The Holy Grail of Effective Managed Integration

An interesting piece, not because it is persuasive, but because it crystallizes issues.  From Can We Manage to Integrate? by William Voegeli.  It is subtitled Chicago suburb Oak Park’s effort to achieve racial balance counsels skepticism about engineered diversity.

Voegeli is dealing with a perennial desire on the part of the progressive left - the desire for government to use force, authority, and incentives to remake the communities in which Americans live.  In fashions consistent with ideological objectives but inconsistent with the desires of those Americans.  

Voegeli's is a long essay and reasonably observant of some of the key challenges to this mind set.  He is asking the question "Is integration still a goal worth pursuing?"  The data he reveals and the arguments he makes, to my mind, seem to argue against the position government managed integration is a goal worth pursuing.

The article explores the experience of Oak Park, Chicago which seems to have achieved managed integration over the past twenty or thirty years.

Its long-term success in stabilizing integration makes Oak Park an exception. But what rule does it prove? It’s clear to Breymaier that, because managed integration has bequeathed “strong and stable property values” and “a foundation for community harmony,” Oak Park has “provided a replicable model for other communities.”

If this is true, why have only a few other places tried the Oak Park strategy, and why has none replicated its success? Presumably, thousands of localities would be pleased to combine strong, stable property values with community harmony. And Oak Park’s achievement is well documented and widely known.

Yet even localities that launched versions of managed integration before Oak Park did have scaled back or given up. Like Oak Park, the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights regards “healthy race relations” as “a cornerstone of the community’s identity,” according to a 2019 Washington Post story. Yet, in Breymaier’s assessment, Shaker Heights’s programs, which predate Oak Park’s by more than a decade, have abandoned the integration of individual neighborhoods, retreating to stabilization of the city’s aggregate demographic makeup.

At least they’re still at it. Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood also tried to stabilize its demographic mix in the 1960s. The endeavor, studied in sociologist Harvey Molotch’s Managed Integration: Dilemmas of Doing Good in the City (1972), was admirably earnest—and utterly ineffective. “The efforts of the South Shore Commission and the public resources allocated to ‘save’ South Shore were,” Molotch concludes, “wasted.” South Shore went from nearly all-white to nearly all-black over the course of 20 years, just like many other South Side and, later, West Side neighborhoods. If anything, managed integration accelerated resegregation. The commission’s public-relations campaigns about the satisfactions of life in a multiracial neighborhood neither induced whites to move in nor dissuaded them from moving out. Circulars about improved schools and parks did, however, help persuade black people living elsewhere in Chicago to relocate to South Shore.

McKenzie and Ruby have the better argument when they contend that Oak Park cannot be an integration template, since its success rests on a unique mix of factors: “proximity to a depressed urban neighborhood, aging housing stock, a high percentage of apartment buildings, and a small, affluent, politically independent liberal community that has the means to be proactive.” They note that Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush won 23 percent of the vote in the 2000 election, losing all 70 precincts in what a Chicago Tribune columnist calls “the People’s Republic of Oak Park.”

The more pressing question, in McKenzie and Ruby’s view, is not whether the Oak Park Strategy can be implemented elsewhere, but how long it can continue in Oak Park itself. In a roundabout way, Breymaier confirms those doubts. If not for OPRHC’s programs, he told the Washington Post in 2015, “Oak Park would probably remain diverse, but it would start segregating very quickly.” But it’s unclear why, given Oak Park’s prosperity and alleged harmony, integration has been managed for 50 years without becoming self-sustaining, and apparently needs to be managed for decades to come, with no prospect of persisting on its own.

There is a success for Managed Integration but it is unique and perhaps unstable, i.e. likely to fail if the strategies are not actively and forcefully sustained.

An interesting and informative essay.  Integration is a complex issue and at multiple levels I have grave concerns, most of which are reflected in one way or another in Voegeli's piece.

I would perhaps identify the core issues complicating integration as:

Questions about its legality

I do not pretend to be a legal scholar but the plain words of the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights would seem to sharply constrain government's potential role in the movement and residence of Americans. 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This sets pretty high standards for freedom and while it does not explicitly say that government cannot constrain where and with whom people to choose to live, there seem to be some pretty obvious limits.  Of course we do accept some infringements through our choices to accept and impose zoning laws and the like.  But for most people, the vernacular interpretation is that Americans can live where they want and among the neighbors they choose.  

Racial quota's and the heavy hand of government are probably anathema to many if not most, even though we might find a way to jesuitically navigate between the explicit freedoms and government's desire to coerce.

