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Comment by lliamander

5 years ago

I think there's plenty of evidence that racially segregated schools was best for social harmony, even in that moment. And while I think that forced segregation was wrong, I don't think it's obvious that forced integration was the best outcome. I think there's a good case to be made that free association would have resulted in a better outcome for all races.

As for the gender/sex segregation issue, I don't know I have a good answer either, though I think freedom to self-segregate would probably help us best discover a "good enough" answer.

3 comments

lliamander

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lliamander  5 years ago

Argh, meant to say "I think there was plenty of evidence that racially segregated schools wasn't best for social harmony, even in that moment."

  • joshuamorton  5 years ago

    I presumed as much :P

    I'll offer two points, and then probably not respond much more because we're well beyond the initial discussion and while you've been very polite, we're moving further into space where things could become heated.

    Forced integration was clearly not best for social harmony in the moment. It required calling in the military (not to mention things like bussing across district are costly and annoying). In general this is the issue with extending rights to minority groups: social harmony is easier to maintain if you don't upset the dominant group.

    As for whether or not forced integration was the "right" thing. Consider that today de-facto segregation is still a thing, school districts are on the whole, still very racially skewed because people are skewed in where they live[0]. Where people are given choice, the privileged are unlikely to give it away, and because of how education works in the US (funding is based on property taxes, and de-facto again segregation and class differences), you can see stark differences in k-12 educational opportunities for minorities still today. Strategies to address this don't exist in many areas, or come with trouble themselves.

    It's unlikely that on the whole educational opportunity would be more equal today without the temporary forced integration, unless you're valuing second order effects (like thinking that school integration "fixed" racial inequality) much more strongly than I.

    [0]: And I'll ignore for now how things ended up that way, but it wasn't by accident