Racism on Campuses

In response to your editorial “Racism Still Plagues Campus Life,” April 10:

After 25 years of federal laws intended to ameliorate, if not eliminate, the prejudicial attitude toward certain minorities in our society, particularly in higher institutions of learning, it still goes on apparently unabated. Enough to make one cynical.

But did anyone really believe that simply adding one more law to the existing tomes would solve this deeply ingrained emotional problem? Laws, which in many cases are only perfunctory words, can promise the opportunity for all to attend schools and colleges of their choice (and ability to pay), but laws cannot compel one group to love or even accept the other, and herein lies the crux of the problem.

The Stanford study recommends increasing the minority faculty, notwithstanding your statement that “few students attend classes taught by minority professors.” This reminds one of the forced school busing days of the 1960s wherein an exodus from public schools to private schools took place to avoid integration mandated by law. Obviously, the desire for education is transcended by the deep emotional antipathy to a close personal association with those of another race or culture who are considered inferior. Shades of Nazism!

If anyone thinks these deeply ingrained prejudices can be mollified at advanced institutions of learning with a new set of rules governing human behavior, he is “whistling Dixie.” Love thy neighbor--sounds so simple!

EDWARD GISHEN

Ventura