So... how about that Tea Party?

[HappySqurriel]

Final-Fan said:

The thing is that this is crazy.  The fact that we work to eliminate racial segregation doesn't mean that we should logically also work to eliminate men's and women's toilets.  Dealing with it on a case by case basis as you might say. 

And dealing with racial segregation socially ... didn't work.  Or, rather, the way it worked was the South, 1880-1950.  Now the innermost quoted post by you will say that this is simply a sad consequence of the correct position to take (government noninterference) but the idea that the problem would just go away on its own (once Jim Crow laws were gone) is pure fantasy.  Without the law against them the South may well have held out indefinitely. 

To put it another way, I'm looking at your final sentence.  If I'm not mistaken, racist clubs are allowed to exist, but businesses are treated differently since they are supposed to be open to the public.  American society on the whole decided racism was inappropriate, but Southern society came to a different answer, which they stuck to until American society as a whole used the law to force them to stop it. 

I think why you think this approach is crazy is because you make the assumption that the status quo would have been preserved in the south. Laws that encouraged or enforced systemic segregation would need to be eliminated, and all institutions or organizations that received government funding would be forced to integrate; because the government has no right to discriminate against its citizens. While it wouldn’t have the immediate impact of government forced integration, as more and more businesses integrated public sentiment would move more and more towards integration; and segregation in the south would have (mostly) eliminated itself.

One thing that people don’t seem to consider is that segregation is the kind of social norm which needs to be externally re-enforced in order to be preserved; and (over time) as people were put into more and more situations where they were integrated the fear of integration would disappear and support for segregation would vanish. Or to put it another way, if you’re dealing with people of all races at school, at the DMV, or when you’re eating at McDonalds it is unlikely that many people would purposefully continue to seek out segregated environments.