The Imperative Of Integration

A powerful new argument for reviving the ideal of racial integration More than forty years have passed since Congress, in response to the Civil Rights Movement, enacted sweeping antidiscrimination laws in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. As a signal achievement of that legacy, in 2008, Americans elected their first African American president. Some would argue that we have finally arrived at a postracial America, but The Imperative of Integration indicates otherwise. Elizabeth Anderson demonstrates that, despite progress toward racial equality, African Americans remain disadvantaged on virtually all measures of well-being. Segregation remains a key cause of these problems, and Anderson skillfully shows why racial integration is needed to address these issues. Weaving together extensive social science findings—in economics, sociology, and psychology—with political theory, this book provides a compelling argument for reviving the ideal of racial integration to overcome injustice and inequality, and to build a better democracy. Considering the effects of segregation and integration across multiple social arenas, Anderson exposes the deficiencies of racial views on both the right and the left. She reveals the limitations of conservative explanations for black disadvantage in terms of cultural pathology within the black community and explains why color blindness is morally misguided. Multicultural celebrations of group differences are also not enough to solve our racial problems. Anderson provides a distinctive rationale for affirmative action as a tool for promoting integration, and explores how integration can be practiced beyond affirmative action. Offering an expansive model for practicing political philosophy in close collaboration with the social sciences, this book is a trenchant examination of how racial integration can lead to a more robust and responsive democracy.

The purpose of this work is to develop a better understanding and thinking about the cumulative impacts of multiple natural resource development projects. Cumulative impacts are now one of the most pressing, but complex challenges facing governments, industry, communities, and conservation and natural resource professionals. There has been technical and policy research exploring how cumulative environmental impacts can be assessed and managed. These studies, however, have failed to consider the necessary integration of community, environment and health. Informed by knowledge and experience in northern British Columbia, this book seeks to expand our understanding of the cumulative impacts of natural resource development through an integrated lens. The book offers a timely response to a growing imperative – proposing integrative response to multiple natural resource developments in a way that addresses converging environment, community and health issues. Informed by the editors’ experiences across several complementary areas of expertise, we envision this book as appealing to a wide range of researchers, educators and practitioners, with relevance to a growing audience with appetite for and interest in integrative approaches.

A half century after the Fair Housing Act, despite ongoing transformations of the geography of privilege and poverty, residential segregation by race and income continues to shape urban and suburban neighborhoods in the United States. Why do people live where they do? What explains segregation’s persistence? And why is addressing segregation so complicated? The Dream Revisited brings together a range of expert viewpoints on the causes and consequences of the nation’s separate and unequal living patterns. Leading scholars and practitioners, including civil rights advocates, affordable housing developers, elected officials, and fair housing lawyers, discuss the nature of and policy responses to residential segregation. Essays scrutinize the factors that sustain segregation, including persistent barriers to mobility and complex neighborhood preferences, and its consequences from health to home finance and from policing to politics. They debate how actively and in what ways the government should intervene in housing markets to foster integration. The book features timely analyses of issues such as school integration, mixed income housing, and responses to gentrification from a diversity of viewpoints. A probing examination of a deeply rooted problem, The Dream Revisited offers pressing insights into the changing face of urban inequality.

A powerful new argument for reviving the ideal of racial integration More than forty years have passed since Congress, in response to the Civil Rights Movement, enacted sweeping antidiscrimination laws in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. As a signal achievement of that legacy, in 2008, Americans elected their first African American president. Some would argue that we have finally arrived at a postracial America, but The Imperative of Integration indicates otherwise. Elizabeth Anderson demonstrates that, despite progress toward racial equality, African Americans remain disadvantaged on virtually all measures of well-being. Segregation remains a key cause of these problems, and Anderson skillfully shows why racial integration is needed to address these issues. Weaving together extensive social science findings—in economics, sociology, and psychology—with political theory, this book provides a compelling argument for reviving the ideal of racial integration to overcome injustice and inequality, and to build a better democracy. Considering the effects of segregation and integration across multiple social arenas, Anderson exposes the deficiencies of racial views on both the right and the left. She reveals the limitations of conservative explanations for black disadvantage in terms of cultural pathology within the black community and explains why color blindness is morally misguided. Multicultural celebrations of group differences are also not enough to solve our racial problems. Anderson provides a distinctive rationale for affirmative action as a tool for promoting integration, and explores how integration can be practiced beyond affirmative action. Offering an expansive model for practicing political philosophy in close collaboration with the social sciences, this book is a trenchant examination of how racial integration can lead to a more robust and responsive democracy.

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.

“[The authors] argue that with more integration and cooperation between businesses, governments and communities, a more sustainable economy is possible.” —The Environmental Magazine We find ourselves between a rock and a hot place—compelled by the intertwined forces of peak oil and climate change to reinvent our economic life at a much more local and regional scale. The Resilience Imperative argues for a major SEE (social, ecological, economic) change as a prerequisite for replacing the paradigm of limitless economic growth with a more decentralized, cooperative, steady-state economy. The authors present a comprehensive series of strategic questions within the broad areas of: Energy sufficiency Local food systems Interest-free financing Affordable housing and land reform Sustainable community development Each section is complemented by case studies of pioneering community initiatives rounded out by a discussion of transition factors and resilience reflections. With a focus on securing and sustaining change, this provocative book challenges deeply embedded cultural assumptions. Profoundly hopeful and inspiring, The Resilience Imperative affirms the possibilities of positive change as it is shaped by individuals, communities, and institutions learning to live within our ecological limits. “Resilience is the watchword for our dawning era of economic and environmental instability . . . The Resilience Imperative is exactly what’s needed to get us moving in the right direction.” —Richard Heinberg, author of Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival “Exceptionally valuable—in vision, in strategic understanding, in concrete ways to build forward. A handbook for a morally meaningful and sustainable future!” —Gar Alperovitz, author of America Beyond Capitalism

Why our workplaces are authoritarian private governments—and why we can’t see it One in four American workers says their workplace is a “dictatorship.” Yet that number almost certainly would be higher if we recognized employers for what they are—private governments with sweeping authoritarian power over our lives. Many employers minutely regulate workers’ speech, clothing, and manners on the job, and employers often extend their authority to the off-duty lives of workers, who can be fired for their political speech, recreational activities, diet, and almost anything else employers care to govern. In this compelling book, Elizabeth Anderson examines why, despite all this, we continue to talk as if free markets make workers free, and she proposes a better way to think about the workplace, opening up space for discovering how workers can enjoy real freedom.

Work-family researchers have had much success in encouraging both organizations and individuals to recognize the importance of achieving greater balance in life. Work and Life Integration addresses the intersect between work, life, and family in new and interesting ways. It discusses current challenges in dealing with work-life integration issues and sets the stage for future research agendas. The book enlightens the research community and informs the public debates on how workplaces can be made more family sensitive by providing contributions from psychologists, sociologists, and economists who have not shied away from asserting the policy implications of their findings. This text appeals to both practitioners and academics interested in seeking ways to create meaningful lives.