In the context of the Negro problem neither whites nor blacks,
for excellent reasons of their own, have the faintest desire to look back;
but I think that the past is all that makes the present coherent, and, further,
that the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.
If we take the advice of James Baldwin and look back at the past of segregation in American history, we cannot fail to arrive at the conclusion that this peculiar pillar of capitalism is a white issue and a white injustice. Unfortunately, it remains so to a wide degree in our own time. Until we lay blame for this shameful aspect of the American social system at the feet of those who own it, a system which purposefully separated blacks from whites in terms of education, housing, public facilities, marriage, transportation, politics, and employment, we cannot begin to rectify the abuses of the past in the present. It will take more than surface integration and embracing diversity, it will entail restructuring the educational, social and political, and justice systems.
To understand segregation we must realize there are two kinds, de jure and de facto. De jure segregation is segregation sanctioned by law. De facto segregation is segregation that exists in fact but is not sanctioned by any law. In order to understand why modern segregation still exists and cannot be significantly changed without infrastructure changes, we must look at the history of this separatist ideology in order to see the infrastructure elements of education, demographics, political, and justice that reinforced its development in American society. Nonetheless, regardless of the required infrastructure changes, they must come at the instigation of whites, whites who created and implemented the very infrastructure elements responsible for segregation’s existence. One of the primary elements responsible for segregation was the political ...