Nsaa -- Adinkra Symbol meaning "he who does not know the real design will turn to an imitation". Credit: W. Bruce Willis, Adinkra Dictionary	Integration: An ideological consensus falls apart By Grisso* Every ideologue is a realist at heart. That is why, every so often, a cherished ideological consensus is thrown overboard. For when it is that the old ideological consensus fails the only test which ultimately matters, namely the test of reality, the realist in the ideologue emerges to say, "it didn't work." That is what happened to communism. It didn't work, so the ideological consensus, which held it in place in those countries where it was tried, fell apart. It will be the same, I predict, with integration in America. It has not worked, it will not work, and the ideological consensus which has supported it is in the process of falling apart. But no, the failure of integration need not mean the reversion to segregation as we knew it. Segregation was never, truly, about separation anyway. The point of segregation was to integrate African labor into service to the white overlord, while keeping the African at a social distance. Apartheid in South Africa was the same. If the European truly wanted separation, he would have remained in Europe, rather than embark on the program of global expansion and conquest which he did. And he certainly would not have embarked on the European trade in kidnapped and enslaved Africans. Seen in this light, slavery was a form of integration, not segregation. The African economy, abundant and self-sufficient as it was, was brought, forcibly and brutally, under the command and control of...integrated with... the European economy. So let us be clear, slavery was a form of economic integration, and the system of social segregation which succeeded slavery, continued to be accompanied by economic integration, as African labor continued to be the major source of white wealth. But along with social segregation went a degree of economic autonomy, albeit small. Segregation meant we had our own churches and doctors and lawyers and dentists. Also, segregated schools, unequal though they might have been, meant that we taught our own children. When "integration" came, the economic effect was to tie the American African economy even more tightly to that of the white overlord. The social effect was to siphon off a growing American African middle-class into closer proximity to whites both on the job and in suburban neighborhoods, while spawing a new, isolated American African "underclass" in inner-city ghettoes all over America. American cities are now more socially segregated, especially in the North, than they were in the South when Jim Crow segregation laws were repealed. It is clear that integration, in the social sense, has not worked. And in the economic sense, it has rendered us more fragmented, and more economically dependent than we were before. And in the meantime, the lynchings of yester-year have metamorphosed into execution-style slayings by police. The program remains constant; only the modalities have changed. The cumulative weight of all the police killings that we have seen all over the country, just in the past few years should cause even the most committed of integration ideologues to rethink. Something is wrong with the "integration" picture. If not integration, what then? The power structure seems already to be a step ahead. Notice how the major media now speak incessantly of "diversity". Diversity sounds good, and is a little more realistic than integration. It promises respect for differences. Maybe we can all get along after all, and Rodney King can have his wish, if we embrace a new ideology of diversity, under which differences are respected, perhaps even celebrated. That is a good principle, and as a matter of precept I cannot disagree with it. But as a matter of practice and precedent I have less reason to agree. America, whatever it may say of diversity, is still wedded to the myth of the melting pot. Thus, instead of the promise of diversity, which implies a symphony of differences, my apprehension is that the American concept of diversity would turn out rather to be a hegemony of false unity ... diversity, but with a white overlord, and with whites remaining in command and control. There can be no symphony without difference, and the music is all the sweeter for all the different instruments in the orchestra. The trouble is the mindset which feels that the orchestra must have a conductor. When will they learn the lesson of jazz music, and of the African musical forms from which jazz derives, which is that each musician creates a space into which other musicians may enter, perform, and create yet new space for the other musicians to enter. It is interactive, it needs no conductor. Yet harmony there is, and order there is, and every musician retains his individuality even as he contributes to a beautiful group harmony. That notion of diversity can work, provided the white overlord steps down from the conductor's podium and joins the band, if he can. What is certain, though, is that the ideology of integration has failed, and we need to fashion a new ideology based on reality. An ideology of diversity may work, but it must be a true diversity, not another one of massa's tricks of deception calculated to retain control. In any event, what we as a people ... Africans in America ... must do is what our jazz musicians know so well how to do, namely do a jazz solo, and create musical space for ourselves, but in that process, also for others. Grisso *(Grisso is a 48 year old African of the diaspora. He has an engineering PhD, and is the author of a mathematical treatise on decision analysis under uncertainty. His email address is grisso@TheAfrican.Com).