Anti-Southern racism was one of the most distinctive features of internal migrations towards the industrial triangle in the 1950s and the 1960s. Many newly arrived primary school children from the Southern regions were referred to special education classes with the scientific support of psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers. The latter defined children of Southern origin as “maladjusted” as a result of their supposed inability to adapt to a more developed environment. In the 1970s, the phenomenon was strongly criticized, but the racism supporting it was not recognized as such. The article analyses the limits of the debate among Communist educators and intellectuals, who read the discrimination towards Southern pupils exclusively in terms of social class, following the precepts of a typically Eurocentric Marxism.