I do not see how you can ever point your fingers at a southern senator or a southern school district and tell them that they are discriminating against black children when you are unwilling to desegregated schools in your own cities. Let me say to my distinguished northern colleagues that the reason you are unwilling to do it is fear of political reprisal. The question is whether northern senators have the guts to face their liberal white constituents who have fled to the suburbs for the sole purpose of having their sons and daughters not go to school with blacks.

Abraham Ribicoff to Jacob Javits, 20 April 1971

Quote from
Clotfelter, Charles T. After Brown : The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), 44.