Oh, come on! 😅 Seriously?!! America, at that point in time, was one of the most racist countries in the world. The national guard was called in to protect little children so that they could go to school. You need a scientific study to figure out that these people wouldn't have figured that stuff out all by themselves in the 2-3 generations between then and now?!
Do you also think people would steal or murder each other less often if we hadn't made laws "forcing" them not to do it? Do you think rates of sexual assault in marriage, for example, would have dropped more quickly if laws hadn't been put in place to prevent it? Do you need a scientific study to answer these questions too??
"Forcing" people to interact with those who are different helps them to realise more quickly that they're just human beings like everybody else. This is not only blindingly obvious, it's been demonstrated (in real life, not in movies) time and time again. (Yes, as you say, the glaring flaw in your "Green Book" argument is that the driver found himself "forced" to interact with this black man. It was this prolonged interaction that eventually changed his mind. This wouldn't have happened, and certainly not more quickly, if they hadn't spent that time together.)
Daryl Davis has become famous by demonstrating that it's possible to do this even in the most extreme circumstances. How many of the 200 or so people he's de-radicalised from racist groups would have left the KKK if he hadn't gone there and "forced" them to interact with a black man? Or do you perhaps think that more would have left if he'd stayed away and left them to their white power rallies to choose whether to speak to black people?
Of course it doesn't work with every individual. But over time, in general, integration happens far more quickly when we interact than if everybody is allowed to stay in their own bubble. Gay marriage rights, desegregation, women in the workplace, there isn't a single counter example to this in human history.
So fundamentally, maybe we’re arguing whether an individual’s right to choose to marginalise an entire group from society (any group, I’m not just talking about black people) should trump that group’s right to live free of marginalisation. It seems like you’re defending a very ugly side of that argument.
