Is America Integrated?

"Recent comments by Senator Lott do not reflect the spirit of our country," said President Bush as he publicly rebuked the Senator for making comments in support of Strom Thurmond's segregationist 1948 presidential campaign. But Lott's comments may reflect the reality of our country more than the president and most white Americans would care to admit.

To be sure, America has made tremendous racial gains since 1948. Largely because the civil rights movement forced America to confront its racial hypocrisy, we now have black sheriffs in Mississippi, a burgeoning black middle class, and a legal system that once enforced discrimination now being used to root out discrimination. We've also seen white attitudes and norms change -- in 1948 Trent Lott would still be the incoming Senate Majority Leader.

But before we applaud our progress we should recognize that in fundamental ways our nation remains as racially divided as it was in 1948. What America has done in the last half century is desegregate -- we've opened the doors to opportunity and gotten rid of discriminatory laws. What America has failed to do is integrate -- dismantle the social, personal and psychological barriers that keep the races apart. We remain far from an integrated nation, a nation in which skin color would be incidental, not fundamental, descriptive, not defining.

The reality today is that blacks and whites are not much closer to living together, learning together, relaxing together, praying together, and playing together than they were when Dr. King pronounced his dream. Black and white lives often intersect - at the workplace or downtown, for example - but rarely do they integrate.

Consider the following:

- A third of all blacks live in neighborhoods 90 percent black or more, and most other blacks live in neighborhoods disproportionately or predominantly black. Most whites live near few or no blacks. For example, on Long Island, New York, home to more than 200,000 mostly middle class blacks, the chance of whites and blacks living in the same neighborhood is less than three percent.

- In school districts with racially mixed populations, the public schools are disproportionately black as large numbers of whites flee the system for private schools. In Atlanta, fewer than 4,000 white children remain in the city's public schools.

- After three decades of busing, magnet schools, court orders, reassignment plans, and even state troopers guarding schoolhouse doors, America's public schools are barely more integrated than they were a generation ago. In schools that are racially mixed, black and white students often remain socially separated, sitting at different lunchroom tables, participating in different activities, gravitating toward different sports, and even using different bathrooms.

- The most segregated hour in America is on Sunday morning when many Americans go to church. Nine in ten black church members belong to black denominations, and most whites never see a black face in the pews.

- Social clubs, nightlife, entertainment, barbershops, hairdressers, vacations, and even one's choice of doctors are often determined by race. One Chicago study found that middle-class blacks and whites both enjoy museums and concerts, but rarely the same ones.

- Blacks and whites follow different media. Of the top 20 television shows blacks and whites watch, they rarely share more than a couple in common. Popular shows for whites generally rank near the bottom for blacks, and popular shows for blacks rank at the bottom for whites. Nearly half of all blacks read the magazines Ebony and Jet, but fewer than one in a hundred whites will ever pick one of these up.

- Blacks and whites are even gravitating toward different sports. Soccer is non-black and baseball is increasingly becoming so; ice hockey, field hockey, swimming and tennis are virtually all white; basketball and football are already predominantly black; and in track and field, long distance running attracts whites while blacks cluster in the speed events.

Perhaps most troubling is that successful blacks who do everything America asks of them still find that whites don't want them nearby. In Matteson, Illinois, a well-appointed town of 12,800 near Chicago, the black population rose from 12 percent in 1980 to nearly 60 percent today. The blacks moving in are professionals, the town's median income rose by 73 percent in the 1980s, crime has not increased, schools have maintained the same standards, and home prices continue to rise -- if anything, the community is wealthier with its new black residents. But whites are moving out, saying they simply want a nice place to raise their kids.

Nor does success shield blacks from even the most corrosive bigotry: black homeowners in predominantly white middle and upper-middle income neighborhoods are advised to hide family photos and mementos if they ever hope to sell their homes to whites. And when their college graduate kids begin looking for jobs they are often asked to take writing tests rarely required of their white peers.

There are also clear indications that other minorities, particularly Hispanics and Asians, are finding a warmer welcome among whites than blacks have ever had. An Hispanic or Asian with a third grade education is more likely to live among whites than a black with a Ph.D., and the current intermarriage rate for native born Hispanics and Asians is, respectively, 35 percent and 50 percent, compared with a little more than 6 percent for blacks. Like generations of immigrants before, Hispanics and Asians are assimilating in ways that blacks have never been able to integrate.

Whites may be somewhat forgiven for believing that America is more integrated than it really is. That's because one of the most integrated parts of American life is the television screen. Even though whites and blacks often follow different media, whites will routinely see blacks and whites mix during a day's fare of newscasts, dramas, soap operas, sports, and commercials. What television has done is give white Americans the sensation of having meaningful, repeated contact with blacks without actually having it. For now, unfortunately, this virtual integration seems like the only kind of integration whites willingly accept.

So yes, race relations in America have changed dramatically since Strom Thurmond ran for president in 1948. Developments unimaginable a generation ago are commonplace today. But the ongoing and resilient color line between black and white suggests the words of the old French saying, plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose - the more things change, the more they stay the same. And the question remains whether the politicians crowing over Trent Lott's demise will ever do anything about the reality behind it.