An Impossible Dream?: Racial Integration in the United States

Contemporary debate over the legacy of racial integration in the United States rests between two positions that are typically seen as irreconcilable. On one side are those who argue that we must pursue racial integration because it is an essential component of racial justice. On the other are those who question the ideal of integration and suggest that its pursuit may damage the very population it was originally intended to liberate. In An Impossible Dream? Sharon A. Stanley shows that much of this apparent disagreement stems from different understandings of the very meaning of integration. In response, she offers a new model of racial integration in the United States that takes seriously the concerns of longstanding skeptics, including black power activists and black nationalists. Stanley reformulates integration to de-emphasize spatial mixing for its own sake and calls instead for an internal, psychic transformation on the part of white Americans and a radical redistribution of power. The goal of her vision is not simply to mix black and white bodies in the same spaces and institutions, but to dismantle white supremacy and create a genuine multiracial democracy. At the same time, however, she argues that achieving this model of integration in the contemporary United States would be extraordinarily challenging, due to the poisonous legacy of Jim Crow and the hidden, self-reinforcing nature of white privilege today. Pursuing integration against a background of persistent racial injustice might well exacerbate black suffering without any guarantee of achieving racial justice or a worthwhile form of integration. As long as the future of integration remains uncertain, its pursuit can neither be prescribed as a moral obligation nor rejected as intrinsically indefensible. In An Impossible Dream? Stanley dissects this vexing moral and political quandary.

About the Author :
Sharon A. Stanley is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Memphis.

Review :
"In this book, Sharon Stanley develops a rich conception of integration that takes account of familiar criticisms. She reveals the complexity of integration, and she does not shy away from the implication that it will be very difficult to achieve. But in the end, Stanley's account persuasively argues that it remains an ideal worth pursuing." --Andrew Valls, Oregon State University "Although activists and scholars have been debating the merits of integration for decades, Sharon Stanley's book offers a strikingly original response. By pressing a case for integration that reckons with the psychic, political, and material effects of white supremacy, Stanley challenges both liberal and conservative approaches to Americans' racial divisions. Her argument is sobering and inspiring." --Lawrie Balfour, author of Democracy's Reconstruction: Thinking Politically with W. E. B. Du Bois "Sharon Stanley's An Impossibe Dream? Racial Integration in the United States is a significant contribution to the re-energized debate over the idea of integration, its implementation in public policy, and its role in social and political philosophy. This is an ambitious critical account of integration, which will invigorate a debate that a divided America must have if it is to develop a coherent sense of itself as a just nation." --Ronald R. Sundstrom, author of The Browning of America and the Evasion of Social Justice "An Impossible Dream? is thoroughly researched and exceptionally clear. Especially impressive is its specification of a white obligation to shoulder the burden of integration and relinquish racial advantage. Stanley powerfully unpacks what white relinquishment means." --Jack Turner, author of Awakening to Race "An Impossible Dream is a well-written book that provides the most thorough examination of racial integration that this reviewer has ever read. The book would be a great addition to classes on racial/ethnic politics, US political thought, and courses exploring the Civil Rights Movement. Highly recommended." --CHOICE "Stanley argues that while real integration would surely involve 'mutual transformation' among black and white Americans, the obligation for black Americans to pursue integration is dependent upon white Americans acknowledging and relinquishing their white privilege, and that obligation on the part of white Americans is not similarly dependent. ELThis moral asymmetry is the theoretical backbone of the book, and demands the attention of not only political theorists, but ethical theorists as well, who often neglect the situational and political contexts that shape moral obligation." --Contemporary Political Theory Sharon A. Stanley's book An Impossible Dream? Racial Integration in the United States is an exceptional intervention to a dynamic field of scholarship.... [It] thoughtfully puts into question liberal and conservative approaches to integration and redirects the debate in ways that reverse expectations regarding the connection between justice and integration. ...The book deftly engages the scholarly literature on integration alongside radical critiques of the same by the black power movement in order to put forward a complex, radical, and realistic model of integration." - Ines Valdez, Political Theory