from the time i first encountered fred i've liked his essays, and now this one cements that approval. make sure to watch the short video at the beginning;

The campaign to force the comingling of blacks and whites hasn’t worked, isn’t working, shows no sign that it will work, has become an industry, and enjoys the support of few. Usually the proselytizing for what seems unwanted togetherness is intense and swathed in righteousness. It is said to be intended to end mistreatment of blacks. The one question never addressed: Do blacks want integration? Does anybody want it?

I would like to see the results of a poll by a reliable organ, Pew perhaps, asking blacks in all walks of life:

“Would you rather send your children to a white or a black school if both had the same funding, quality of facilities, and quality of instruction?”

Black kids might be asked which school they would prefer.  For twelve years they bear the brunt of policies made in their name by people they don’t know to promote ends they may not share, without their preferences being taken into account or at least heard.

If the results of such polls showed that blacks—ordinary blacks, not activists and politicians—do not want integration, What objection could there be to having schools for blacks only governed by black officials, and likewise for whites? Call it salutary disengagement.

Let us admit it: Schooling in its biracial form has been a source of endless friction. Whites complain of affirmative action and dumbing down, blacks of racism. White parents, or some of them, want their children to learn good English, while blacks apparently see grammar as alien and oppressive. Serious differences exist as to what should be studied. The cultures seem so far apart as to be immiscible. What to do?

Why should both races not enjoy self-determination, each deciding in its own schools what should be taught? Literacy should be required of all citizens, but what beyond this? I want my children to know of Fifth Century Athens as it is a formative source of their culture, but why should black kids, having no roots in Greece, have to learn this stuff? For that matter, if white parents in the Bible Belt want their children to learn about Christianity, why is this anyone else’s business?

Blacks and whites have proved unable to live amicably intermixed. What alternative is there? Many people have argued for a policy of separate but equal. In its 1954 Brown decision, the Supreme Court said that “separate is inherently unequal.” This was both illogical, and arrant twaddle, but fit the court’s mood. What was true in those days is that separate invariably meant that blacks schools got less funding and less support. They observably, documentedly were not equal. In today’s world, with its willingness to engage in affirmative action, ensuring equality of resources by enforceable law would be easy as would be the continued provision of such things as lunches and books........more........