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On July 28, 1967, President Lyndon Johnson established the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. The more common name for this commission is The Kerner Commission. This commission was tasked to answer three basic questions pertaining to the racial unrest in American cities: What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again? It is common knowledge how the commission deemed that two separate Americas existed, one for whites, the other for blacks.
“What white Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro can never forget--is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it. It is time now to turn with all the purpose at our command to the major unfinished business of this nation. It is time to adopt strategies for action that will produce quick and visible progress. It is time to make good the promises of American democracy to all citizens-urban and rural, white and black, Spanish-surname, American Indian, and every minority group.”
Kerner Commission Report
On February 26, 2018, 50 years after the Kerner Commission findings, the Economic Policy Institute published a report evaluating the progress of the black community since the Kerner Report was released. It was based on a study done by the Economic Policy Institute that compared the progress of the black community with the condition of the black community at the time of the Kerner Commission. Titled “50 years after the Kerner Commission,” the study’s central premise was that there had been some improvements in the situation blacks faced but there were still disadvantages blacks faced that were based on race.
Here are some of the findings.
• African Americans today are much better educated than they were in 1968 but still lag behind whites in overall educational attainment. More than 90 percent of younger African Americans (ages 25 to 29) have graduated from high school, compared with just over half in 1968—which means they’ve nearly closed the gap with white high school graduation rates. They are also more than twice as likely to have a college degree as in 1968 but are still half as likely as young whites to have a college degree.
• The substantial progress in educational attainment of African Americans has been accompanied by significant absolute improvements in wages, incomes, wealth, and health since 1968. But black workers still make only 82.5 cents on every dollar earned by white workers, African Americans are 2.5 times as likely to be in poverty as whites, and the median white family has almost 10 times as much wealth as the median black family.
• With respect to homeownership, unemployment, and incarceration, America has failed to deliver any progress for African Americans over the last five decades. In these areas, their situation has either failed to improve relative to whites or has worsened. In 2017 the black unemployment rate was 7.5 percent, up from 6.7 percent in 1968, and is still roughly twice the white unemployment rate. In 2015, the black homeownership rate was just over 40 percent, virtually unchanged since 1968, and trailing a full 30 points behind the white homeownership rate, which saw modest gains over the same period. And the share of African Americans in prison or jail almost tripled between 1968 and 2016 and is currently more than six times the white incarceration rate.
Following up on this, Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute, wrote an op ed published in the February 28th edition of the New York Daily News entitled, “50 years after the Kerner Commission, minimal racial progress.” It had been 50 years since the commission made those recommendations at that point, yet Rothstein makes this statement: “So little has changed since 1968 that the report remains worth reading as a near-contemporary description of racial inequality.” There is a reason little has changed.
The commission recommended solutions based on the following 3 principles: “To mount programs on a scale equal to the dimension of the problems. To aim these programs for high impact in the immediate future in order to close the gap between promise and performance. To undertake new initiatives and experiments that can change the system of failure and frustration that now dominates the ghetto and weakens our society.” With all due respect, I do not believe the members of the commission truly understood the real size of the problem. As of today, principle number 1 has yet to be met.
In order for a societal problem to be solved there must be a will consensual among all to solve the problem by any means necessary. Not by a half measure here and a half measure there. Principle number 1 was to create programs equal to the dimension of the problem. That’s a laudable goal, but the dimension of the problem in 1967 was 191 years of denied income, education, housing and wages. What series of programs could be proposed to a nation where half the people believed that “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice?”
“These programs will require unprecedented levels of funding and performance, but they neither probe deeper nor demand more than the problems which called them forth. There can be no higher priority for national action and no higher claim on the nation's conscience.”
Kerner Commission Report
And so here you have it. Suddenly a nation that had felt it unnecessary to provide equal funding, facilities, housing or income even as the supreme court in 1897 determined it was fine to be separate if everything else was equal, a nation still fighting against the Brown decision by using state laws, a nation that had just decided to allow blacks the free access to the ballot and public accommodations, was going to appropriate billions of dollars to fix an almost 200 year old problem. It has yet to be done.
