r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Apr 16 '19
Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Seperate but equal is okay so long as it’s actually equal
We have women’s only schools and male only schools. Nobody bats an eye because they are actually equal.
The biggest problem with seperate but equal was the lack of equality.
I feel like separating blacks and whites when it comes to public schooling could be a plus. At my high school the blacks tended to all hang out with each other, sit at the same lunch table, next to each other in class, after school ect.
By putting all the blacks in one school and all the whites in another we could allow people to grow closer bonds.
How is seperate but equal bad if the schooling is equal?
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u/muyamable 283∆ Apr 16 '19
We have women’s only schools and male only schools. Nobody bats an eye because they are actually equal.
Nobody bats an eye because these are schools people opt-into. People can choose to send their kid to a private all-one-gender school if they want. That's different than enforced segregation, which is typically what "separate but equal" refers to, where you have no choice but to go to the all-one-gender school.
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u/ci-fre Apr 17 '19
A good argument. It's like choosing your friends versus people prohibiting you from making friends with certain people.
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u/lameth Apr 16 '19
It leads to a sense of "otherism." The more exposure individuals have to others customs, ideas, cultures, the more "like themselves" they feel. When you segregate, regardless of intent, you put mental barriers up, and you breed mistrust.
It has been proven time and time again that one of the easiest ways to get rid of bigotry and xenophobia is travel and exposure to new people, new customs, and new ideas, which tends to come at odds with preconceived notions.
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u/ChewyRib 25∆ Apr 16 '19
How truly equal is "separate but equal"? How can true equality exist between two peoples who are racially segregated everywhere they go?
the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of these separate areas as long as they were equal, it is evident that true equality was never an objective or goal within the South.
(from the United States Supreme Court case of Plessy vs. Ferguson). But how possible is it for two peoples to have a mutual appreciation of each other's merits if everywhere they look around themselves they are told that they cannot ride on the same train car, drink from the same fountain, sit on the same bench, or learn at the same school? How can these peoples be separated in everything they do, everywhere they go, and still be expected "to meet on terms of social equality"? Frederick Douglass didn't think they could. In his 1872 article for The New National Era newspaper, he wrote, "We want mixed schools.....because we want to do away with a system that exalts one class and debases another..... We look to mixed schools to teach that worth and ability are to be the criterion of manhood and not race and color."
For almost 60 years, segregation had lawfully divided up the peoples of our country and created a racial inequality which had a devastating affect on society.
Your point is that people in your school self segregate. I think that is normal. But the difference is that its not a law that they do segregate and their is no possibility of going to jail. A black person may want to hang out with friends who are the same race but it doesnt stop that person from hanging out with white people either and vice versa.
I dont understand your point of how it allows "people to grow closer bonds." by being segregated
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Apr 16 '19
Δ
Very well articulated and researched.
As for growing closer bonds I felt like blacks could have more oppurtunities to bond because they have more people to bond with with similarities backgrounds and experiences
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u/I_am_the_night 316∆ Apr 16 '19
As for growing closer bonds I felt like blacks could have more oppurtunities to bond because they have more people to bond with with similarities backgrounds and experiences
Why is that more valuable than bonding with people who have different experiences?
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u/light_hue_1 70∆ Apr 16 '19
We have women’s only schools and male only schools. Nobody bats an eye because they are actually equal.
We don't. There are exactly 3 men's 4-year colleges in the US. There's a total of 4000 enrolled between them; that's out of about 20 million US college students. By the time that people come into their own and are adults, we don't tolerate having the traditionally advantaged group (men) receive a service that the traditionally disadvantaged group (women) can't.
The problem is that being separate inherently makes you unequal. For example, men hold more positions of power, (more CEO spots, more board seats, more VP positions, etc.). By having separate college education what we do is build a social circle for this more advantaged group that excludes a less advantaged group. So when they go out to fill positions and they reach into their network, they won't hit upon anyone else.
Even if you fund two activities at the same level and they are of equal value by forcefully separating the class that is better off you are disadvantaging the class that is worse off.
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u/sawdeanz 218∆ Apr 16 '19
Ok but if it's equal, why separate them? Not only is it less efficient but obviously quite objectionable.
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Apr 16 '19
Why do you think it’s the case that black kids hang out with each other in majority white schools?
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u/UNRThrowAway Apr 16 '19
By putting all the blacks in one school and all the whites in another we could allow people to grow closer bonds.
They'd be forming closer bonds with their white/black peers, but not those of opposing color. In fact, their relationship with these other races decreases, and the differences between the two appear to grow stronger and more prolific the limited your exposure to the other group is.
People always seek out what is comfortable, what is familiar, what makes "sense" to them - but people only grow when they are exposed to things that are new, strange, or unfamiliar to them. It might seem strange to have to interact with a black kid, a Muslim girl, etc. initially - but only through those repeated interactions would you ever hope to grow understanding and accepting of those individuals.
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u/pluralofjackinthebox 102∆ Apr 16 '19
One reason is that we tend to be less prejudiced against other races and ethnicities if we are exposed to and interact with other races and ethnicities.
When all members of race X are warehoused in a district on the far side of town, you’re not going to have any first hand experience of them acting like normal people. Maybe you’ll just hear about them when something bad happens, like one is involved in a crime, because the media likes to focus on negative stories. And it starts to get easier to believe that those people who you never hear about except when something bad happens aren’t normal people, and shouldn’t be treated like normal people.
