As the situation currently stands, neither of the two opposing sides have reached an agreement nor have they acceded to their opponents. As seen in history, the clash between both camps was apparent in the case of the crisis in 1957 at Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. At that time, the court case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, deemed segregation in school unconstitutional; however, some Southern schools, including Little Rock Central High School, refused to desegregate. In effect, when a group of nine African American tried to attend the first day of classes at that high school, they were blocked by the National Guard. Also, a mob of around 1,000 people prevented the African American students from entering the school facilities. All these events led to President Dwight Eisenhower to order the deployment of 1,000 paratroopers and 100,000 National Guardsmen to desegregate the school. By examining the events that took place that led to this near-violent situation, the occurrences at Little Rock High School serve as a metaphor for the potential consequences of this controversy being unresolved.

Both sides of the controversy have deep-personal convictions that their argument is correct and should be the dominant ideology in society. However, since their viewpoints radically differ, their goals can be seen as offensive to each other—this in effect may create tension between patrons of both sides. Racial tensions have spawned violence, as shown throughout history and current events.  As a consequence, violence, which entails differing sides either mounting terrorist attacks or murdering other another race out of hate, may occur. If racial tensions have spawned violence, and given that the United States is a racially-diverse nation, the consequence may be the disintegration of unity. As seen in other racially-motivated conflicts around the world, civil war, terrorism, disorder, and political instability may occur. Although the likelihood of such consequences occurring in the United States is slim, such mayhem of large magnitude is still a possibility.

Implications of Self-Segregation

As self-segregation remains prevalent in a college campus and thus society as a whole, a series of consequences will occur. Self-segregation in the lunchroom eliminates a potential social space for students to intermingle with other races thereby diversifying their cultural experiences.  Only talking amongst themselves, the students at a lunch table who never interact with other races will not actually get to know others around them; intimate relations are impossible between two groups of people who never interact.  In this sense, without interaction, only assumptions and preconceived notions can develop. Compare this claim to the concept of experiencing first-hand any facets of life—we go into a situation with preconceived notions, and we change our perspectives after we experience first-hand what it really is to go through the aforementioned situation. The implications for not interacting with other races are ignorance and prejudice— by using the example of university chemistry labs, if the student reads about chemical interactions and studies molecular formulas and accepts the given information as a truism, without actually performing the situation, the student will never fully understand.

In terms of the future, the racial isolation of an individual who chooses to self-segregate will suffer from a lack of experience resulting from rarely interacting with people from different races, discomfort in new situations because he or she has never stepped of out his or her comfort zone, and difficulty in communication. Imagine Fred, a student that has just graduated from an elite private university with great grades, top honors, and a degree in economics. Throughout college, Fred has only ever interacted with students of his own race.  Although Fred has a great university education, when he goes out in the real world to do business, he will not know the mannerisms of different cultures and will therefore be at a disadvantage to those who have developed relationships with people of a different race. With no integration, the other side of racially-connected arguments cannot be understood. Integration, the alternative to self-segregation, leads to “greater interracial interaction outside the friendship group and stronger commitments to racial understanding” (Humphreys). Thereby, self-segregation leads to discrimination and prejudice, the deadly-duo that form racism, which spawns from misinterpretations or generalizations. If self-segregation can be eliminated, understanding the viewpoints of differing races will reduce misunderstandings and thus racism as a whole. Individuals cannot understand the other side of their biases and prejudices without interacting with the very people he or she holds the prejudices against.