The Color of Law A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein (z-lib.org).epub

The idea that African Americans themselves don’t want to integrate is a
white conceit. Many thousands of African Americans risked hostility, even
violence, when daring to move into predominantly white neighborhoods.
This history has generated considerable reluctance by other African
Americans to try to follow them. When African Americans move to
predominantly white neighborhoods today, they remain more likely to be
stopped by police when driving home or kept under unusual surveillance in
retail stores when shopping. Teachers are more likely to expect their children
to be less capable and to be unqualified for challenging classes. African
American pupils are often disciplined severely in integrated schools for
minor misbehavior that, in the case of whites, schools ignore.
It is reasonable to expect that many, perhaps most African Americans will
choose segregation unless they are welcomed into white communities whose
interracial hospitality becomes widely known. Until then, African
Americans’ avoidance of integration cannot be considered a free choice.
Reform of police practices and school academic and disciplinary policies in
predominantly white areas is essential, together with incentives for African
Americans to take the chance of believing that those reforms are real.
But incentives alone will not suffice. To achieve an integrated society,
African Americans too must take greater risks. A partner in a prestigious law
firm once explained to me why she opposed my advocacy of integration: “I
am a middle-class African American professional woman, and I want to live
where I can be comfortable, where there are salons that know how to cut my
hair, where I can easily get to my church, and where there are supermarkets
where I can buy collard greens.”
No affluent middle-class suburb can be fully integrated overnight. So if
my lawyer friend moved to an all-white suburb now, she won’t find the
hairdresser, church, or supermarket she seeks. But once the neighborhood
integrates, salons specializing in African American hair will open, and the
supermarket will stock greens. She may initially have to return to her old
neighborhood for church; this may be a price paid for the benefits of
integration to herself, her children, and our nation.
Many white middle-class neighborhoods today have supermarket aisles
with traditional Jewish, Italian, and Asian foods, even when Jews, Italians,
or Asians remain a minority in the area. These items were not found, though,
when the first members of these groups arrived. Some had to be pioneers.