAACP focused its efforts on eliminating segregation in the public schools. This campaign was led by Thurgood Marshall, the first director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and later a U.S. Supreme Court justice. In 1954, Marshall successfully argued the landmark case brown v. board of education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873, before the U.S. Supreme Court. The ruling in that case declared that racially segregated schools are inherently unequal and thus unconstitutional. Like other NAACP leaders, Marshall was strongly committed to the principle of racial integration. His arguments in Brown were heavily based on the work of Kenneth B. Clark, a black social psychologist whose research suggested that black children were stigmatized by being educated in racially segregated schools, causing them to suffer psychological and intellectual harm. Marshall used this theory of "stigmatic injury" to persuade the Court that racially segregated schools were inherently unequal. Although the Brown decision called for an end to formal segregation, it did not explicitly call for positive steps to ensure the integration of public schools.

The desegregation momentum begun by Brown was enacted into law by the 1964 civil rights act (Pub. L. No. 88-352, 78 Stat. 246), which denied federal funds to any program that discriminated illegally on the basis of race, sex, color, religion, or national origin, outlawing such discrimination not only in public schools but also in areas of public accommodation and employment. To ensure the support necessary for passage of the act, its writers worded the act specifically to emphasize that its purpose was to desegregate, not to integrate. "Desegregation," the act said, was "the assignment of students to public schools … without regard to their race," but "not … the assignment of students to public schools in order to overcome racial imbalance."

Nevertheless, after the Civil Rights Act was passed, judges and other federal officials enforcing it required schools to go beyond racially neutral desegregation policies to try to remedy past segregation by enforcing a greater degree of racial integration. This policy was established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1968 in Green v. County School Board, 391 U.S. 430, 88 S. Ct. 1689, 20 L. Ed. 2d 716, in which the Court ruled that a school district's desegregation plan was unacceptable under the Brown ruling. The Green case involved a school district that had two high schools that had previously been segregated by race. When the district changed its rules to allow students to attend the school of their choice, few black students chose to attend the traditionally white school, and no whites chose the black school, thus leaving the schools segregated. In its ruling in Green, the Court called the "freedom of-choice" plan a "deliberate perpetuation of the unconstitutional dual system" and said that school boards had an "affirmative duty to take whatever steps might be necessary to convert to a unitary system in which racial discrimination would be eliminated root and branch." Although a freedom-of-choice plan could theoretically be a viable method for converting to a "unitary, nonracial school system," the Court said, it would have to "prove itself in operation," adding that such methods as rezoning might prove speedier, and thus more acceptable. Although the Court did not explicitly require active integration, it suggested that the validity of desegregation plans would be measured by the amount of integration that they actually produced.

This emphasis on achieving specific levels of integration as proof of desegregation was reinforced by the 1971 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in swann v. charlotte-mecklenburg board of education, 402 U.S. 1, 91 S. Ct. 1267, 28 L. Ed. 2d 554. In Swann, the Court ruled that schools could use methods such as involuntary busing and the altering of attendance zones to achieve specific ratios of racial mixing, as long as those ratios were established as a "starting point[s] in the process of shaping a remedy" for past discrimination.

In a 1974 case, Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717, 94 S. Ct. 3112, 41 L. Ed. 2d 1069, the Supreme Court made it more difficult for city school districts to achieve racial integration. In Milliken, the Court ruled that a federally ordered desegregation remedy could not include suburban schools when a city's school district was officially segregated for reasons other than past illegal discrimination, such as the simple demographics of its residents. In other words, if the surrounding suburban districts had not contributed to past illegal segregation, they could not be held responsible for remedying it. A cross-district remedy, the Court ruled, would be permissible only to correct a cross-district wrong. The effect of Milliken has been to allow an increasing amount of resegregation in public schools as housing patterns divide black and white residents between cities and their surrounding suburbs. More recent cases, such as Missouri v. Jenkins, 515 U.S. 70, 115 S. Ct. 2038, 132 L. Ed. 2d 63 (1995), have continued to impose strict judicial limits on the power of the courts to impose and enforce desegregation plans in the public schools.

Despite significant legal victories mandating greater integration, therefore, the actual amount of racial integration in the United States—in the schools and elsewhere—remains limited. In fact, in 2003, the Harvard University Civil Rights Project warned that early school integration gains were actually being reversed. In an 82-page report titled "A Multiracial Society with Segregated Schools: Are We Losing the Dream?" the multidisciplinary research-and-policy think tank examined trends in federal public school enrollment data from the start of integration efforts through the year 2000. According to its analysis of these figures, the desegregation of black students progressed continuously until the late 1980s. Quantifiable gains from this policy included sharp increases in minority high-school graduations and the narrowing of differences in test scores between white and minority students. Then a process of "resegregation" began.

As argued in the report, resegregation has been marked by several disturbing statistical trends. Whites have clustered in schools with an average of 80 percent white populations, blacks have found themselves more segregated than at any time since the 1970s, and a substantial number of schools have emerged with virtually all non-white student populations. These the authors scathingly designated "apartheid schools" for their institutional resemblance—in terms of economic impoverishment, lack of resources, and social and health problems—to those found under the system of racial segregation enforced in twentieth-century South Africa. The findings also highlighted the isolation of Latino students, who have become the most highly segregated racial group in the public school system.

