While there are myriad reasons why segregation exists and continues to persist, for generation after generation, the main reason why segregation exists, and continues to exist, despite there being laws mandating integration in all aspects of American life, is that the favored race finds it much easier to exploit, to manipulate, to control, and to discriminate when those that are unfavored are segregated away from the mainstream favored population; for then what so happens in those segregated areas, is effectively known only by those of the favored race that have entered into the segregated areas, and as long as the narrative is thereby successfully controlled by that favored race, what happens there, stays there.
On the other hand, wherever segregation does not exist in communities, or ceases to exist; while this doesn’t necessarily equate to complete harmony and friendship amongst all the people there, progress of meaningful inclusion often typically will be made, though alas this progress will be mixed with still significant issues that must be attended to – of which, what we do so often find though is that when people of different backgrounds, different cultures, and different colors, actually end up congregating together, that in a lot of instances, prejudices and tensions are reduced, fundamentally because of the eventual enlightenment of the recognition that we each have a lot in common with one another, after all. That is very important, for not until the favored race buys into the reality that racism and other discriminatory acts are pernicious and wrong, will the monolithic favored race majority become divided into those that have risen above prejudicial attitudes and those that have not.
Once significant numbers of the favored race have woken up so as to clearly recognize injustice, unfairness, and inequality, and therefore to understand that it is fundamentally wrong whenever any people are judged by something other than the content of their character, then their vested interest in seeing that this is rectified in a responsible fashion becomes engaged. This means that those that believe that each of us is truly born with unalienable rights will actually feel a responsibility to do their part to see that this is lived for everybody, as compared to just a select few. Further to the point, when those members of the favored race, intuitively recognize that prejudices based on surface judgments such as creed, or color, or background, are unfair and mistaken, they will do their part to see that this is overcome by sensibility as well as good law, properly applied.
It is always much more difficult to maintain one’s illogical prejudices, whenever a fair and equal chance has been provided for those that historically have been oppressed; in which, as a matter of course, integration between those different cultures, different races, and different backgrounds also becomes part and parcel of that given community. After all, hate and prejudice have an awful lot in common with demonizing other people, so as to dehumanize them as something less than human; and when those that have been unfairly subjugated are subsequently given a fair opportunity to prove their mettle, things change for the better. The best part of integration, is it gives the favored race a true opportunity to make amends for what they have historically done wrong, which thereby uplifts them from the poverty of their spirit, and in turn, helps to uplift those so held down, by the removal of their chains.