Segregation

“ We condemn the segregation of foreign races in different sections of our large cities. But the segregation of the better, or at least more fortunate, classes, is just as bad and more disastrous to the welfare of the city. ”

“ That solution is segregation. It offers intact all the advantages which the opportunities of life among a highly civilized race create without the demoralizing and humiliating influences at work on account of race prejudice. It frees the whites and Negroes alike and enlarges the opportunities for the development of each race, under a common flag, that will no longer be under the necessity of polluting the pure air of Heaven by withholding its protection from among even the humblest of its citizens. ”

“ What so absurd as unguarded wealth? The day of high board fences is passing. While segregation will supply certain opportunities, which we may profit by, if we use them as stepping-stones to higher things, it can only do so, if there is courage to defend what has been won. ”

“ Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society ”

“ That segregation and separation have characterized the life of many of the groups for considerable periods of time has become a commonplace, and it has been generally known that the life of these different foreign-born groups was separate from the general life of the community, and the life of one group separate from the life of other groups. ”

“ We cannot deny the sincerity and passion with which many feel that their blood, lineage and culture are worthy of protection by enforced separatism of races and feel they have built their segregated institutions for many years on almost universal understanding that segregation is not constitutionally forbidden. ”

“ He thus became the chief defender of two things or two ideas, slavery and particularism, to which the developing character of the nineteenth century was utterly opposed; slavery here and everywhere was doomed to be beaten down by the tide of humanitarianism, while localism, and sectionalism, and all other tendencies to exclusiveness and segregation, were at variance with those great forces of aggregation and of nation-building which were manifest in the whole civilized world. ”

“ Here we encounter one of the greatest dangers attendant upon race segregation, where the two races are not equal before the law, where public opinion makes and enforces one law for the upper race, and practically another law for the under race. ”

“ The practice of racial segregation is not in keeping with the ideals of Democracy and Christianity.
(2) Racial segregation is robbing not only the segregated but the segregator of his human dignity. Furthermore, the propagation of racial prejudice is unfair to the generations yet unborn. ”

“ Moreover, we cannot ignore the fact that assimilation today has proceeded much beyond where it was at the earlier periods. Blush or shudder, as many will, mixture of blood has been making inroads on segregation faster than change in law. No clear line of separation between the races has been observed. More and more a large population with as much claim to white as to colored blood baffles any justice in classification for segregation. ”

“ The pauper was then, if free from disease, to be assigned to his particular section of the workhouse, according to a sevenfold classification by sex, age, and physical condition.
(ii.) Segregation
The character of the workhouse of 1835-1847 was principally determined by the practice as to the segregation of its inmates. To discover exactly what the Central Authority intended this segregation to be is surprisingly difficult. We have first a rigid and logical classificatory scheme, imposed with the force of law. ”

“ Another reason for segregation is the criminality and immorality of the Negro race. Even if it would benefit a few Negroes or satisfy their vanity to travel with whites or to live on the same street with them is little reason why the comfort, property values, health and morals of the whites should be endangered thereby. The better elements of society have rights as well as the worst and the majority should receive consideration as well as the minority. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Attempting to dispose of the moral and psychological implications of racism, the News and Courier insists that Southern whites should entertain no sense of guilt in connection with segregation policies. “It was God [Pg 69] who created people with different physical characteristics. Who is to say that the races He created separate and distinct should now be scrambled?” If separation on the basis of race were sinful, so was separation by faiths and creeds. ”

“ Influenced then by these considerations we determined after much hesitation and deliberation to try the experiment of a modified form of segregation, not taking them away from their trade or out of the city into a wholly distinct village, but settling a few of the more earnestly-disposed amongst them in a little square of houses apart by themselves but at the same time in the midst of the dwellings of their old caste-fellows. ”

“ Thus it may be in the interest of the Association in every case to make a frontal attack on segregation, to press for an immediate breaking down of racial barriers, and to sacrifice minor points that may win a given case for the major points that may win other cases too. ”

“ Yet it is a plain fact that the entire world of humanity is more or less segregated in groups. The family group gave rise to the tribal group, the tribal group to the regional group, and the regional group to the national group. There are groups within groups: language groups, labor groups, racial groups and class groups. Certainly no sane group desires public segregation and discrimination. But it is a clear historical fact that different groups have won their social rights only when they developed a group spirit and strong group organization. ”

“ The third was a report of a survey conducted for the American Jewish Congress in 1947 by Max Deutscher and Isidor Chein. They sent a questionnaire to 849 social scientists, asking, first in the affirmative and then in the negative, “ [Do you] believe that enforced segregation has (has not) a detrimental psychological effect on members of the racial or religious groups which are segregated?” A second question, similarly phrased, sought the social scientists’ opinions on whether such segregation has detrimental effects on the majority group imposing the segregation. ”

