And there is a kind of comic futility in such efforts, because we are all stuck here on the same continent and we will never escape from each other or from the shared past that has made us Americans. So these two stories of race and freedom are intimately related, and together have formed most of what can be called American identity. Separatism in the simple sense has been much more common than one might expect. Plans to colonize free blacks, for example, were considered sensible by many thoughtful Americans, black and white, from the 1770s through the Civil War, and in some cases long afterward. Thomas Jefferson advocated colonization, as did Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln, and many others.
Colonization is obviously a form of separatism.
In a broader sense, separatism pervades racial thinking of all kinds. That was true in 17th-century Carolinian marriage laws, and it is true in the racial identifications we see in personals ads today. Segregation was separatist. Multiculturalism today, in its way, is separatist. While I do believe racial separatism has been inherent in American racial life for centuries, I also believe it has always failed to reach its goals.