Finally, by way of definition, integration has come to mean a willing suspension, or abolition, of the state of mind I attempt to convey by separation. So defined, integration is almost nonexistent in the South. The term embraces the complete and unrestrained intermingling of races, on terms of social equality, without constraint of any sort; it is color-blindness, voluntarily accepted; it is more than mere joint membership on civic committees or school boards. And it is not something that can be achieved by writ of mandamus. A court can impose a legal condition of desegregation, and thus put an end to segregation; but a court cannot enjoin separation and thus achieve integration. The arm of the law, long as it is, cannot reach into certain areas of the human spirit.
It would be pointless, at this late stage, to prepare even a hypothetical brief directed wholly against “desegregation.” The desegregation of public institutions is a fait accompli. True, the process is far from complete; in the Deep South, in this late spring of 1962, the process has not even begun—and I would not hazard a guess when it will begin, or be complete. No time soon. But my thesis here is primarily the South’s abhorrence of integration, and especially the South’s continuing stubborn resistance to a widespread desegregation of the public schools that fearfully would result in integration of the races. Why is the South resisting race-mixture in its public schools?
I am going to suggest three primary reasons. Other writers about the South might put them down as five or ten or fifteen reasons, but in the end perhaps we would cover the same points. Mine are, first, the arguments of anthropology; second, the arguments of practicality; and third, the arguments for gradualism.
VI
On the first point: The South earnestly submits that over a period of thousands of years, the Negro race, as a race, has failed to contribute significantly to the higher and nobler achievements of civilization as the West defines that term. This may be a consequence of innate psychic factors. Again, it may not be, but because contemporary evidence suggests little racial improvement, the South prefers to cling to the characteristics of the white race, as best it can, and to protect those characteristics, as best it can, from what is sincerely regarded as the potentially degrading influence of Negro characteristics.
Now, that is a “racist” thesis, and if one would listen to no more than the horrified gasps of the Liberal left, the very statement is a dreadful example of racism at its worst. Hitlerism! Fascism! Kluxism! White supremacy! To the doctrinaire theologians of a Liberal socio-anthropology, the thesis is blasphemy, and it is mortal sin even to consider it. A Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, in May 1957, denounced such heresy in unequivocal terms: “The fact is, of course, that the Negro possesses the same capacities and potentialities as does the white.”
But if this is a fact, how did it get to be a fact? How “of course”? Is the question of innate aptitudes and characteristics no more arguable than the sum of two plus two? Is the flat statement that “the Negro possesses the same capacities and potentialities as the white” to be regarded on a level with “Washington was the first President,” or “the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the square of its other two sides”? If this “fact” has in truth been so positively established, discussion of the subject is wholly pointless; nothing remains to be said, and those readers whose minds are closed to reconsideration will flee from these pages and soothe their wounded sensibilities with the balm of Ashley Montagu’s hairless prose.
But those who are agreeable to pursuing truth, wherever the quest may lead them, will stick around; they will keep their minds open; they will acknowledge at least an outside possibility that the disciples of Boas and Klineberg could be in error; they will formulate questions, and they will insist upon honest and straightforward answers to them. And if intellectually satisfying answers to their questions cannot be adduced, they will honestly acknowledge at the end: The question is still open.
Now, that is all the defense can ask. Few Southerners have made any serious attempt to read up on anthropology or to acquaint themselves with the results of intelligence tests. Their judgments and attitudes—or if you please, their prejudices—are based largely upon personal observation, instinct, upbringing, the cumulative experiences of a lifetime, stored up day by day and hour by hour. An advocate for the South does not wish to be dogmatic. He does not insist that the South has all the right answers. He does not say, “the fact is, of course.” But the South does suggest that it raises some of the right questions.
Even to raise the right questions has become an almost impossible undertaking in today’s emotionally charged atmosphere. For the past twenty years at least (I write in 1962), a systematic and well-financed campaign has been under way to obliterate the entire concept of race. This calculated perversion of honest scholarship has drawn a rebuke from Dr. Carleton S. Coon, one of the world’s foremost anthropologists, who himself believes that classification by race “is a nuisance.” In The Story of Man, Coon departs from his masterly narrative long enough to register a serious protest against the activities “of the academic debunkers and soft-pedalers who operate inside anthropology itself.”