AS the experiment of so-called racial integration failed? In the wake of the recent flare-up of racial accusations hurled across Bermuda's cultural divide, it would be easy to conclude that the state of race relations has much in common with the pathology of the disease malaria ? it can lie dormant for years but when the main symptom manifests itself, it involves the sudden onset of intense fever which if not looked after could result in death.

Even after a malaria attack subsides and the patient believes that he is cured, in fact malaria remains in the body and its symptoms can recur at any time. Not so long ago a writer of a Letter to the Editor in raised objections to my description of the state of race relations as being an attempt to "graft black people into white society" rather than the popular and somewhat more pleasant sounding term of racial integration.

Well, I am afraid that I meant what I said for since the late 1950s / early 1960s, when it was declared that this was going to be the new way forward for race relations in Bermuda, the policy has, in fact, amounted to an attempt to graft black people into white society. And I will set out the reasons why I believe this to be so.

The letter writer referred to the dictionary meaning of integration but if we are to be honest with ourselves, we would have to accept that the social reality of racial integration in no way resembles the true meaning of the word except in those incidences of multiracial relationships and marriages across the colour line, which in many ways represents the ultimate in racial integration.

I have been reading a very interesting book on the subject of race. The book is called

The introduction from the book reads in part: "This is not a book about laws or policies but about people. It is about the way black and white Americans live, learn, love, play, interact, relax and think. It is about the images we hold and the choices we make; about the shows we watch and the communities we build; about the myths we spin and the frustrations we feel. It is about whether integration is a workable goal our nation can achieve or a fiction that merely salves our conscience and makes us feel good about ourselves."

Of course, this is a book written about American's racial divide. But since it is true that we in Bermuda have so many things in common with America, including a racial divide, some of its observations apply here as well.

The book notes that despite the stated goal of integration, black and white Americans will drive to work from still separate neighbourhoods and they will listen to different radio stations, they will read different magazines and newspapers published by different mass media conglomerates that come to different conclusions about life's realities.

If the media, both in terms of news content and entertainment products (movies, music, TV programming), are responsible for shaping one's world-view, then an increased move away from a common media experience to one that is more segmented along racial lines, then we are living in separate realities, facing separate futures. You might well ask where Bermuda fits in all of this as the black community does not own its own media outlets. Yes, that is true.

But who would dispute that Power 95 is probably mostly listened to by the black community while VSB and maybe FM 89 are probably listened to by predominantly white audiences.

The most important aspect in all of this is how the news is understood differently by both communities, racial interpretations that are also reflected in contrasting views of Bermuda's historical realities: there is a white official history and a black folkloric memory of history. These differing interpretations of events are put into the starkest possible perspective in Bermuda when whites and blacks tell their differing accounts of the period when Tucker's Town was developed in the late 1920s and how the black people who had lived there were relocated.

It is commonly accepted that Bermuda's period of racial integration officially started in the aftermath of the theatre boycott in 1959.

do you know as one who was born in the generation after those who struggled against Bermuda's segregated system, that as a teenager I never went to the movies and sat in an integrated audience just as I never went to school with white children?

As regards the movies, how did this happen years after the theatre boycott which was supposed to open up such areas for all? It was because of a very curious hangover from Bermuda's segregated past. Whites still went upstairs and blacks sat downstairs; it was almost as if there had been no point to the theatre boycott, over fighting for the right to be able to sit anywhere in the theatre.

Nobody ? black or white ? gave a second thought to the fact that there was still segregation in what was supposed to be a desegregated Bermuda.

In fact, we never saw truly integrated movie theatres until the Island Cinema closed in the 1970s and the old Rosebank was divided into two single-storey theatres ? no more upstairs, downstairs divide was possible. There is another irony in all this in that Bermuda General Theatres, which fought desegregation in the 1950s, actually ended up bringing about real integration at the movie theatres in the 1980s when they made two theatres out of one.

Well, you might say, even so, all that is now in the past. But let me tell you something else. In America the most segregated hour of the week is 11 o'clock on Sunday morning when the nation is at prayer.

Blacks go to their predominantly black churches and whites attend predominantly white churches; we in Bermuda do the same.

In fact, there are some churches which used to have large white congregations which went elsewhere as soon as blacks began turning up in large numbers. I don't have to name names; most people know which churches I am speaking of.

But there is another curiosity at work here ? people have put up plaques to memorialise their loved ones on the walls of churches. These people's remains lie in the graveyards outside the churches which they probably attended all of their lives. You can look at those names and know that they are the names of white Bermudians.

But look around the pews of the church today and you ask: "Where are the white people, the descendants of the people whose names are on the memorial plaques on the walls of the church?"

Well, to be fair, perhaps their absence is more of a cultural thing rather than a racial thing. We blacks do sometimes worship differently, we sing differently, we feel the spirit differently and this has a lot to do with our African ancestry.

But there is supposed to be only one God and I have seen a fair number of white people whose spirituality has more in common with black people than their fellow whites: they would be more at home in predominantly black churches than at more traditional white ones.

You may continue to argue because Bermuda is so small, because everything is so compact, we have always done things differently ? even in matters of race.

There is some truth to this. But let us turn to Bermuda's school system ? historically, whites went to private schools well before there was a debate on the standard of education in public schools.

It has always been accepted that a majority of white children will attend private school while the majority of blacks will go to public school. And this remains a fact despite the one-way integration in recent decades of black children into private schools.

The trend of whites going to private schools accelerated when it was decided to desegregate Bermuda's school system by law. I was a witness to that process because I went up to the House of Assembly on the day the Members of Parliament debated and passed the law.

I almost got run over by a horde of white parents, mostly mothers, who were dead set against such a law being approved. I saw a similar reaction when at one time Bermuda entered a debate as to whether so-called black studies should be taught in Bermuda's schools, which in reality only meant the inclusion of the black Bermudian role in Bermuda's history (and, from my perspective, that would have also meant the inclusion of the black man's role in world history).

This initiative came to naught and incredibly enough some black people were concerned, arguing the issue should not be pushed because it might upset white people to learn the truth of race relations in this country.

When I speak of an attempt to graft black people into white society I know what I am talking about. But that still leaves the question: Where do we go from here in regards to the overall question I broached at the outset ? has the experiment of so-called integration failed? Well, I have long accepted that the experiment of whether multiracial societies can work has always involved a lot of trial and error.

the American authors of do not profess that there is a miracle cure to America's racial divide. One black and the other writer white, they were shocked to learn that even though they are both academics and have collaborated together in the past, they essentially live in two different worlds ? worlds of black and white. While calling Washington-mandated integration a myth, they do speak of what they consider to successful manifestations of genuine racial integration.

And they have found some worrying trends. One is that African-Americans are getting tired of carrying the burden of integration on their backs alone while white Americans increasingly are asking what more they have to do to satisfy black demands. The result is a degree of voluntary resegregation.

Again what of Bermuda and its racial divide? Will there be a different trend here based on the fact that blacks constitute the overwhelming majority as opposed to in America where they are a minority? Or will we too get tired of carrying the burden of so-called integration on our backs alone?

I guess it all comes down to this: As a black Bermudian, what do I really have in common with my fellow white Bermudian which will allow us to live in harmony? I confess that up to this point I do not have a true answer to this question which will have such a great bearing on the future of this country.