![]() ![]() In our recent Economic Inclusion Reports on Baltimore, Charlotte and St. Fred Harris, the sole surviving member of the Kerner Commission. ![]() “Whereas the Kerner Commission called for ‘massive and sustained’ investment in economic, employment and education initiatives, over the last 50 years America has pursued ‘massive and sustained’ incarceration framed as ‘law and order,’ while the ‘war on drugs’ has failed,” says a new book, “Healing Our Divided Society,” co-edited by former Sen. In fact, in many ways this nation has done the opposite of the report’s recommendations. None of the solutions voiced by the Kerner Commission were applied. Actions such as this caused King to call America “schizophrenic” as the nation attempted to hold onto the noble ideals of freedom and equality while refusing to let go of the privileges associated with racial identity. However, despite commissioning the Kerner Report, President Lyndon Johnson quickly suppressed the report’s findings when it was published in 1968. “This deepening racial division is not inevitable,” the report concluded. Discrimination and segregation have long permeated much of American life they now threaten the future of every American.” Reaction to last summer’s disorders has quickened the movement and deepened the division. The report predicted that America “is moving toward two societies, one black, one white - separate and unequal. Officially called the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, the Kerner Commission identified systemic racism and poverty as the causes of the major black rebellions in Newark and Detroit the previous summer. And the share of African-Americans in prison or jail almost tripled between 19 and is currently more than six times the white incarceration rate.”įifty years ago, as cities burned from people’s rage at King’s murder, the rest of America had already dismissed and forgotten the damning and prophetic report published only a month earlier by the presidential commission and chaired by Illinois Gov. 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. 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 these areas, their situation either has failed to improve relative to whites or has worsened. ![]() Eerily similar to the title of King’s final book, “ Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, ” his murder sent a powerful shock wave through the soul of America urban rebellions sprang up in over 100 cities, placing the nation at a political and social crossroads.Īccording to the Economic Policy Institute’s recent report, “With respect to homeownership, unemployment and incarceration, America has failed to deliver any progress for African-Americans over the last five decades. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it and white society condones it.” - Kerner Commission Report, 1968įifty years ago today, the public assassination of Dr. What white Americans have never fully understood - but what the Negro can never forget - is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. ![]() “Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans. ![]()
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