![]() ![]() ![]() Second, improve black neighborhoods, what the commission called attempts to “gild the ghetto,” something we’ve half-heartedly tried with little success for the last 50 years-for example, with enterprise zones, empowerment zones, extra funding for pupils from low-income families, and charter schools. This is the course we have mostly followed. First, continue present policies, resulting in more riots (or rebellions-the commission debated what to call them), economic decline, and the splintering of our common national identity. The commission said the nation faced three alternatives. It threatens the foundations of our democracy. In other respects, things are pretty much as dismal now as then-the commission condemned “stop and frisk” policies and equipping police with military weapons “that have no place in densely populated urban communities.” Some conditions are now worse: the “two societies” warning has been fulfilled, not only in our economic and social live, but in the racial polarization of politics exposed in the last election. Today, any large corporation would face condemnation, perhaps litigation, if no African American had achieved executive responsibility. The only black executives were at banks and insurance companies serving black neighborhoods. We identified some 4,000 policymaking positions in the non-financial corporate sector. In the mid-1960s, I assisted in a study of Chicago’s power elite. Today, 23 percent of young adult African Americans have bachelor’s degrees, still considerably below whites’ 42 percent but more than double the black rate 50 years ago. ![]() We’re still far from equality-affirmative action remains a necessity-but such progress was unimaginable in 1968. Perhaps most dramatic has been growth of the black middle class, integrated into mainstream corporate leadership, politics, universities, and professions. Of course, not everything about race relations is unchanged. The report warned that continued racial segregation and discrimination would engender “two societies, one black, one white-separate and unequal.” So little has changed since 1968 that the report remains worth reading as a near-contemporary description of racial inequality. Residents’ lack of Fambition or effort did not cause these conditions: rather, “hite institutions created, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it… essentially responsible for the explosive mixture which has been accumulating in our cities since the end of World War II.” Publicly available, it was a best-seller, indicting racial discrimination in housing, employment, health care, policing, education, and social services, and attributing the riots to pent-up frustration in low-income black neighborhoods. Chaired by Illinois Governor Otto Kerner (New York City’s mayor John Lindsay was vice-chair), it issued its report 50 years ago today. President Lyndon Johnson appointed a commission to investigate. The worst in 1967 were in Newark, after police beat a taxi driver for having a revoked permit, and Detroit, after 82 party-goers were arrested at a peaceful celebration for returning Vietnam War veterans, held at an unlicensed social club. ![]() In 1967, young black men rioted in over 150 cities, often spurred by overly aggressive policing, not unlike the provocations of recent disturbances. ![]()
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