What can the government do?

During the discussion of A Raisin In the Sun, the issue of housing discrimination was brought up numerous times as a major cause of a segregated society. We also connect this issue in the book to the real-life where the same issue is taking place, such as in the articles where the author called Michigan one of the most segregated states. I was actually pretty surprised to find out that racial discrimination of this scale still exists today. One question that I had was why aren't there any regulations that restrict these types of discrimination; however, now I realize that the issue will not be easily resolved.

First, the biggest factor of this issue is the presence of self-discrimination which I blogged about last week. Self-discrimination leads to the prevention of integration of different ethnicities or races. In the case of Housing discrimination, the buyers of the house are not restricted from buying housing in areas with different races or ethnic groups, they simply chose not to live there. This important factor is the reason that there are no government regulations on the housing situation. Because everyone is following their own self-interest by moving to areas with similar racial groups, the government cannot just force people to integrate; it will even cause the cafeteria situation I talked about last week where everyone seems to live together but is actually self-separated into smaller groups of racially similar people. This can lead to even more problems than just not integrating because of the lack of cultural exchange which causes stereotypes and eventually led to conflicts. This is what will happen if the government tries to regulate the housing issue. Also trying to regulate how people think goes against almost every law in the world, so they cannot just simply force people to integrate and live together.

So how can this issue be resolved? I honestly have no idea. The best we can do now is to educate others, especially people from different races, about our own culture so there is no wall that blocks each other's thoughts. Hopefully, by doing this, we can influence more and more people to do the same until everyone in the world is educated about other races or ethnicities. That is when segregation will be truly and completely eliminated and we can have a truly diverse and integrated world.