Sorry for the late reply, but I just read your message.

I most certainly do not believe in "separate but equal" because that was a phony rationale for de jure segregation. Contrary to your assumption, I do believe that all schools should have equal facilities and resources. Schools in poor neighborhoods generally do not have facilities and resources equal to schools in affluent neighborhoods because schools are largely financed by local property taxes. This needs to change, as it has in my state. The tax money needs to be spread equally between schools (see, comrade, I can tolerate some socialism).

Unlike you, I do have a problem with the State denying an open seat to a five or six year old kid in a neighborhood school and forcing him to ride a bus for 2 to 4 hours a day.in order to achieve some particular ideal racial mix dreamed up by a bureaucrat or bright social engineer like yourself.

I don't think much is achieved solely by a kid sitting next to a kid who looks different. Thus, I don't have a problem with schools that are predominately composed of one race as long as that racial composition is not the result of state action or coercion. And I believe that if a kid doesn't want to attend his neighborhood school, he should have the right to take a bus to another school.

One thing that separates us, comrade, is the degree to which we are willing to use coercion by the State to achieve some people's ideals about how society, and human beings, ought to be. I don't have a problem with white Kristine (from another thread) because she prefers to hang with people she can relate to culturally and intellectually and those people happen to be mostly white. I don't consider that a crime against the State, do you? And it doesn't bother me that O.J. Simpson likes to boink blond, white women.

Live and let live, comrade, as long as the State doesn't deny us the rights to go where we want, associate with whom we want, eat in the restaurants of our choice, and sleep in the hotels of our choice.

BTW, comrade, I consider myself a liberal--in the truest sense of the word, not a conservative.