As a result of this study the commission identified 12 `grievances common in the communities they visited: “1. Police practices 2. Unemployment and underemployment 3. Inadequate housing. 4. Inadequate education 5. Poor recreation facilities and programs 6. Ineffectiveness of the political structure and grievance mechanisms. 7. Disrespectful white attitudes 8. Discriminatory administration of justice 9. Inadequacy of federal programs 10. Inadequacy of municipal services 11. Discriminatory consumer and credit practices 12. Inadequate welfare programs. “ You would be hard pressed to say these grievances do not still exist. The Kerner Commission was tasked to find out why the racial unrest happened. Instead of blaming blacks for being angry about the way they were treated, instead of inventing terms like victim mentality, the commission took a long hard look at American societal issues. The bottom line is that the Kerner Commission determined in 1968 what blacks already knew and what whites refused to hear. This quote from Nathaniel Jones, Assistant General Counsel for the Commission says it all, “One of the conclusions of the Kerner Report was that white racism was at work, was the cause of the upsets and the uprisings that we had. In fact, the report stated that white society created it, perpetuates it, and sustains it.” In other words, “The root cause of the problems blacks face is white racism.” It was that conclusion that made it possible for white America to ignore the findings. Once whites felt as if they were to blame for the conditions of black people in America, they resisted the findings in this study. President Johnson called for the study and never implemented the suggested actions. He wasted government money by increasing spending on the Vietnam war and claimed he did not have the money to implement the types of programs suggested in the report.
Martin Luther King called it over 50 years ago. “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.” Had Johnson spent the billions he wasted in Vietnam on programs suggested by the Kerner Commission, many of the issues blacks face today would be reduced or eliminated. The Kerner Commission report is perhaps the finest study done on race in the history of this nation. As I wrote earlier, there is a reason why Rothstein came to his conclusion. We are now 52 years past the Kerner Commission findings. There has been little progress because at no level of government or society has America met even the first principle of the Kerner Commission.
“What white Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro can never forget--is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it. It is time now to turn with all the purpose at our command to the major unfinished business of this nation. It is time to adopt strategies for action that will produce quick and visible progress. It is time to make good the promises of American democracy to all citizens-urban and rural, white and black, Spanish-surname, American Indian, and every minority group.”
Kerner Commission Report
On February 26, 2018, 50 years after the Kerner Commission findings, the Economic Policy Institute published a report evaluating the progress of the black community since the Kerner Report was released. It was based on a study done by the Economic Policy Institute that compared the progress of the black community with the condition of the black community at the time of the Kerner Commission. Titled “50 years after the Kerner Commission,” the study’s central premise was that there had been some improvements in the situation blacks faced but there were still disadvantages blacks faced that were based on race.
Here are some of the findings.
• African Americans today are much better educated than they were in 1968 but still lag behind whites in overall educational attainment. More than 90 percent of younger African Americans (ages 25 to 29) have graduated from high school, compared with just over half in 1968—which means they’ve nearly closed the gap with white high school graduation rates. They are also more than twice as likely to have a college degree as in 1968 but are still half as likely as young whites to have a college degree.
• The substantial progress in educational attainment of African Americans has been accompanied by significant absolute improvements in wages, incomes, wealth, and health since 1968. But black workers still make only 82.5 cents on every dollar earned by white workers, African Americans are 2.5 times as likely to be in poverty as whites, and the median white family has almost 10 times as much wealth as the median black family.
• With respect to homeownership, unemployment, and incarceration, America has failed to deliver any progress for African Americans over the last five decades. In these areas, their situation has either failed to improve relative to whites or has worsened. In 2017 the black unemployment rate was 7.5 percent, up from 6.7 percent in 1968, and is still roughly twice the white unemployment rate. In 2015, the black homeownership rate was just over 40 percent, virtually unchanged since 1968, and trailing a full 30 points behind the white homeownership rate, which saw modest gains over the same period. And the share of African Americans in prison or jail almost tripled between 1968 and 2016 and is currently more than six times the white incarceration rate.
