Trevor Noah Questions Integration

It’s not a discussion we should dismiss

Former Daily Show host Trevor Noah asked on his podcast this week if integration was a mistake. It’s a question one rarely hears in America, especially from a black liberal like Noah.

He made sure to preface his loaded question to Princeton professor Ruha Benjamin with some qualifications.

“I'm separating two things. ‘Cause I know in America people are like ‘Of course, there was racism and there was segregation.’ And I go, 'no, no, no, I'm separating them.' Let's separate someone being oppressed and someone not being able to get a job, and someone not being able to get a bank loan. Let's take all of those things, the negative things away,” Noah said.

He then went on to talk about the positives of Finland and its cultural homogeneity and how that strongly differs from American diversity. He implied that it’s often better to be around people like yourself as your kind understands you better than outsiders.

“It's a loaded question, but I would love to know if you think integration was the right solution, maybe, on the other side of civil rights,” he asked Benjamin.

The black academic replied: “No, I don’t. I don't think it's actually that controversial when, if you understand that segregation and integration weren't the only options.”

“But again, when you're being integrated into institutions, into a culture that's a supremacist culture, that's a culture that feeds off of hierarchy, that feeds off of insecurity, anxiety…Why are we being integrated into that?” she added.

Benjamin decided to avoid an intriguing discussion to ramble about how nation-states are fake and other nonsense. Noah was clearly the more intelligent person in this discussion, despite lacking Benjamin’s elite credentials. The Princeton professor seemed only capable of talking in left-wing buzzwords.

Noah and Benjamin came at the matter from different angles. The discussion prior to the question centered, among other things, on how to best teach kids in schools and how students benefit when disruptive kids are removed from class. Noah feels students may learn better when they’re around their own and their cultural norms are the standard. Trying to force them into an alien environment may be counter-productive.

Benjamin was less concerned with student performance. She’s primarily worried that integration assimilates blacks into a culture of “white supremacy” and “hierarchy.” For an education expert, she’s awfully unfamiliar with American schooling. The last thing our schools teach is white supremacy. Most history is centered around minority figures now. Kids are far more likely to know about marginal figures like George Washington Carver and Harriet Tubman than foundational Americans like Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson.

There were much smarter black figures who made similar arguments in the past. Black nationalists were fundamentally opposed to integration and preferred separation. They wanted a country of their own, or at least, their own communities bereft of white influence.

Even the foremost black intellectual in American history had qualms about integration. W.E.B. Du Bois helped shape modern black identity through his writings and his role in founding the NAACP. The Souls of Black Folk and Black Reconstruction in America are still widely read today. While widely honored by white liberals and blacks alike, Du Bois thought there could be a positive side to segregation. Similar to Noah’s hypothetical, he argued that there should “never be an opposition to segregation pure and simple unless that segregation does involve discrimination.” He felt segregation could be positive because it could preserve black identity and uplift their own communities. Rather than wait for whites to do things for them, Du Bois urged blacks to build up their own institutions. “Never in the world should our fight be against association with ourselves because by that very token we give up the whole argument that we are worth associating with,” he wrote.

This was just as controversial of a position in the 1930s. His stance in fact led to his split with the NAACP. But it was a serious opinion that offered an alternative to straight integration.

Black America chose a different path from the one advocated by Du Bois. Rather than assimilating to a culture of “white supremacy,” they’ve just embraced dependency on the system they think is racist. They’re dependent on government assistance and racial quotas to get ahead. They demand more carve-outs and more entitlements from the government rather than building things of their own. It all comes down to demanding the “man” gives them more, and often he does. Along with the other perks, blacks have not one but TWO federal holidays dedicated to themselves. They also have a whole month devoted to their history. They even now own the Super Bowl halftime show.

But none of it is enough. America is still too white supremacist in the view of Ruha Benjamin and others.

Make no mistake: Benjamin’s criticism of integration is merely another way to guilt trip white America into doing more for blacks. If Benjamin was serious about separating from whites, she wouldn’t be a professor at Princeton. She would be teaching at Howard. She has little interest in building up independent black institutions. She just wants more gibs.

Black critics of integration in the past worried that their people would be forced to assimilate into whiteness and give up their own culture. Integration didn’t cause that to happen. Blacks still retain a separate identity from the American mainstream and are more devoted to that identity than ever before. Many of them also still live in majority-black communities. There just isn’t any sense of independence or autonomy. The identity is privileged and supported by the system.

The group that gave up a sense of peoplehood with integration were whites, not blacks.

Integration was not a roaring success. It pushed whites out of many of our great cities and turned them into nightmares. Detroit, Cleveland, Jackson, and Memphis are just some of the victims of this policy. Blacks and whites, for the most part, still go to different schools. Black communities are still mired in poverty and violence in spite of all of America’s attempts at uplift. One can argue that integration was inevitable for 20th century America, but that doesn’t mean we have to pretend it was the greatest thing ever.

Trevor Noah should be commended for bringing up this topic. It’s unfortunate the conversation left much to be desired, but hopefully others will follow the path blazed by Noah. It shouldn’t be controversial to question whether integration was an unmitigated success. It clearly wasn’t.