Social Science and the Desegregation Process

T HIS paper undertakes to analyze segregation as a social process. Subsequently, consideration is given to the problem of desegregation and to the general lines along which programs of desegregation must move. Our concern is primarily with racial desegregation. Segregation is continuously at work in all human societies as a natural, unguided, and unwitting process. It takes the form of a diverse and chiefly undesigned operation which sets apart groups of people inside of a larger, embracing society. This setting apart may result from practices of exclusion employed by one group against others, or by voluntary withdrawal on the part of given groups, or by the operation of natural forces which place individuals in different localities or different social