Following up on this, Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute, wrote an op ed published in the February 28th edition of the New York Daily News entitled, “50 years after the Kerner Commission, minimal racial progress.” It had been 50 years since the commission made those recommendations at that point, yet Rothstein makes this statement: “So little has changed since 1968 that the report remains worth reading as a near-contemporary description of racial inequality.” There is a reason little has changed.
The commission recommended solutions based on the following 3 principles: “To mount programs on a scale equal to the dimension of the problems. To aim these programs for high impact in the immediate future in order to close the gap between promise and performance. To undertake new initiatives and experiments that can change the system of failure and frustration that now dominates the ghetto and weakens our society.” With all due respect, I do not believe the members of the commission truly understood the real size of the problem. As of today, principle number 1 has yet to be met.
In order for a societal problem to be solved there must be a will consensual among all to solve the problem by any means necessary. Not by a half measure here and a half measure there. Principle number 1 was to create programs equal to the dimension of the problem. That’s a laudable goal, but the dimension of the problem in 1967 was 191 years of denied income, education, housing and wages. What series of programs could be proposed to a nation where half the people believed that “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice?”
“These programs will require unprecedented levels of funding and performance, but they neither probe deeper nor demand more than the problems which called them forth. There can be no higher priority for national action and no higher claim on the nation's conscience.”
Kerner Commission Report
And so here you have it. Suddenly a nation that had felt it unnecessary to provide equal funding, facilities, housing or income even as the supreme court in 1897 determined it was fine to be separate if everything else was equal, a nation still fighting against the Brown decision by using state laws, a nation that had just decided to allow blacks the free access to the ballot and public accommodations, was going to appropriate billions of dollars to fix an almost 200 year old problem. It has yet to be done.
As a result of this study the commission identified 12 `grievances common in the communities they visited: “1. Police practices 2. Unemployment and underemployment 3. Inadequate housing. 4. Inadequate education 5. Poor recreation facilities and programs 6. Ineffectiveness of the political structure and grievance mechanisms. 7. Disrespectful white attitudes 8. Discriminatory administration of justice 9. Inadequacy of federal programs 10. Inadequacy of municipal services 11. Discriminatory consumer and credit practices 12. Inadequate welfare programs. “ You would be hard pressed to say these grievances do not still exist. The Kerner Commission was tasked to find out why the racial unrest happened. Instead of blaming blacks for being angry about the way they were treated, instead of inventing terms like victim mentality, the commission took a long hard look at American societal issues. The bottom line is that the Kerner Commission determined in 1968 what blacks already knew and what whites refused to hear. This quote from Nathaniel Jones, Assistant General Counsel for the Commission says it all, “One of the conclusions of the Kerner Report was that white racism was at work, was the cause of the upsets and the uprisings that we had. In fact, the report stated that white society created it, perpetuates it, and sustains it.” In other words, “The root cause of the problems blacks face is white racism.” It was that conclusion that made it possible for white America to ignore the findings. Once whites felt as if they were to blame for the conditions of black people in America, they resisted the findings in this study. President Johnson called for the study and never implemented the suggested actions. He wasted government money by increasing spending on the Vietnam war and claimed he did not have the money to implement the types of programs suggested in the report.
Martin Luther King called it over 50 years ago. “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.” Had Johnson spent the billions he wasted in Vietnam on programs suggested by the Kerner Commission, many of the issues blacks face today would be reduced or eliminated. The Kerner Commission report is perhaps the finest study done on race in the history of this nation. As I wrote earlier, there is a reason why Rothstein came to his conclusion. We are now 52 years past the Kerner Commission findings. There has been little progress because at no level of government or society has America met even the first principle of the Kerner Commission.
“To mount programs on a scale equal to the dimension of the problems.”
