Full integration without distinct aims would erase black identity

Evidence

[W]hat we must now ask ourselves is when we become equal American citizens what will be our aims and ideals and what we will have to do with selecting these aims and ideals. Are we to assume that we will simply adopt the ideals of Americans and become what they are or want to be and that we will have in this process no ideals of our own? That would mean that we would cease to be Negroes as such and become white in action if not completely in color. We would take on the culture of white Americans doing as they do and thinking as they think. Manifestly this would not be satisfactory. — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 38

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Du Bois’s double consciousness and the identity-politics debate in the civil rights era; also echoes the assimilation-vs-pluralism tension.