American race relations theory is applied to the conceptualization of assimilation in America and to problems in planning in higher education desegregation. Black colleges can be viewed as microcosms of American race relations in their patterns of conflict, accommodation, and assimilation. The conflict over the propriety of black colleges' claims and their continued existence in desegregated society is played out as national policy. Black colleges are expected to accept diminished roles in order to integrate according to the prescribed pattern: a plurality of separate identities is transformed into a colorless, interracial community. Black colleges are caught in the controversial middle ground between desegregation options that purport to advance equality in a racially-disparate society and those necessary for efficiency in a system stressed by duality in a single system--the delivery of higher education in the South. Some conceptualizations suggest that the absorption of blacks into the mainstream of American life would be neither inevitable nor even desirable from the standpoint of the requirements of a democratic and pluralistic society. The fundamental dilemma is whether the positive benefits of the Brown decision become a threat to black cultural and institutional prerogatives/imperatives. (SW)