Desegregation and integration

Kenneth Clark in a recent session of the American Association for the Advancement of Science again propounded his thesis that desegregation and integration were two independent processes. He defines the former as the legal and social step by which members of a minority group are given equal access to some facility such as the public schools. He suggests that the latter is a psychological change in which a whole population learns to live together and to drop ancient bias and prejudice. Clark's contribution is a perceptive analysis of two components of what is actually a single process. I cannot help disagreeing with Clark's pleas that social scientists delay their study of attitude change and concentrate on the legal and social fight for desegregation. If anything, an understanding of the ways in which attitudes are shifted becomes more crucial than ever in the face of such a massive social change.