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BLACK COMMUNITY REALITIES              HAMILTON

But the agenda has shifted. Today, very few black spokesmen are calling for integration of the schools. Now, they talk of controlling the schools in their own neighborhoods. The emphasis is no longer solely on the acquisition of verbal skills. Many black people now understand that a child can be permanently crippled, psychologically, while at the same time measuring up to criteria others have decided are the major determinants for "achievement."
This transformation is the function of many things: the decidedly slow pace of desegregation, which is as much a barometer of the socio-political character of the society as any combination of words and legal decrees; the clearly documented inability of the schools to understand the great cultural needs and concerns of black children; the ultimate realization of the racist ethos of the society. It is obvious that the country could not continue to acknowledge the failure of its schools in relation to black children, without black people eventually coming to question the very legitimacy of those schools. I would suggest that the failure to perform adequately even in the structural area has opened up a series of questions which speak to normative values. 
Some critics of this new agenda see the trend as a rather unfortunate move toward fractionalization, even toward a new racialism.* Professor Daniel P. Moynihan is worried about the potential consequences of formalizing, institutionalizing certain "quota" systems. He believes that preferential treatment for black people should best be pursued privately and informally, lest we develop into a situation whereby other minority groups will suffer. My strong suspicion is that it is too late for that kind of sophisticated approach to pluralist solutions. Even the private and informal approach is resisted by too many people (especially by liberals who cling to a principle of color-blindness). The problems of race in this society no longer lend themselves to such solutions. I conclude this precisely because I believe that the values of existing institutions do not support such change. Therefore, I see it as necessary to change substantially those institutions and build new ones based on different sets of normative values . . . for example, color-consciousness not color-blindness, group cohesion not individualism, respect for Afro-American culture not the assumption of white, western cultural superiority. And I see this as a formal, overt, public process. My personal predictions aside for the moment, I see this as necessary at this stage.

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*See: Daniel Pl Moynihan, "The New Racialism," The Atlantic Monthly, August, 1968. 35-40
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