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The Problem of Integration
Third
Group Views Integration Problem
by
Charles L. Allen
Atlanta Constitution
(January
3, 1957)
For several days we have been looking at the reasons why
some white people want to maintain racial segregation and why
some Negroes want integration. There is a third group to hear
from. Why do some white people want integration? From my own
correspondence I find six main reasons stated: (1) They believe
that integration is certain to come and that it would be better
to work out the various problems involved in a calm,
intelligent, friendly manner than to fight against it.
They maintain that integration is the law of the land and
to reuse to accept it as such is like some who continue to fight
the Civil War. They also believe that no race of people can
forever be held in bondage, that study of history reveals that
sooner or later a people will gain freedom.
(2) Some white people believe in integration because they
believe it is simple justice. They point out that Negroes in the
U.S. Have equal responsibilities as citizens--they must obey the
same laws, pay taxes, fight in defense of the country--and equal
responsibilities call for equal opportunities and privileges.
(3) Some white people believe in integration because they
feel that our practice of segregation weakens our position in
world affairs and robs us of our opportunity to provide moral
and spiritual leadership for the world. They feel that the race
question is a world question and that the peace and prosperity
of the U.S. are dependent upon our being able to make and keep
the friendship of the other nations of the earth.
(4) With many integration is a matter of religious faith.
They believe that the doctrine of the fatherhood of God carries
with equal force the doctrine of the brotherhood of man. They
maintain that the two are wings of the same bird and cannot be
separated. They sing with John Oxeham: "Join hands, then,
brothers of the faith--Whate'er your race may be--Who serves my
Father as a son--Is surely kin to me'.
(5) Many white people believe in integration because of
their faith in the Negro race. They believe that, if given equal
opportunities, negroes will be equally good citizens and equally
fine people. They point to countless individual Negroes who
represent the very highest in character, who render conspicuous
service to the nation and world, who maintain their homes as
beautifully as any people, who appreciate the finest things in
life equally with any other race.
(6) Some believe in integration because of the costs of
segregation. They say that blighted housing areas and unsanitary
living conditions hurt the entire city; that when a people is
held back, the cost in crime, disease, ignorance, etc., is too
high a price to pay; that Negroes would be a much greater asset
to the nation economically and culturally if they were not
segregated.
Tomorrow we look at reasons some Negroes prefer
segregation.
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.— WashingtonPost
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ChickenBones Store
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posted 22 June 2008
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