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"In the minds of Negro pupils and parents," says New Jersey's State Commissioner of Education Frederick M. Raubinger, "a stigma is attached to attending a school whose enrollment is completely or exclusively Negro, and this sense of sting and resulting feeling of inferiority has an undesirable effect on attitudes related to successful training." Raubinger has issued orders to end de facto segregation in three New Jersey communities. In the same vein, a former foe of "social engineering via bussing," Dr. John Fischer, president of Columbia's Teachers College, warns that schools must "take positive action to bring Negro children into the mainstream of American cultural activity." And in California, the state supreme court in June came close to outlawing de facto segregation. Where it exists, ruled the court, "it is not enough for a school board to refrain from affirmative discriminatory conduct." No exact racial ratio is required, but schools must take "corrective measures."
The ideal integration situation, says Psychiatrist Robert Coles, after studying Southern schools, is apparently a middle-class school with diverse ethnic groups and high teaching standards. In a forthcoming report, sponsored by the Southern Regional Council and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, Coles adds that young children mix naturally, ignoring adult tensions. Teen-agers take longer, but in the course of a year begin to see "them" as individuals to be judged on personal merit. As for standards, both races generally work as hard as ever. Says Coles: "We have yet to hear a Southern teacher complain of any drop in intellectual or moral climate in a desegregated room or school."
While the pressures for integration bring a troublesome measure of controversy, reaction and disillusionment, it is a fact that every sensible effort to desegregate schools—alarmists to the contrary—is likely to improve the general level of U.S. education.