He is not wrong. The cumulative effect of small ingroup preferences is segregation, see this little cute simulation <a href="https://ncase.me/polygons" rel="nofollow">https://ncase.me/polygons</a>. To enforce desegregation you need to either suspend freedom even for small choices, or reeducate your subjects to exhibit unnaturally large outgroup preference.
The article's focus on "parent choice" seems like a red herring to me. Bussing isn't any more about parent choice today than it was in the 70s. Though I'm sure one could easily find anti-civil rights publications from back then trying to make that same appeal to tradition.<p>The fact is that integration never really happened in the US. The powers that be used arguments like "parental choice" to stymie progress, and we ended up in a good-enough middle ground where the privileged class could pretend something was done, and racism was over. Meanwhile school funding remains directly tied to standardized test scores, creating virtuous/vicious cycles of classism in virtually every city across the country.<p>The point of establishing public schools was to break the cycle of only the rich being able to afford a good education. IMO the fact that there is such a thing as good/bad public schools means the system has failed. I'm totally in favor of bussing as much as I am the use of online tools like KhanAcademy and subsidized child care.
Assume that's right - that letting parents choose what school their children attend (by choosing where they move) leads to more segregated schools. Therefore... what?<p>You can't let parents choose because they might choose wrongly? If that's your position, how do you feel about the exact same logic being applied to abortion? And if you don't like how that would work out on abortion, maybe it's not good logic here?<p>The US left sure seems willing to be authoritarian in order to achieve the social ends that they want...