Conundrums of Integration: Desegregation in the Context of Racialized Hierarchy

Recent scholarly and public conversations have given renewed attention to integration as a goal, an aspiration, and/or an imperative. These calls for integration are infused with the conviction that segregation is a linchpin, if not the linchpin, of persistent racialized hierarchies. While the costs of persistent segregation remain clear, the call for integration as the unequivocal answer is more contested. In this article we grapple with some of these conundrums of integration, asking whether, in fact, integration furthers equity and if not, why not? To explore this issue we focus on an integrated space-Riverview, a successful high school known for its diversity-and drawing on theory from social psychology, we show how the promise of integration in such contexts is undermined. We conclude that while integration may well be a necessary condition to advance equity, it is not by itself a sufficient condition to ensure it.