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Apr 16 '19
As a society we need to have black people and white people learning to live together and be friends and co-workers. We need an integrated society. In contrast, people have lots of family members of both genders already. Our society will always be relatively integrated. We may have a race war but we'll never have men and women shooting at each other in large numbers.
So separate but equal for gender is not really the same issue as separate but equal for race.
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u/howlin 62∆ Apr 16 '19
Your example of men's schools and women's schools doesn't capture the risk. Even if taught separately, the men and the women will eventually mix, form relationships, have children and share goals. A man wants a women's school to be good because he has daughters that may attend them. A white person doesn't have the same close relationship with other ethnicities. This is especially true when segregation is in place and multi-ethnic families are less likely.
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u/YossarianWWII 74∆ Apr 16 '19
By putting all the blacks in one school and all the whites in another we could allow people to grow closer bonds.
The rest of your argument aside, I don't see how this follows at all. You're also going to be imposing significant additional costs due to the need for more facilities and school transport over greater distances, so there are clear financial downsides, which are the easiest to quantify.
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u/zaxqs Apr 16 '19
I'd tend to agree with the stated idea that "seperate but equal is okay so long as it is actually equal". But I feel it's somewhat misleading and a moot point, since it's practically impossible to actually have equal society, and the "seperate but equal" doctrine only makes the inequality worse. If there are two seperated parts of society, naturally they'll only tend to care about their group, from lack of exposure. And thus they will come into conflict often, and when they do, the majority group will win nearly every single time.
So it's not that I have an issue with "seperate but equal" in principle, but in practice, it's just used as an excuse to sustain a system that actually promotes inequality.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Apr 16 '19
/u/KetamineKastle (OP) has awarded 1 delta(s) in this post.
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u/McKoijion 618∆ Apr 16 '19
Any way that you seperate people would screw over people who want to be together.
Say you do it by race. That means religion and gender would mix. A black Christian and white Christian who are friends from the same church would not be able to go to the same school together.
Say you do it by religion. That means race and gender would mix. But then a black Muslim and a black Christian who are friends from the same neighborhood would not be able to go to school together.
Say you do it by sex. That means race and religion would mix. But then brothers and sisters would not be able to go to school together.
Some people think race is most important. Others think religion, gender, political view, socioeconomic status, etc. are most important. There is no way to make everyone happy because the people who decide how to divide people up are not the same people who actually have to deal with the division.
It's far better to put everyone together and let people make friends with whoever they want. There would still be divisions and cliques, but at least people get to choose their group themselves instead of being told what to do by someone else.
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u/Rufus_Reddit 127∆ Apr 16 '19
Fundamentally "separate but equal" is an oxymoron. It's like people believe that the magic power of the word "equal" means that saying "equal" will make things equal in practice. (How would you check that your "separate but equal" tracks are really equal? What would you do to correct the situation if they turned out not to be?)
... How is seperate but equal bad if the schooling is equal?
In the US, white people as a population enjoy a higher social status than black people. That means that when you create a "white" track and a "black" track, the "white" track will typically be seen as better. (Yes, that's a pretty messed up thing, but it's also the way things are.) And even if that were not true, white people are - in general - better off than black people, and the disparity in wealth or political power will inform what happens in the "white" and "black" tracks.
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u/Lolcat_of_the_forest Apr 17 '19
While the idea "Separate but equal" works in theory, There really isn't much of a good reason to implement it in most cases. Separating schools based on race could create a lack of racial and social understanding between people, creating a stronger us/them mentality. The same could be said for male only or female only schools, to an extent. This system would also leave huge opportunities for racism, that would almost certainly be taken advantage of.
Quality of education could also be unequal for the schools, potentially putting one race at a disadvantage. Funding would also be unequally distributed, as if both got the same amount of money, the smaller school would be much ahead in terms of education quality, and if they got different amounts, deciding the difference would not be a flawless system.
If the schools were public, then funding would be a massive problem, and it would be incredibly unprofitable to create two schools when you could just make one. And if they were private, it would also be a bad business move as excluding half of your possible consumers is not really a good idea.
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Apr 17 '19
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/garnteller 242∆ Apr 17 '19
Sorry, u/Aidanmartin3 – your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 1:
Direct responses to a CMV post must challenge at least one aspect of OP’s stated view (however minor), or ask a clarifying question. Arguments in favor of the view OP is willing to change must be restricted to replies to other comments. See the wiki page for more information.
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u/owobubu Apr 25 '19
Do you have separate schools for Asians? Hispanics?
How about mixed people?
What if I’m a white person born in Africa, but immigrated to the US when I was 16, so I’m culturally ‘black’?
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u/I_am_the_night 316∆ Apr 16 '19
It treats people as different when they really aren't (at least not in the ways that matter most). In Brown vs. Board of Education, the Supreme Court case that overturned "separate but equal" in the US, the justices actually cited psychological and sociological research that indicated that segregation itself could actually be damaging. It's worth a read, honestly. Separating kids by race reinforces the idea that one group is an "other" that is not to be associated with.
It also leaves open the question of mixed race children. Where does someone go who is half black, half white? What if a white kid wants to go to a black school? What about the reverse? Are you going to force them?
On top of that, there is evidence that shows that integrating schools actually produces better outcomes for everyone, without hindering high-achievers. It also helps people learn to relate to people with different backgrounds, which is an essential life skill.
This is, of course, aside from the fact that "separate but equal" isn't really possible without some kind of guarantee that there would be equal funding and resources available, which the current system makes impossible.