“ Former Governor Byrnes stated that “the hope” of the South was voluntary segregation. [113] Proposals for voluntary segregation, of course, contain no provision for Negro parents who desire integrated schools for their children.
The News and Courier has been a consistent advocate of voluntary segregation. In defending this approach, the Charleston paper said:
Happiness cannot be measured in worldly goods, nor social position, nor many of the things that some of us hold too dear. ”

“ All this segregation by color is largely independent of that natural clustering by social grades common to all communities. A Negro slum may be in dangerous proximity to a white residence quarter, while it is quite common to find a white slum planted in the heart of a respectable Negro district. One thing, however, seldom occurs: the best of the whites and the best of the Negroes almost never live in anything like close proximity. ”

“ Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I it" relationship for an "I thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. ”

“ This growing independence and self-sufficiency in the trades, the professions, and social intercourse leads35 inevitably, as he pointed out, to a form of natural segregation based upon economic needs and social preferences, and in conformity to the laws of nature, which is a very different matter from the artificial and arbitrary segregation forced upon unwilling people by the laws of men. ”

“ This differentiation into natural economic and cultural groupings gives form and character to the city. For segregation offers the group, and thereby the individuals who compose the group, a place and a rôle in the total organization of city life. ”

“ The Negro is segregated from his41 white neighbor, but white business men are not prevented from doing business in Negro neighborhoods.
6. There has been no case of segregation of Negroes in the United States that has not widened the breach between the two races. Wherever a form of segregation exists it will be found that it has been administered in such a way as to embitter the Negro and harm more or less the moral fibre of the white man. That the Negro does not express this constant sense of wrong is no proof that he does not feel it. ”

“ The earliest history of man reflects an awareness of racial distinctions; in one fashion or another, discrimination has existed through all recorded time, and “prejudice,” if you please, like the poor, has been with us always. It exists among the Negro people themselves. It exists around the world, and may be seen in especially cruel and virulent forms in some of those nations said to be so terribly offended by the manifestations of segregation that remain in the American South. ”

“ But take a community of a thousand, and let ten such internal groups be formed, and every group will have to canvass more or less hard to increase its number. For the other nine hundred people, being able to pick and choose, are likely to feel a deep indifference to the question of joining any segregation at all. ”

“ It may be argued that if this psychological law is true in practice the necessity for segregation exists in the imagination only—that the Race Problem will solve itself on the principle of self preservation and self interest if let alone and given time. ”

“ It does not prohibit the buying of property by white or black. Do you think you can prevent a man from living in the house that belongs to him?”—Baltimore Sun, report of hearings on segregation ordinance. ”

“ The device of insuring greater harmony of social life by segregation of the insubordinate and elimination of the criminal, aims, on the other hand, at progress, and belongs to dynamic sociology. The thing does not have to be done over and over again in order to hold ground already gained. ”

“ Then, as regards the segregation from foreigners, it is evident that we need employ little time, for such of the town populations as have maintained a fair state of morality amid the evils of large cities, are not likely to be materially affected by the bad habits and customs of the white races; and as for those who have never led a steady life, it would not much matter with whom they mixed. ”

“ Exiled variants from several groups under auspicious circumstances may in turn form a community where the process of selection will be directly opposite to that in their native groups. In the new community the process of selection naturally accentuates and perfects the traits originally responsible for exclusion. The outcome of segregation is the creation of specialized social types with the maximum of isolation. ”

“ Amalgamation is a thousand leagues remote from the sphere of practical politics. I have been endeavouring to state for outsiders the case of the South as I understand it. I may have stated it wrongly, or understated it; but no one can possibly overstate the resolve of the South that the colour line shall not be obliterated by “miscegenation.”
233 Four Possibilities: IV. Segregation. Lastly, we have to consider the fourth conceivable eventuality—the geographical segregation of the negro race, whether within or without the limits of the United States. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Setting aside social barriers, which in early times as well as now undoubtedly tended to keep intermingling peoples separate, it would seem that in the more populous communities of modern times a greater permanence of the single combining elements might occur, owing to their larger numbers, which make the opportunities for segregation more favorable. ”

“ People will be drawn together into little groups of similar ménages having much in common. And this—in view of the considerations advanced in the first two chapters, considerations all converging on the practical abolition of distances and the general freedom of people to live anywhere they like over large areas—will mean very frequently an actual local segregation. There will be districts that will be clearly recognised and marked as "nice," fast regions, areas of ramshackle Bohemianism, regions of earnest and active work, old-fashioned corners and Hill Tops. ”