Race is an arbitrarily preferred identity

For the racists whose world view is substantially shaped by race identity, this is almost impossible to see.

The reality is that personal identity is multitudinous (see Walt Whitman), variable and evolving.  The biggest and most obvious identities are Race, Religion, Sex, Class, Income, Culture, Education Attainment, Profession, Age, Marital/familial status, Political identity, Ideological Identity, etc.  

For most people, most of the time, class is far more a salient issue than race.  People wish to be with their own class.  They are open to associating with other classes, but they prefer their own.  I have long made the observation that most of the social issues deemed in America to be race related are in fact class-based.  

And these primary identities are only that.  There are tons of additional layers.  There are some people for whom their identification is much more specific.  Its not just that I am, hypothetically, one of the 30% who have a college education, but I have a degree from a Most Competitive university for example.  I have a hard sciences degree rather than a humanities degree.  My degree is from my state flagship university might be a further refinement of identity.  "Go Dawgs!"  

Similarly with religion.  It is not just religious versus secular, but usually which religion.  And divisions within that religion are startlingly important to adherents.  

Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"

He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"

He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"

Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.

To prefer Race as an identity is a mere ideological presumption.  Every identity is important to someone in some way.  

And finally, identities evolve over time.  Aspects of my personhood which might have been to some degree important when I was 10 are different when I am 20 or 30 or whichever age.  Partly this is simply the seven ages of man.

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Our priorities and identities change as we age.  But there is also path dependency, experience and context as well.  If I suffer trauma at some point, it has a probability of shifting my identity.  Similarly with some unexpected boon.  My professional experiences change me.  My family responsibilities have greater priority at some points than others.  All of which affect how I identify myself.

Definitional incoherence

There are several aspects of this, not all of which Voegeli addresses.  

One is certainly the confusing and incoherent mixing in the US of race and culture and location.  This is most obvious with the designation of Hispanic covering Spanish speaking people from Latin America but not Spaniards from Spain (who are White).  Depending on the poll, some 2/3rds of Hispanics self-identify as white.  If we are being consistent and specific, some 75-80% or more of Americans are White.  

There is a similar issue with Native American.  Some 10-15% of Hispanics are biologically or self-identify as aboriginal American, i.e. descended from any of the many pre-contact peoples in the Americas.  But their numbers swamp those of who we consider for Census purposes Native Americans.  

15% of American blacks are foreign born, mostly either Caribbean or West African.  Yet the normal socio-econometric measures for this population are no match for native born African Americans.  The foreign have far higher education attainment, far more intact families, far more religious, and have far higher incomes.  Yet they are all lumped together even though they have different conditions, needs, and aspirations.  

Voegeli does address one area of incoherence early in his essay.  I would offer the following as an example.  For the progressive left, both white flight and gentrification are both risible forms of racism.  This is because they are mixing race and class.  If it were merely race then definitionally, white flight and gentrification cannot both be racist.  It is possible that one or the other might or that both might not be.  But they can't both be racist.  That is incoherent.  

Voegeli points out that if everyone were to have to live in community's racially representative of the nation, then many people would be condemned to always be in a minority in some fashion.  If race is my most important identity and I am black, right now I can lived in a majority black community, a racially integrated community or a White (or other race) majority community.  I have choices. 

Under managed integration,  I will always be only 13% of the population.  If I were disposed to priority my race as the most important element of my identity, that could be potentially traumatic.  

It is incoherent to insist on managed integration and to also not acknowledge that such a policy condemns people to fewer and lesser choices than exist today.  

Managed Integration is not popular and possibly unworkable

People's demonstrated preferences are different from the ideological objective of managed integration.  

People wish to reside with those whom they most identify or where they feel most comfortable or where they can anticipate the best education for their children or where they feel the safest and most secure or where it is most convenient to commute or where there are the greatest employment opportunities.  

Managed Integration, prioritizing Race as an identity and effectively reducing the range of people's choices, cannot provide the mix of trade-offs and opportunity costs people wish to choose among.  Which is why Voegeli is writing about Oak Park.

Managed Integration has worked for a variety of historical reasons.  But it is one of a very, very few and it seems to be anticipating an inability to continue managed integration into the future.  

For all that there are legitimate historical criticisms and even some today, after reading this article, I am more committed to idea that the current legal and cultural construct is the best and most fair.  Under the Constitution, people are able to choose here they live and among whom.  And that is better than any version where the government decides.