Did Integration Actually Help Black People?

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]I know this might sound crazy to some people, but it's a real conversation that needs to be had. Did integration actually help us in the way we thought it would?

[00:00:11]Unpopular opinion, but I think that integration was one of the worst things that could have ever happened to the black community. I think separate but equal would have done just fine, but being integrated with people that hate us was never a good look for our community. If you are a black American and you are breathing in the United States today, you are the luckiest among the luckiest of black people that have ever lived.

[00:00:34]>> And before anything gets twisted, this is not disrespect towards MLK or the civil rights movement. What they did took real courage. People were getting beaten, jailed, killed just for demanding basic human rights. That history is real and it matters. But just because something was necessary in that moment doesn't mean we can't look back at it and ask what it cost us to.

[00:00:54]Because every major decision comes with consequences. And integration for all the doors it opened also closed a lot that we don't talk about enough. At the core, integration wasn't random. Black people were locked out of quality schools, decent housing, good jobs, and basic public services. Segregation wasn't separate, but equal. It was separate and unequal on purpose. So, the goal made sense. We wanted access, better education, better opportunities, a fair shot at life in a country that we helped build. And for a lot of people, integration did exactly that.

[00:01:25]>> You know, how we were separated and there was still there was some still sneaky stuff going on, right? But as you know, things evolved, you know, got better, um, we started to mingle together. And, um, that made a lot of us, white and black folk happy. That mentality is what truly being suppressed is. When you feel like you have to be around all black people, you when you feel like you have to go to all black schools or you feel like you have to work all black jobs or you feel like you have to work live in all black neighborhoods or if the president isn't black then oh woe is me.

[00:01:59]>> The very thing that people fought for, marched for and died for to get rid of segregation, you choose to do it voluntarily. being in better funed schools, living in resource neighborhoods, getting access to networks we were denied that change outcomes for many families. Studies even showed that during certain periods, especially around the 70s and 80s, integration helped close some of the education gap. It gave people a real chance to move differently in life. So, I'm not going to act like there weren't any benefits, but that's only one side of the story. While we were moving into their spaces, something else was happening at the same time. Our own spaces started disappearing. Blackowned businesses that once thrived in segregated communities started losing customers. Black schools that had strong cultural identity and teachers who understood their students got shut down or absorbed. We didn't just integrate into their system. We abandoned ours.

[00:02:53]>> I don't like working for black folk and I don't like shopping at their businesses. Right.

[00:02:58]>> When you highlight black own, I'm definitely not going to support.

[00:03:00]>> [ __ ] black businesses. Anytime I see a place that says this is a blackowned business, I know it's going to be a [ __ ] failure. And that shift hit way deeper than money. It affected community. It affected identity. It affected how we saw ourselves when we were no longer surrounded by people who look like us in positions of authority.

[00:03:17]There used to be entire black ecosystems. Doctors, teachers, shop owners, all circulating wealth and knowledge within the community.

[00:03:25]Integration cracked that system open, but it didn't replace it with something that fully protected us either. So now you got to ask, access came, but at what cost? Sometimes I have conversations with the elders who experienced the black community of the 50s, '60s,7s, ' 80s up to now and they tell me about a time when today's most impoverished hoods, Inglewood, Chicago, South Central LA, Harlem were thriving, bustling black communities full of blackowned businesses and multiple socioeconomic classes living amongst one another. When integration happened, all of the wealth divested into white communities, leaving nothing but poverty in the black neighborhood. And the wealthy class has been in a neverending race to assimilation ever since. If we had our own towns, own banks, own schools, own police officers, own everything. Why the [ __ ] And we were and we were thriving at that. It wasn't necessary.

[00:04:13]>> Another part people don't talk about enough is who actually carried the weight of integration. It wasn't equal.

[00:04:18]A lot of the burden fell on black children. Kids walking into hostile schools dealing with racism from students, teachers, entire communities that didn't want them there. Imagine being a child and having to integrate into a space where people are yelling at you, threatening you, sometimes even attacking you, all while being expected to learn and be strong. That's not a small thing. That's psychological weight at a very young age.

[00:04:40]>> They don't have enough gumption to turn around and tell that Supreme Court to rule on the laws of the land rather than to mess with our children and ruin our education and put our country down. You >> kid. Now, there were appointed officials and we'll impeach every one of them. We have to to get this country back where about time somebody do something to get now all of a sudden that the tide is turning a little bit. You see how things feel now. You all come upset, huh?

