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Racial integration, or simply '''integration''' includes Desegregation (the process of ending systematic Racial Segregation ). In addition to desegregation, integration includes goals such as leveling barriers to association, creating Equal Opportunity regardless of Race , and the development of a Culture that draws on diverse traditions, rather than merely bringing a racial Minority into the Majority culture. Desegregation is largely a legal matter, integration largely a social one. DISTINGUISHING ''INTEGRATION'' FROM ''DESEGREGATION'' Morris J. MacGregor, Jr. in his paper "Integration of the Armed Forces 1940-1965" writes concerning the words ''integration'' and ''desegregation'': ... In recent years many historians have come to distinguish between these like-sounding words. Desegregation they see as a direct action against segregation; that is, it signifies the act of removing legal barriers to the equal treatment of Black citizens as guaranteed by the Constitution . The movement toward desegregation, breaking down the nation's Jim Crow system, became increasingly popular in the decade after World War II . Integration, on the other hand, Professor Oscar Handlin maintains, implies several things not yet necessarily accepted in all areas of American society. In one sense it refers to the "leveling of all barriers to association other than those based on ability, taste, and personal preference";Morris J. MacGregor, Jr. Integration of the Armed Forces 1940-1965 , Center of Military History, United States Army, Washington D.C. (1985). The linked copy is on the Army's official site. The Handlin quote is footnoted within the MacGregor piece as Oscar Handlin, "The Goals of Integration", Daedalus 95 (Winter 1966): 270. in other words, providing equal opportunity. But in another sense integration calls for the random distribution of a minority throughout society. Here, according to Handlin, the emphasis is on racial balance in areas of occupation, education, residency, and the like. From the beginning the military establishment rightly understood that the breakup of the all-black unit would in a closed society necessarily mean more than mere desegregation. It constantly used the terms integration and equal treatment and opportunity to describe its racial goals. Rarely, if ever, does one find the word desegregation in military files that include much correspondence. Similarly, Keith M. Woods writing on the need for precision in , 1997 . Accessed March 26 , 2006 . In their book ''By the Color of Our Skin'' Leonard Steinhorn and Barbara Diggs-Brown - who also make a similar distinction between ''desegregation'' and ''integration'' - write "... television has... give {Link without Title} white Americans the sensation of having meaningful, repeated contact with blacks without actually having it. We call this phenomenon virtual integration, and it is the primary reason why the integration illusion - the belief that we are moving toward a colorblind nation - has such a powerful influence on race relations in America today." Reviewing this book in the Libertarian magazine '' Reason '', Michael W. Lynch sums up some of their conclusions as, "Blacks and whites live, learn, work, pray, play, and entertain separately." He cites Stephan and Abigail Themstrom's ''America in Black and White'' as making the case to the contrary, gives anecdotal evidence on both sides of the question, and writes:
Distinction not universally accepted Although widespread, this distinction between ''integration'' and ''desegregation'' is not universally accepted. For example, it is possible to find references to "court-ordered integration" {Link without Title} Google search for "court-ordered integration". from sources such as the ''. Accessed March 26 , 2006 . These same sources also use the phrase "court-ordered desegregation", apparently with the exact same meaning; The Evolution of Brown v. Board of Education , part of ''Beyond Brown'', PBS. Accessed , 2006 . the ''Detroit News'' uses both expressions interchangeably in the same article. When the two terms are confused, it is almost always to use ''integration'' in the narrower, more legalistic sense of ''desegregation''; one rarely, if ever, sees ''desegregation'' used in the broader cultural sense. NOTES SEE ALSO
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