Perhaps this is where I break with my fellow lefties, I don't know. But I don't think people really do things -- en mass and maybe even individually -- that isn't in their interest. I don't believe whites began supporting Civil Rights in the 60s strictly out of an attack of moral conscience -- they were not interested in being a member of a community which sanctioned the fire-hosing of children. It's clear that Jim Crow and segregation worked to the immediate advantage of some white people, but I've never believed that it worked to the long-term advantage of most white people. The price of international embarrassment, of essentially shrinking the middle-class, of destroying valuable brain-power, of sowing resentment amongst a substantial minority of the populace, of creating ghettos is high.
I think Coates fails to make a distinction between interest and desire. It is in no one's interest to smoke cigarettes or eat junk food all the time, to have unprotected sex outside of committed relationships or drink heavily every weekend. People do those things despite the fact that they are bad for them because they enjoy doing them. Likewise, it's not clear that we are served by having 1 percent of our population in prison, but certainly many people feel safer with long, inflexible prison terms given to people who commit crimes. Segregation may have mainly served the interest of the few, but it certainly gave a lot of people something they wanted or it wouldn't have persisted.
Given a choice, people always do what they want. They don't always do what's in their best interest. The latter is called maturity, and it's a never-ending process.
--A. Serwer
