1. Segregation implies coercion by the dominant group. Racial solidarity implies certain subjective tendencies of like-mindedness. Racial solidarity may be enhanced by segregation but it thrives best if its causes have their roots in the will to progress rather than the will to exist amidst oppression. Though segregation may aid the tendency toward racial solidarity, neither segregation nor racial solidarity are to be advised in a modern civilization. Racial solidarity for protective reasons with strong limitations (never legal) may be advisable today in America.
2. The definite racial aim of segregation is to prevent the contact of races physically; to prevent Negroes from living with the whites in their neighborhoods and vice versa; to keep themselves separate as a group, thus making segregation of schools and other institutions a natural sequence. Whereas, the aim of racial solidarity is to focus the financial, economic, political and social strength of the group for the purpose of meeting the attacks of the white race as well as for the solution of group problems; for example, solid financial strength would mean Negro business houses of every description, banks, etc.; it would mean that the race as a unit would withdraw its patronage and support from any institution or business that discriminated against members of their group; they would boycott as a unit any brand of goods made by a firm dealing unjustly with colored patrons, etc. It means that politically the group would throw its strength to the party whose principles are in harmony with the welfare of the Negro.
3. Segregation presupposes a force from without which seeks to compel those of the same race or nationality or religious belief to remain among themselves, separated from those of another group supposedly superior. Grouping together either for purposes of living or of religious worship or for other purposes, with the idea of developing a group or race consciousness and thus to develop "pride of race," presupposes a force from within—that is a conscious desire of the people themselves to develop the latent powers within their own group through intensive application.
4. Negroes tend to flock together as do members of other racial groups. I do not regard this as segregation. When an effort is made from without to group them together, which carries along with it restrictions of movement, residence or activity, we have segregation. Racial solidarity seems to me to be the conscious or unconscious reaction to segregation. It is a doctrine of revolt.
5. Segregation means to me regulation of racial contacts by law or force between white and colored people. Racial solidarity is a natural development of massing because of race congeniality.
6. Segregation and racial solidarity differ fundamentally and essentially in the motive prompting the individual act to be discussed. Segregation is the forcing apart of any group into a less favorable environment in order that advantage or position may accrue to those in authority. Race solidarity represents the active part in the same rôle, and is the effort of individuals to utilize similarity of aims or of situation as the basis of an offensive or defensive alliance.
7. Racial segregation is harmful as a social aim. Racial segregation is the result of the attempt of a more powerful group to impose its ideas of racial inferiority upon a weaker group. The weaker group in its attempt to defeat this program rightly adopts racial solidarity as a definite aim in order to strengthen itself both to resist discrimination which usually follows segregation and to attack the vicious and narrow-minded motives of proponents of racial segregation.
8. Voluntary segregation is a step, consciously or unconsciously taken, toward racial solidarity.
9. It seems to me that segregation and racial solidarity differ in that the latter is merely a mental attitude whereas the former, though it includes a certain mental attitude, is chiefly characterized by a sort of hysterical physical separation. Racial solidarity obviously can exist among groups separated by considerable distance, as among Jews. When the mental attitude is not, or is felt not to be, adequate to effect the desired separation among races, then a sort of hysteria ensues and separation is one of the forms in which this hysteria expresses itself. On the whole we may have reason to doubt its efficacy, for it bears a relation to race solidarity akin to that which legal restraint bears to moral restraint.
It seems probable that both racial solidarity and segregation aim at the same thing. Segregation, it seems to me, in the long run must prove a poor means to the end, and it would not require a very imaginative person to think that in its crass forms it may destroy the very end it aims to achieve by creating a prejudice of a violent and consuming sort.