I recently received a review copy of Sheryll Cashin’s new book titled, “The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class are Undermining the American Dream,” published by PublicAffairs. Before I could open it, the back jacket captured my attention.

“…Black people do not crave integration, although we support it,” it reads. “What seems to matter most to us is not living in a well-integrated neighborhood but having the same access to the good things in life as everyone else. Black people want the benefits of an integrated work place; we want the public and private institutions that shape opportunity to be integrated. More fundamentally, we want the freedom to chart our course and pursue our dreams. We bang on the doors and sometimes shatter the ceilings of corporate America not because it’s largely white, but because this is how we ‘get paid.’

“We want the option of sending our children to any college we desire, but Spelman, Howard and Morehouse are often at the top of our list. We want space on the airwaves for our music, preferably aired by black-owned radio stations. We want to see and celebrate ourselves on television, but we do not particularly care that there is no black friend on “Friends” because most of us don’t watch it and don’t understand its appeal. This is not separatism in the classic sense. It’s an emerging ‘post-civil rights’ attitude that is simply ambivalent about integration. And it’s a very dangerous thing.”

Cashin, a law professor at Georgetown University, is the daughter of Dr. John Cashin, a well-known civil rights leader in Huntsville, Ala. Her new book arrived a week after I had returned to Washington, D.C. from a speaking engagement in my hometown, Tuscaloosa, Ala. There, I learned about a continuing controversy over where to build a third high school.

When I graduated from high school in 1965, things were clearly defined: Blacks attended Druid High School on the west side of town and Whites enrolled in Tuscaloosa High on the east side, not far from the University of Alabama. That was prior to the desegregation of public schools in Alabama.

Two high schools were recently built near the outer boundaries of Tuscaloosa, far from my West Tuscaloosa neighborhood. When it came time to build a third one on the west side, original plans called for building it on an undeveloped tract on the western fringe of my hometown. Many African-Americans objected and the compromise site is on land that previously housed the all-White Tuscaloosa High School.

If I were still living in McKenzie Courts, my old housing project, that would mean instead of taking 10-15 minutes to walk to Druid, it would now take 30-45 minutes to walk across town. And that’s supposed to be a victory? Why is it that neighborhood schools are fine for White students who do not wish to walk or be bussed across town but when it comes to Blacks, that’s supposed to be acceptable?

Equally important, as Sue Thompson, a childhood friend and local attorney, observed: What message does this send to our young Black kids? Are we saying to them that in order to get a quality education they must go to schools that are still in largely White neighborhoods?

Those who think it’s alright from Black kids to be bussed across town miss the central goal of desegregation. It wasn’t the bussing, but what was at the end of the bus ride that mattered the most. By law, I had to attend segregated schools in Alabama. And Black teachers were assigned to all-Black schools.

Next year, my senior class will celebrate its 40th anniversary. Looking back, we were blessed to have studied under some of the best teachers in the country. We were never deluded into thinking our teachers had to be White in order to be good. As Cashin notes, it was all about having equal access to resources and opportunities.

Initially, we had the best teachers and the worst budgets. Under desegregation, many of our best teachers were re-assigned to the formerly all-White high school and some of the worst White teachers were assigned to what had been an all-Black high school.

No one is suggesting that we go back to the good ol’ days of segregation – which were old but hardly good. However, if integration is to be of value, it has to mean living together as equals, not having Black students bear the brunt of what is passed off as progress.