The Dream Is Gone

Michael W. Lynch from the December 1999 issue

A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America.)

I see America's rhetorical and "virtual" integration, as reflected on TV, as a sign of progress, even while I find the NAACP's threat to force it by lawsuit absurd. Theatrical and other public displays of racial harmony and mixing, however inaccurate in any given situation, may represent a standard to which an American audience aspires, perhaps even a model for eventual behavioral integration. They may even be the reason why I, emerging from a home that didn't place any independent value on integration, nevertheless find myself living what I consider an integrated life. I'm partial to John Updike's formulation, quoted by Steinhorn and Diggs-Brown: "An ideal colorblind society flickers at the forward edge of the sluggishly evolving one." Perhaps I'm still under an illusion. But I'm living it. I've already made my choice.