Hasan Yahya, An Arab American writer- Michigan, USA.
Integration is a term has several meaning in many areas. For example, in sociology it means, bringing of people of different racial or ethnic groups into unrestricted and equal association, as in society or an organization. The opposite is segregation between races or types of people or disintegration in terms of color, ethnicity, sex. In psychology, integration means, the organization of the psychological or social traits and tendencies of a personality into a harmonious whole. A third meaning in Mathematics, integration means, the process of computing an integral; the inverse of differentiation. The final meaning in electronics, integration means, the process of placing more than one integrated circuit on a single chip.
What concern us here is the social and psychological integration, where people can live together in harmony according the law, without discrimination and prejudice, where discrimination is a crime before the law of modern societies practice democracy and follow constitutional rules in the fields of work and employment evaluation. Any recorded violation can be brought to court, and can be ruled by juries and judges to incriminate offenders and practitioners of discrimination. For example, Blacks in America in the 1960s and 1970s were discriminated against in many areas, where segregation was the rule of some communities.
After 9/11 terrorist attacks, many people of Arab and Muslim origins were generalized under national security laws, for profiling, the reason was suspecting terrorist in any form especially those who look Arabs and Muslims, Persians, Indians, and even Mexicans were included in such profiling. Where the color and shape of dress were enough to rule out innocence, of citizens, students or visitors.
Integration in sociology, face difficulty to be produced and practice under personal or institutional laws in the process of assimilation of immigrants, where if Arabs and Muslims for example, want to be integrated in the American or European societies, individuals may accept such integration, but institutionally, people are considered foreigners even though they are fully integrated. It will be hard to discover this negligence of integration in the Arm forces, or some political ranks. Therefore, the promotion of plurality of races and cultures in the American society, encourage integration backward, where ethnicity and ethnic groups began to integrate themselves in their original societies rather than the American and European societies. This practice hurts the national process for integration, and reduction of justice dealing with certain ethnic or religious groups differently in charity business such as the case of Muslims, Jews and Christians. Where the reader may guess where the discrimination may occur after 9/11.
Historically, in the U.S. the goal of integration began little before the 20th, was to eliminate discrimination and segregation of blacks from the rest of American society. After reconstruction , white dominance, codified segregation (Jim Crow) laws, was reestablished in the South; blacks were denied the vote and equal share in community life. In 1896 the Supreme Court upheld the principle of separate but equal treatment, (in what was known of PLECCY V. FERGUSIN) and by 1920 segregation affected education, hospitals, churches , housing, and public facilities. The rising civil rights movement opposed segregation, and in the late 1940s the Federal government gradually moved toward integration. Following the Supreme Court’s momentous decision in what was known as (Brown v. the Board of Education) in 1954, that public school segregation is inherently unequal and denies blacks equal protection under the law, the 17 segregationist states and the District of Columbia were ordered to desegregate their schools. Resistance of the law of desegregation erupted in several states in a form of law suites and violence, for example, in Arkansas, federal troops enforced integration in 1957 over Governor Orval Faubus’s objections, while other Governor George C. Wallace tried in vain (1963) to block blacks from enrollment at the University of Alabama.
Another milestone was the successful bus boycott in 1955 and 56, in Montgomery, Alabama, led by civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., to end segregation in transportation. As a result other segregated places were challenged such as restaurants, beaches, and other public places.
After while, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibiting discrimination in voting, education, employment and public facilities, together with the 1965 voting Rights Act, for the first time gave the Federal government the power to enforce desegregation—by denying funds to segregated programs and schools or by overseeing elections. Sale and rental of housing desegregation Act followed in 1968, and in the 1980s, the Affirmative Action took place. In these days, integration is almost in full practice, but ethnicity and plurality approaches of the melting pot find some difficulties in practicing full integration. (789 words) www.askdryahya.com
Sources:
- The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia, 2nd Ed. 1983, 1989.
- http://www.answers.com/topic/integration
Tags: 9 11 terrorist attacks, according the law, constitutional rules, discrimination and prejudice, social traits