Legal in the sense that it isn't illegal. Why are you trying to play with words? This nation is segregated. That is the primary reason there is still racial strife and why it is a benefit to be born white.
Until we are ACTUALLY integrated.......this issue will remain.
It isn't a desire to self segregate. It is a recognition that the barriers to integration are still too lofty.
When I was at college, all of the minorities CHOOSE to sit with each other in the dining halls.
I guess our college was segregated. Is it your contention the security guards should have broken up their friendships and dispersed them among the white students to force integration? Seriously?
Do you think the government should make it illegal for black people to associate with other black people, and the government should go into all the various China Towns and break them up? Really? Because those voluntary associations aren't "illegal," so that makes this segregation. . . . well.. . . legal?
Yeah, that's called voluntary association. Any poor black person that wants to can move into a white trailer park.
There's a good book that addresses this issue called,
"Why Are All Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria"
"Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see black youth seated together in the cafeteria. Of course, it's not just the black kids sitting together-the white, Latino, Asian Pacific, and, in some regions, American Indian youth are clustered in their own groups, too. The same phenomenon can be observed in college dining halls, faculty lounges, and corporate cafeterias. What is going on here? Is this self-segregation a problem we should try to fix, or a coping strategy we should support? How can we get past our reluctance to talk about racial issues to even discuss it? And what about all the other questions we and our children have about race? Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, asserts that we do not know how to talk about our racial differences: Whites are afraid of using the wrong words and being perceived as "racist" while parents of color are afraid of exposing their children to painful racial realities too soon."
And the fact is if we can't have an honest discussion about racism without half of those discussing it accusing the other half of being racist because they aren't discussing it 'right', then it's pretty much a given that we're screwed and won't ever understand it as it really is.
I remember an old "All In the Family Episode". In the series Michael Stivick ("Meathead the Polack' as Archie called him") was best friends with the black kid "Lionel Jefferson" who lived next door. And in one scene, the discussion was on race and Stivick was repeatedly asking Lionel for the 'black man's perspective' on whatever was being discussed. Finally Lionel called him on it. Stivick couldn't see how racist it was to ask Lionel to provide a 'black man's perspective' instead of just asking Lionel what he thought about it as he would have asked a white guy.
Nobody ever asks for the 'white man's perspective' but so often black people have to give it as a 'black person's perspective' or they will be demonized by the PC crowd as "uncle Tom's" or "sell outs" or whatever.
That comes back to White Privilege. When have you ever seen a white person called out as a 'discredit to his race' because he took a particular position? But over the years we've certainly heard the term applied to Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Condi Rice et al when they expressed an opinion unpopular in most of the PC crowd.
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