Milton Galamison Oral History, excerpt (audio transcript)
WARREN: To what extent would you accept the present program of the, of the New York school system? What reservations do you have about that program now?
GALAMISON: My feeling is that there are two school systems really in New York City, not one. One system is the all-white school system and to a degree the integrated school system and the other system is the segregated school system which certainly is not producing the best in terms of our negro children.
That is, the discrepancy is seen mostly in the academic performance, and the academic performance of the children in the segregated schools is invidious by comparison to the academic performances of children in the first system that I allege to exist. Now, my major criticism is that if we don’t solve the segregation problem, we haven’t solved any basic problem because this is the basic problem.
My feeling is that all the prejudices and discriminations of the culture which affect the negro in housing and in employment and in areas of social life, that is, “I don’t want a negro in my home,” or, “I wouldn’t want a negro to marry my daughter,” are also brought to bear on the negro in the educational system. Tragically enough, people refuse to recognize this, and that we need an integrated school system not only to protect the negro from what happens to be a, a white dominated school system, but we also need an integrated school system to protect white children from the arrogances and the racial supremacy feelings that they are inclined to feel, being “defended”–I put that in quotation marks–from contact and classroom relationships with negro children.
The whole culture, unfortunately, the pattern of the culture dictates the impossibility of having an equal educational system that’s segregated. Now, New York City has not made meaningful steps in the direction of desegregating the school system. They are hedging and avoiding and procrastinating and managing all kinds of, of efforts which are not bringing about the, the timely and the planned desegregation of the school system. They, they feel free to place the onus for integration on some negroes in terms of open enrollment, but they do not feel that white children apparently should be inconvenienced in any way to help bring about a desegregated classroom, and this is the thing that distresses me.