Perhaps the most pernicious element of Socialism is its attack on culture, per se. If a just society is defined as one in which everyone is the same, in which all distinctions of class, national identity, ethnic background, religion (which of course is to be destroyed root and branch), or any other differentiator are gone, then culturally nothing is left. Everything is left to the winds. All that is stable is the State, which is omnipotent, and everywhere.
If this image is appalling, then we must envision the alternative: the acceptance, in principle, of individual and cultural variety. More: that such variety is not just a species of injustice, but the very fruit and flower of what is most noble and best in human beings. Our identities are what we offer the wider world, what we use most efficiently to enrich others.
Given this, with respect to racial integration, what is needed is not the eradication of cultural differences, but their reconciliation in countless individual encounters, in improbable friendships, surprising commonalities between strangers, and an underlying theme that we are all alone together, and may as well make the best of it. This requires neither giving up our identities, nor asking others to do so.
So often, it seems to me that the valorization (acadamese for valuing) of the Other is not intended so much to exalt or respect the Other, so much as to denigrate US. Once WE are gone, then that same hammer will come crashing down on everyone else. There is no genuine tolerance in this, no reaching across cultures such that we both grow. It is a zero sum contest, in which many of those playing it want US to lose.
When I say US, I mean old fashioned Liberals, for whom the Constitution is the most brilliant political document ever written, and who value personal autonomy, a sense of moral structure (which they refuse on principle to impose on others), political freedom, economic freedom, and a modest but very real and very deeply felt patriotism.