In this paper we argue that although the United States and South Africa have produced qualitatively different national frames about the necessity for racial integration in education, certain practices converge in both nations at the school level that thwart integrationist goals. Drawing on sociologist Jeannie Oakes and colleagues' idea of schools as "zones of mediation" of economic, racial, social, and cultural phenomena, we provide empirical evidence of how a complex set of social interactions--sustained by explicit organized school practices--limit educators' and students' abilities to accept and comply with integrationist aims of equity and the redress of cumulative disadvantages due to past racial discrimination. We discuss how social and symbolic boundaries reproduced by educational actors in everyday school practices illuminate the macromicro tension between the goals of racial integration policy and perceived group interests. Our arguments emerge from thorough analyses of ethnographic, interview, and survey data obtained over a four-year period from multiracial and desegregated schools located in four US and South African cities.