The nation is in the midst of a debate on using race to determine enrollment in schools, as if that will solve all our social ills. Integration may give us peace of mind, but it won’t be an end to social injustice.

The country’s schools should be integrated. Kids shouldn’t grow up wondering what other cultures are like. They should experience them through their friends in class and on the playground. But simple integration of schools will not eliminate the social principles that created the segregation in the first place. Take San Francisco, for example: When the school board tried to use race as a basis for integration in the unified school district, citizens were outraged. It only aggravated the racist atmosphere that some families experienced.

The San Francisco Chronicle asked, “What can the government do when the last vestiges of state-sponsored segregation are erased and schools nevertheless remain racially isolated because of housing patterns, parental choice and perhaps societal discrimination?”

I’ll tell you what’s not an answer: instant gratification. Using race to determine school demographics will solve the immediate problem, but it doesn’t even begin to touch the underlying issue.

After Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, schools were supposed to be integrated. Well, that didn’t exactly happen. Sure, legally no one could be denied enrollment from a school based on race, but the social attitudes of the United States had been in place for over a century. So we’ve proposed forced integration as another Band-Aid for this gaping wound.

We are all lucky enough to be attending an institution of higher education. But none of us got here because our schools were integrated. Integration doesn’t alter social constructions. It doesn’t change the fact that, overwhelmingly, the minorities who are segregated by socio-economic factors often don’t get a chance to attend college. And the reasons for that are what we should really be examining.

Since the civil rights movement, the country has gradually lapsed back into segregation. But instead of simply bussing black kids into predominantly white schools and white kids into predominantly black schools, we should take a long look at the crux of the situation. An integration policy for American schools would be a quick fix – and we saw how well that turned out the first time.

The San Francisco Unified School District used to have a policy of using race to determine enrollment in schools, but discontinued that practice. It could never please everyone – some were outraged that their race was being put on the spot for any reason, while others simply didn’t want to have to bus their kids somewhere else. And no one should be surprised that this concept didn’t work. It made no effort to reform people’s ideologies, only the route they took on the way to school.

What all this means is that bussing kids from their poor neighborhood to attend the school in the rich neighborhood won’t do anything in the long run. They’ll still grow up seeing privileged kids enjoying a life they assume they don’t deserve. When all is said and done, integration is generally a good thing, but the solutions we’ve come up with are merely another giant carpet under which we can sweep our shame. And believe me, it will come back to haunt us again.