Wry Catcher
Diamond Member
- Banned
- #1
Executive Summary
"Our Nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white -- separate and unequal."
On March 1, 1968, in the wake of riots in Detroit and Newark, and with more riots soon to come after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, that was the conclusion of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders -- the Kerner Riot Commission, named after its chair, then-governor of Illinois Otto Kerner.
Thirty Years Later
What has happened in the 30 years since and where do we stand now? The Kerner Commission proposed remedies to racial, spatial and economic disparity. The civil rights movement of the 1960s and early 1970s brought about improvements that helped expand an African-American middle class. It is important to recognize the achievements made possible by the civil rights movement and by individual struggles of millions of African-Americans. The African-American middle class has expanded, as has African-American entrepreneurship. The proportion of African-Americans with white-collar jobs has risen. There has been an enormous rise in the number of African-American mayors, other elected officials and police chiefs. The high school graduation rate among African-Americans is rising.
Yet in the 1970s, when technological change in the economy increased demand for high skilled and educated workers, jobs for the less skilled and educated became obsolete. The unemployed stayed behind, but more mobile middle class African-Americans left core inner city neighborhoods. Especially during the 1980s, labor market policies to provide training and jobs for the less skilled never materialized. In the words of Professor William Julius Wilson and his colleagues at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (Appendix 1), "The exodus of working-and middle-class blacks from core inner-city neighborhoods enhanced the concentration effects of joblessness and poverty and removed important economic and social buffers that had softened the impact of macroeconomic changes in these vulnerable communities. During the decades of the 1970s and 1980s, conditions in inner-city ghettos went from bad to worse."
Today, while pundits and leaders talk of full employment, for the first time in the twentieth century most adults in many inner city neighborhoods are not working in a typical week. Former Labor Secretary Ray Marshall estimates the real unemployment rate at about 15 percent, far higher than the official rate. The Center for Community Change in Washington, DC estimates the "jobs gap" to be over 4,400,000 persons needing work. A high proportion are in the inner city. The consequences of high neighborhood joblessness are more devastating than those of high neighborhood poverty. When people are poor but employed they can better prevent family breakup, crime, drugs and other problems than when people are poor and jobless.
Since the Kerner Commission, there have been other important trends:
See more:
The Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation
"Our Nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white -- separate and unequal."
On March 1, 1968, in the wake of riots in Detroit and Newark, and with more riots soon to come after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, that was the conclusion of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders -- the Kerner Riot Commission, named after its chair, then-governor of Illinois Otto Kerner.
Thirty Years Later
What has happened in the 30 years since and where do we stand now? The Kerner Commission proposed remedies to racial, spatial and economic disparity. The civil rights movement of the 1960s and early 1970s brought about improvements that helped expand an African-American middle class. It is important to recognize the achievements made possible by the civil rights movement and by individual struggles of millions of African-Americans. The African-American middle class has expanded, as has African-American entrepreneurship. The proportion of African-Americans with white-collar jobs has risen. There has been an enormous rise in the number of African-American mayors, other elected officials and police chiefs. The high school graduation rate among African-Americans is rising.
Yet in the 1970s, when technological change in the economy increased demand for high skilled and educated workers, jobs for the less skilled and educated became obsolete. The unemployed stayed behind, but more mobile middle class African-Americans left core inner city neighborhoods. Especially during the 1980s, labor market policies to provide training and jobs for the less skilled never materialized. In the words of Professor William Julius Wilson and his colleagues at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (Appendix 1), "The exodus of working-and middle-class blacks from core inner-city neighborhoods enhanced the concentration effects of joblessness and poverty and removed important economic and social buffers that had softened the impact of macroeconomic changes in these vulnerable communities. During the decades of the 1970s and 1980s, conditions in inner-city ghettos went from bad to worse."
Today, while pundits and leaders talk of full employment, for the first time in the twentieth century most adults in many inner city neighborhoods are not working in a typical week. Former Labor Secretary Ray Marshall estimates the real unemployment rate at about 15 percent, far higher than the official rate. The Center for Community Change in Washington, DC estimates the "jobs gap" to be over 4,400,000 persons needing work. A high proportion are in the inner city. The consequences of high neighborhood joblessness are more devastating than those of high neighborhood poverty. When people are poor but employed they can better prevent family breakup, crime, drugs and other problems than when people are poor and jobless.
Since the Kerner Commission, there have been other important trends:
See more:
The Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation
