Whose side are you on? East or West? North or South? Haiti or the Dominican Republic? Black or white? Rich or poor?  Pro-life or pro-choice? Are you with us or against us? Pro-Arab or pro-America? Are you in or out? The categories can seem arbitrary, even childish, but the world we live in isn’t a game of red rover: Distinctions like these often mean the difference between life and death, love and hate, peace and war.

Or, for that matter, segregation and integration. The word “segregation” is used far less frequently than it was 50 years ago, when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that separate is not equal. But the fading away of that term doesn’t mean that the practice of segregation — intentional or not — has vanished. Today people throughout the world continue to grapple with differences and division — along the lines of class, ethnicity, national origin, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion, and a host of other categories.

As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, this special issue of InTheFray Magazine asks whether we should settle for a world of difference or continue struggling to step across the dividing lines. We begin with some historical context: Segregation’s last hurrah, a collection of Will Counts’ award-winning 1957 photographs of nine black students who defied the Arkansas National Guard to attend an all-white high school in Little Rock. In Making a nation of difference, we speak with Berkeley law professor Rachel F. Moran about how effective Brown has been in transforming racial attitudes in this country.

How do we balance our need to bond with people like ourselves, and our desire to bridge the divides separating us from others? Journalist and activist Robert Jensen examines the contradictions of being an antiracist advocate while also maintaining Illusions of superiority about his own whiteness. And guest columnist Carol Lee explores the struggles  faced by modern women who are confronted with both family and work responsibilities in We can do it … right?

Rounding out this week’s articles, we step onto a not-so-distant shore to examine the legacy of a centuries-old segregation linked tragically to North America’s own: the Caribbean island shared by two nations, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, separated near birth along lines of blood and bloodshed. In The handshake man, Justin Clark examines the struggles to fit in faced by Haitians on both sides of an island cleaved in two, while Sierra Prasada Millman, in Far from heaven, far from home, questions the possibilities of redemption for characters — and countries — trying to crawl out from the shadows of their violent histories in Haitian American writer Edwige Danticat’s novel The Dew Breaker.

On Monday, May 17, 2004 — the anniversary of the Brown decision — we will publish part two of this special issue, including: