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304 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. ix (1956)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0304 and id is 1 raw text is: FOREWORD Within the last two years three momentous decisions on human rights have been handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States. On May 17, 1954, the Court declared racial segregation in the public schools of this nation to be unconsti- tutional. On May 31, 1955, the Court ruled that the defendants in the aforemen- tioned case make a prompt and reasonable start toward full compliance with that ruling. On November 7, 1955, the Court, in effect, applied to public parks and beaches the principle enunciated in its May 17 ruling that separate educational facilities are unequal. These decisions are being interpreted as expressing a gen- eral rule under which certain racial statuses of the past are rendered null and void and new statuses are to be created. They may well be harbingers of significant changes in human relations throughout the country. The fabric of these decisions, however-their trim yet tangled actuality-is no product of the moment but has been woven over the years. Public policy, state rights, decrees of judges, acts of legislatures, popular and unpopular opinion, have all entered into the design. And as abstractions meet concrete situations in many areas-educational, economic, political, and social-each will affect the other in the impact. For the decisions reveal a society at peace with confusion, surging to- ward a more democratic objective. Their ideal is social justice and their logic the logic of things that change. But what is the meaning of these decisions for social life in the United States? What are the matters of immediate and practical concern which demand rational action and realistic planning? In general, we see two processes at work-desegre- gation and integration. Desegregation we regard as a neutralizing process that must occur when groups have been prevented from having equal access to the ma- terials of a society and egalitarian relations with other groups, races, ages, religions, sexes, or classes because of edicts or customs which have limited the character and extent of their participation. The segregated society may be typified by separate schools for races and peoples, white primaries, denial of equal access to places of public accommodation, laws preventing racial intermarriage, and other procedures and rules. Desegregation is at once the removal of these barriers and the essential prerequisite to integration. It is achieved to the degree that it succeeds in modify- ing the social institutions, the personal behaviors, and the value systems which sup- ported the segregated structure. Integration, on the other hand, is the situation and the process which exists when men in society are breaking down such barriers while moving toward the full ac- ceptance of all people without reference to their racial, religious, or ethnic differ- ences. It is the process of achieving full equality of status and condition. The elimination of Negro jobs or Mexican jobs in employment, the establishment of open occupancy tenancy programs in housing, are but first steps toward inte- gration. Ultimately, integration is an ideal condition which ceases to exist once it is achieved. In a culturally healthy community the condition may be achieved so gradually and so effectively as to attract little or no popular attention or opposi- tion. In other situations the transition may be fraught with real or imagined dan- gers. Whether the transition from segregation to integration through desegregation is easy or rugged, the change always involves some social cost to the existing sys- ix

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