Is Voluntary Racial Segregation Bad?

It seems every other week there’s a news article or report about how American schools are becoming “increasingly segregated.” What’s happening is that people are making the choice to move to areas with better government schools, putting their kids in private schools, or opting to home-school. At least for now, people have the right to move wherever they want and for whatever reasons.

Inevitably, those who are financially unable to move to neighborhoods with better schools and can’t afford private schools or home-schooling get left behind. What is the government’s role in these situations? During the civil rights movement, the people fought for and won the right to be treated as first-class citizens. The government dismantled decades worth of Jim Crow laws and struck racial segregation from the books. Should the government now coerce people to integrate?

The Civil Rights Project at the University of California released a report that shows blacks and Hispanics are “more separate from white students than at any time since the civil rights movement and many of the schools they attend are struggling.” (Source)

What role should the government take, if any, in so-called voluntary segregation? Should we be concerned about racial segregation per se or only government-mandated segregation?

So-called residential segregation is not illegal or immoral. It’s one thing if a landlord or realtor or mortgage company discriminates against someone on the basis of race. It’s quite another if people choose to live in certain areas and around certain people. As long as the government isn’t doing the segregating, it shouldn’t be an issue.

One consequence of residential segregation is that some schools will contain a larger number of low-performing students. As the article notes, these schools tend to have weaker teachers, and a higher percentage of kids from low-income homes and for whom English is a second language.

Should we just say, “That’s life,” and be done with it?

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