Recently, Dr. Melvyn Bassett caused quite a stir by suggesting that the marked increase in enrolment in private schools is resulting in de facto segregation in the public school system. Dr. Bassett concluded that if the drift towards private school education persists, it could very well result in increased racial hostility in the future.

The question needs to be asked, "Is segregation of schools necessarily damaging to race relations?" The answer to this question is not a simple one and depends very much on what one understands to be segregation.

My baby Oxford Dictionary defines the verb to segregate as "to take from the rest and set apart for some purpose". The key phrases are "take from" and "set apart". The two phrases imply forcible separation.

Segregation so defined, is rampant in the entire society, especially in the public education system.

Most public education systems separate children who are academically gifted from the rest. This is called by the inoffensive word "streaming". Private education systems segregate the children of the richer classes from those of the poorer classes by exacting a very high price for attendance at their institutions. Even in Russia, when it languished under a communist system that claimed to be classless, the mentally gifted children received superior instruction and many perks.

We need to ask: "Why is segregation frowned upon when the practice is so widespread in our society?" I argue that it is the removal of choice that makes segregation distasteful. When access to a school is based on characteristics we cannot attain, such as race, than segregation becomes distasteful and is very likely to lead to racial hostility.

But the parents who opt to send their children to private schools are not likely to be exercising this option for reasons of race. I live next to the Bermuda High School for Girls and can observe sufficient numbers of young black girls entering and leaving the institution to appreciate that if anyone sent their children to that school to escape association with black children, they certainly failed.

Yet it must be stated that very few white parents are prepared to send their children to the predominantly black public schools which are often far better staffed and equipped than the very expensive private schools. Clearly white parents do not believe that the public system can deliver the quality of education they desire for their children and this view is widely shared by black parents also. These facts certainly do not lead to the conclusion that increased segregation that is a matter of mutual consent is likely to lead to an increase in racial hostility.

The key factor that determines whether or not racial hostility will increase is related to the extent to which the races are able to interact positively in all other aspects of Bermuda society. In Bermuda's worst case scenario, there are still very many other situations in this society for which people of different races intermingle and enjoy each others company. I refer to the corporate and government workplaces and the myriad of sites where Bermudians pursue sport and recreation. Still, one might well ask: "While these places of intermingling exist, are they truly integrated?"

My baby Oxford defines integration as the "combining of different elements into a whole". While we can argue that segregation can be removed, we cannot claim that the removal of segregation will result in integration. The removal of segregation is to say that the door is open and anyone can enter. It does not by itself mean that anyone will enter. If we force everyone to enter will that be integration? Clearly, integration must also be a matter of choice not force.

This brings us to the point where some Bermudians claim that diversity is an ideal to be sought after. Both political parties subscribe to this point of view. The PLP does because it was never comfortable with the concept of integration. The leadership of that party never believed that people should be forced to associate with each other. Rather, it believed very strongly that people should be able to participate freely in all aspects of Bermuda society as a matter of choice.

The UBP, on the other hand, was sold on the idea that integration was the solution to Bermuda's racial ills. No doubt this belief led them to place the term "United" front and centre in the name of its party. Today, the UBP accepts that the term "integration" placed a huge burden on racial unity in their party with black members insisting that movement towards the goal of integration was not fast enough while whites were convinced that the party was moving too fast. It is no surprise, therefore, that the party readily adopted the term "Diversity" which allowed a far greater degree of flexibility in terms of the development of its social policy.

Would a fully integrated school system improve race relations? If education means no more than children sharing the same space and looking at the same set of facts than education is not likely to result in an improvement in race relations. I reach this conclusion because the history and development of Bermuda's major races has been very different with respect to slavery and segregation. Yet, to the extent that education serves to reinforce the positive aspects of our development while at the same time encouraging increased interaction of the major races, we can have reasonable expectations that racial antagonisms will rapidly diminish and ultimately disappear altogether.

We may conclude that there is a need to increase the opportunities for Bermuda's major races to interact in a positive way, if race relations are ever to improve.

I believe that many of Bermuda's institutions are accomplishing this despite the continuing presence of groups conspicuous by their racial homogeneity.

However, even in these cases, members of both races may join such institutions, if they so desire. For all of the above reasons, I think Bermudians can claim to be well on the way to a society wherein one chooses one's school as well as one's place of employment, worship and entertainment based on considerations that are not racial.