Most damningly, the Civil Rights Project report diagnosed an intellectual and moral failure in U.S. society to uphold the principles of integration. Not for want of public support was integration being abandoned, the authors argued. Instead, governments had essentially given up: Policy makers had erroneously concluded that enough progress had been made and that more was unattainable. Noting the absence of Congressional action since the early 1970s and the dearth of Executive Branch enforcement since the Johnson era (with the sole exception of the Carter administration), the authors blamed lawmakers, the Executive Branch, and the courts for allowing integration efforts to wither while resegregation took root. The report called for a renewed focus on desegregation from both state and federal authorities to offer minority students attendance choices among better, more integrated schools.

Such failures have led many black leaders to question whether integration is indeed possible in the United States and whether it would actually benefit African Americans. Those in favor of integration follow in the tradition of Marshall and martin luther king, jr., who insisted that integration would lead to increased freedom, power, and opportunities for African Americans. "In our society," King insisted, "liberation cannot come without integration and integration cannot come without liberation." More recently, Andrew Young, civil rights activist, former U.N. ambassador, and former mayor of Atlanta, has emphasized that integration does not lead to assimilation. "Those who reject integration," he said, "do so because they see the black community as one-way assimilation." In contrast, he said, "integration is a two-way street, each side contributing their own values, virtues, and traditions."

Other black scholars and political leaders have followed the lead of Du Bois, questioning the value of integration for African Americans and recommending instead separate black schools, churches, and economic networks. In the 1960s, members of the black power and black nationalist movements, including Malcolm X, argued that integration was an inappropriate strategy for blacks, who they believed could free themselves from racism and repression only by separating themselves from the mainstream white culture. Integration, they asserted, would result in African Americans being assimilated into the white community. In 1967, for example, Stokely Carmichael, a leader of the black-power movement, said, "The fact is that integration, as traditionally articulated, would abolish the black community." More recently, some legal theorists of race relations have criticized the theory of stigmatic injury that Marshall presented in Brown, contending that it rests on a notion of African-American inferiority by asserting that black children can receive an adequate education

The Most Segregated States for Black and Hispanic Students: 2000–2001
Most Segregated States for Black Students			Most Segregated States for Hispanic Students
State		Mostly minority^a	State		Mostly minority^a
^a"Mostly minority" is defined as a school whose enrollment of black and/or Hispanic students is at least 90 percent of the total enrollment.
source: Harvard University, The Civil Rights Project, A Multiracial Society with Segregated Schools: Are We Losing the Dream?, 2003.
1	Michigan	62.5%	1	New York	58.7%
2	New York	60.8%	2	Texas	46.9%
3	Illinois	60.1%	3	California	44.0%
4	New Jersey	50.0%	4	New Jersey	40.7%
5	Maryland	50.0%	5	Illinois	40.0%
6	Pennsylvania	48.3%	6	Florida	30.0%
7	Alabama	43.1%	7	Pennsylvania	27.6%
8	Wisconsin	42.9%	8	Connecticut	27.1%
9	Louisiana	42.2%	9	Arizona	25.6%
10	Mississippi	41.3%	10	Rhode Island	25.4%

only in the presence of white children. derrick a. bell, jr., a leading legal theorist on race relations, has been a particularly vocal critic of integrated schools, insisting that they do not meet the needs of African-American children, whom, he says, would be better served by increased funding for schools in black neighborhoods, more black teachers and administrators, increased parental involvement, and higher expectations for academic achievement. Many educational experts concur, suggesting that many young black males would receive a higher-quality education by attending black male academies where the approach and curriculum were specifically designed to counter the social and cultural challenges faced by those young men in today's world.

Many of the black leaders who today advocate integration have refined the notion, insisting that it means more than simply mixing black and white students in the same school. Legal scholar john a. powell (who spells his name with only lowercase letters) said that true integration "transforms racial hierarchy" by "[creating] a more inclusive society where individuals and groups have opportunities to participate equally in their communities." Similarly, Ellis Cashmore, a leading scholar of race relations, said integration "describes a condition in which different ethnic groups are able to maintain group boundaries and uniqueness, while participating equally in the essential processes of production, distribution and government." Cashmore conceded, however, that in the United States, this type of integration "remains more of an ideal than a reality."

Cashmore and other current race-relations scholars suggest that integration no longer means simply desegregation but rather that it now includes pluralism. Pluralism, in this context, refers to a condition in which no ethnic hierarchies exist, so there are no ethnic minorities per se; instead, the various groups in society participate equally in the social system, therefore experiencing balance and cohesion rather than contention and resentment. In this sense, said scholar Harold Cruse, "the separate-but-equal doctrine that Brown ruled unconstitutional should have been supplanted by the truly democratic doctrine of plural but equal.

Cross-references

Disability Discrimination; School Desegregation; Separate But Equal.

integration

n. 1) adopting a writing as part of an agreement. As "the parties agree that Robert's Rules of Order shall be the procedural rules employed during negotiations." 2) removing barriers to schooling, housing, and employment which formerly segregated races, particularly blacks and sometimes Hispanics, from the general society, dominated by whites in the United States. Integration includes encouragement of free and equal association, equal access to public facilities and housing in any neighborhood, equitable employment, promotions and pay levels, as well as racial mix in schools.

integration

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Reconstruction to 1954

1954 to 1963

School Desegregation

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The 1964 Civil Rights Act to the Present

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noun inclusion

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noun combining

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noun the act, process, or result of abolishing racial segregation

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noun the action of incorporating a racial or religious group into a community

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noun the act of combining into an integral whole

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noun an operation used in the calculus whereby the integral of a function is determined

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