The End of Integration

Schoolboy Brooks makes it clear today that the American political Right never did want integration after all, decades of sanctimonious protest notwithstanding.

You'll recall that the Supreme Court's recent decision in the Seattle and Louisville cases banned the use of race in the pursuit of racial integration. Today Brooks unleashes all the phony sorrowfulness of which he is capable, covering world history in two hundred words while shedding crocodile tears over his claim that human nature wants to live in homogeneous groups.

It is more accurate to say that most white Americans want to live in homogeneous groups. The more "conservative" you are, the more likely you are to desire overwhelming white environments, judging by the historical evidence of conservative hostility to every single stage of the civil rights movement in this century and the last. Remember in the second Austin Powers film where Scott tries to talk back to his dad Dr. Evil and Dr. Evil blocks every sentence, then the first word, then the first syllable, then the first tiny sound? Brooks's Dr. Evil is so in charge he doesn't even have to interrupt anymore.

Brooks' permanent job is to make conservative preferences look like human nature and laws of physics, and this piece is a case in point. For years conservatives said they were just defending individual rights, and said they loved integration, said they were anti-racist, said there was no evidence that resegregation was happening, said their insistence on colorblindess wasn't causing it even if it did exist, said the best way to end racism was to stop using the category race. Now they can drop the facade. Brooks in effect confesses that they didn't want integration at all (while saying he's sorry the "dream" of integration has died). Unable to resist his normal hypocritical piety, Brooks says integration's death is just the way the world is, as opposed to the way conservatives said it outta be over and over while they tirelessly organized against every generation of racial remedy in each of the last fifteen generations.

I've also posted my own analysis of the Breyer dissent. I think Breyer offered a profound attack on the fundamental empirical and legal claims of the conservative "colorblindness" position. Anti-racists should be rallying right now, and his dissent could help. Are we really this apathetic? Failure to fix the racial divide in this century, like we did in all the other ones, is going to wreck all of our societies, as it already is.