The 1968 Kerner Commission Got It Right, But Nobody Listened
The 1968 Kerner Commission Got It Right, But Nobody Listened
Released 50 years ago, the infamous report found that poverty and institutional racism were driving inner-city violence
Pent-up frustrations boiled over in many poor African-American neighborhoods during the mid- to late-1960s, setting off riots that rampaged out of control from block to block. Burning, battering and ransacking property, raging crowds created chaos in which some neighborhood residents and law enforcement operatives endured shockingly random injuries or deaths. Many Americans blamed the riots on outside agitators or young black men, who represented the largest and most visible group of rioters. But, in March 1968, the Kerner Commission turned those assumptions upside-down, declaring white racism—not black anger—turned the key that unlocked urban American turmoil.
Bad policing practices, a flawed justice system, unscrupulous consumer credit practices, poor or inadequate housing, high unemployment, voter suppression, and other culturally embedded forms of racial discrimination all converged to propel violent upheaval on the streets of African-American neighborhoods in American cities, north and south, east and west. And as black unrest arose, inadequately trained police officers and National Guard troops entered affected neighborhoods, often worsening the violence.
“White society,” the presidentially appointed panel reported, “is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.” The nation, the Kerner Commission
warned, was so divided that the United States was poised to fracture into two radically unequal societies—one black, one white.
The riots represented a different kind of political activism, says William S. Pretzer, the
National Museum of African American History and Culture’s senior curator. “Commonly sparked by repressive and violent police actions, urban uprisings were political acts of self-defense and racial liberation on a mass, public scale. Legislative successes at the federal level with the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were not reflected in the daily lives of African-Americans facing
police misconduct, economic inequality, segregated housing, and inferior educations.” Black racial violence was not unique in 1960s American culture, Pretzer says: White Southerners set a precedent by viciously attacking Freedom Riders and other civil rights protesters.
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