The Pursuit of Racial Amity
7th January 2014
Fred blows the whistle.
Pondering the smoking ruins of American racial policy, I wonder whether it isn’t time to say publicly what many, if not most, of both races know: It isn’t working. It isn’t going to work. If it were, it would have. If it were working, we would not need the unending laws to force the races together when they don’t want to be together. If people wanted diversity, it would happen without compulsion.
The hope that black and white would mingle amicably if only segregation were dismantled relied on a peculiarly American inattention to life and history and on a belief that people will behave as we want them to instead of how they observably behave. Human nature remains human nature, no matter how hard one holds one’s breath and turns blue.