Acceptance and Integration
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The Civil Rights Movement is largely characterized with terms like “integration,” and “acceptance” the ideas Baldwin warns his nephew of. Integration meant that Black Americans can be sat with white ‘countrymen’ on a bus, in a movie theatre, or in class without implications. That, post “integration,” society would not fuel divides through segregation.
But to me, integration implies alienation. It implies that someone, or something, that is alien, abnormal, and different must be integrated. A great effort must be made to accept another who is unlike you. Baldwin discusses a feeling of endangerment among white Americans. This danger that their identity would be taken away from them. Part of this identity being superiority, or being in control of the narrative, how can a white person simply accept ‘integration’? To integrate with people whom they have objectified, how can they reconcile with having a core tenant of their identity be attacked?
A white person’s upbringing and history predisposes them. The history of racism and discrimination predisposes them. Their racial bias, their longing for segregation, or their racist fantasies for what a Black person is predisposes them. To me it seems that Baldwin makes the request of his nephew to not regard the white person in fury, but in pity, or maybe even sympathy for being in a circumstances where they are taught their identity is under threat.
Baldwin describes the white Americans’ ‘integration’ with Black Americans as out of order, and so uncomfortable to the white person. He says: “any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one’s sense of one’s own reality.”
Yancy discusses the racist comments calling for attention of a Black person, saying that it “communicates a spectacle to behold.” The person is now a “thing,” a “dreaded object.” When Baldwin warns his nephew of integration and acceptance, he warns him against accepting this narrative told on his behalf. That one should not shed away dignity and identity for the sake of “integration.”
So the what is the way to chart one’s own course? Is there a way to escape the racist, objectifying narrative that a racialized person is born into?