Thanks to black university students, segregation is coming back into its own.  Not government-mandated coercive segregation under Jim Crow, with its back-of-the-bus rules, separate washrooms, “whites” and “blacks only” drinking fountains, etc.  That type of segregation was a clear and present danger, a violation of the rights of free association: that no one should be compelled to associate with anyone else against his will, or prohibited from so doing.  Happily, that unjust chapter in our history is long gone.

We are talking here of something entirely different: voluntary segregation.  The philosopher Muhammad Ali, perhaps the most formidable boxer of all time, said it best: “In the jungle, lions are with lions and tigers with tigers and redbirds stay with redbirds and bluebirds with bluebirds.  That’s human nature, too, to be with your own kind.  I don’t want to go where I’m not wanted.”

So what are the African-American students at our most prestigious universities and many others as well now demanding?  Separate graduation ceremonies, separate spaces, separate clubs, separate dormitories, separate dining rooms, separate counseling services, separate courses (black studies).  More power to them, say I.

If segregation is good enough for lions, tigers and blacks, it ought to be good enough for whites, Asians — indeed, for all people.  We already have separate clubs for females, sororities, and separate bathrooms for them, too, although the latter seem to be on the way out in these woke times.  (Not all movement is in the direction of voluntary segregation.)

Actually, this is just the tip of the iceberg of segregation on campus.  Musicians gather into groups limited to those who sing or play instruments.  Athletes have been known to exclude others from their get-togethers.  They even further segregate into smaller communities focusing on separate sports.  Nor are the nerds far behind them in this exercise.  The chess club is pretty much limited to fellow patzers.  The physicists and chemists keep to themselves on many occasions as well.

But the black students deserve some additional special praise.  It took great courage for them to insist upon their rights to be among themselves.  The way ahead in this regard was far easier for thespians, poets, philosophers, mathematicians, etc. on campus.  No one objects to them gathering and excluding outsiders.  All deserve to engage in free association; no one should be compelled to associate with anyone else against his will.

However, with that type of segregation, and only that type, one of the underpinnings of affirmative action will be broken.  This policy is often justified on the ground that it affords people of all races experiences, interactions, with one another.  If blacks want to isolate themselves from others in the academic community, this supposed benefit of affirmative action will be truncated, if not entirely eliminated.

One of the arguments for affirmative action is that members of different ethnic and racial groups would benefit from interacting with one another.  This neo-segregation would be in direct conflict with that goal.  But the law of free association inures in the direction of segregation, if it is so desired, not integration.

Suppose now that white students wanted to isolate themselves from all others, or Asians, or any other such group.  Would that type of initiative be tolerated on campus?  Not bloody likely.  It would be rejected along with cries of “supremacy,” “racism,” etc.  Why the different treatment?  Presumably, because all groups are not equal.  Some now have more “equity” than others.

The key, here, is voluntarism.  Anti-miscegenation laws are illicit since they prohibit voluntary integration. School busing to achieve racial integration — as practiced, infamously, in Boston — was coercive, and therefore also constituted improper law.  Likewise with segregation.  If it is imposed by government, and therefore compulsory, it is thus a legal wrong.  However, if it is practiced on a voluntary basis, such as by these black students on campus, then it is to be applauded, if human freedom is to be supported.

Image via PickPik.