[00:05:03]You're all upset. Say somebody taking your rice over.

[00:05:05]>> Meanwhile, the system itself didn't change overnight. It was still built on the same mindset. So, instead of the environment adjusting to us, we were expected to adjust to the environment.

[00:05:14]And that pattern still shows up today in different forms. Some black thinkers, both back then and now, have questioned whether the focus should have been different instead of pushing so hard to integrate. What if more energy went into strengthening black schools, black businesses, and black communities? Even Dr. King towards the end of his life said, and I quote, "I fear I have integrated my people into a burning house because we already had structure.

[00:05:39]It wasn't perfect, but it was ours."

[00:05:41]There's an argument that says we traded independence for access. that we moved away from building something self- sustaining and put ourselves in a position where we rely on systems that never fully prioritized us.

[00:05:52]>> Now, you always talk about black ownership and black business.

[00:05:55]>> That's right.

[00:05:56]>> Why does so many of our institutions struggle while others flourish with less resistance?

[00:06:01]>> Because black people love white people more than they love themselves. Black people want to be accepted by white people more than each other. The black American dream is to be amalgamated with the Caucasian community. We don't want an all black hospital. We don't want all black communities. We don't want black supermarkets. We want to be accepted by white people. That is the dream. We raise our kids to go to school, get an education, move out your neighborhood into a white one. And if you buy a house around white people, you're considered a success in a black community. That was true a hundred years ago. That's true today. Who really wants to be part of a black community? I do, but there's not a lot of us who are. You can't build independently for black people when you don't have enough black people wants to support it.

[00:06:51]>> And that doesn't mean segregation was good. It wasn't. But it does raise the question, was integration the only path or just the path we chose at the time?

[00:06:59]What makes this conversation even crazier is that decades later, a lot of places are still separating again?

[00:07:05]Anyway, schools are becoming more segregated. Neighborhoods are splitting along economic and racial lines.

[00:07:10]resources are still uneven. So after all that effort, all that sacrifice, we're slowly watching a version of the same divide come back, just dress differently. It's not the same laws, but the outcome can look real familiar. And that makes people question everything even more. Because if integration was supposed to fix the gap, why does the gap feel so similar?

[00:07:28]>> Integration never happened. Inner city schools in Chicago all black. [ __ ] the whole south and west side extremely segregated. Obviously, there are other factors in play.

[00:07:37]>> Y'all do know that everything is schools are segregated.

[00:07:41]Y'all know that we're still redlined.

[00:07:44]Think about who's predominantly in urban communities. Think about where the taxpaying dollars are going as far as the communities in the school system is concerned.

[00:07:53]Things are already segregated. I don't think that y'all realize that because it's not overt. It's there's no signs that says colors only. One thing that is important though, integration wasn't just about sitting next to white people in a classroom. It was about challenging a system built on white supremacy. It was designed to keep black people at the bottom politically, economically, and socially. Integration was one way to disrupt that structure. And in that sense, it mattered. It forced the country to confront its own hypocrisy.

[00:08:20]But let's be real, dismantling a system doesn't mean it disappears completely.

[00:08:24]White supremacy didn't end. It adapted.

[00:08:27]So even with integration, the deeper issues never left. They just became less obvious to some people.

[00:08:35]>> Black people are lucky to be Americans.

[00:08:39]If it weren't for white people having slaves back in the day, there would be no black people in America.

[00:08:45]>> You don't get to go create a bunch of black only this, black only, black, black, black, black black. People areing tired of that [ __ ] by the way. And then turn around and cry [ __ ] wolf when someone says, "You know what? We're going to go do white."

[00:08:55]>> Today, a lot of black people still want access to diverse spaces, good schools, safe neighborhoods, and opportunities across the board. But at the same time, there's a growing appreciation for black spaces, too. places where you don't have to explain yourself, where you're understood without code switching every 5 seconds. That balance matters because integration should have been about choice, not replacement. So, was integration the right decision? There's no simple answer to that. Integration brought opportunity, a level of access, and progress in ways that can't be ignored. But it also came with losses, community institutions, and a certain level of independence that we're still trying to rebuild. So maybe the real question isn't whether integration was right or wrong. Maybe it's whether we fully understood what we were trading when we made that move. Because history isn't just about what happened. It's about what we learn from it. And if we're being honest, we're still figuring that out in real