Is America Repeating the Mistakes of 1968? // The Kerner report revisited; final report and background papers
The Kerner Report confronted a tense nation
with data about structural racism throughout the country and made
recommendations to solve the problem. But America looked away.
Structural racism has
to be addressed, but Obama is a lame-duck president with a Republican Congress
that is unwilling to work on any legislative proposal that this White House
sends them. The prospects of this Congress making progress on any kind of
federal criminal-justice reforms are slim to none. And though Hillary Clinton
has taken a much tougher stand in calling for criminal-justice reform and
fighting for racial justice, she does not have an extensive record of dealing
with institutional racism, and in the 1990s, she supported federal crime
policies that only bolstered the law-and-order approach. Like Humphrey, she has
shown a willingness to allow the political fears of the right push her toward a
more conservative stance on these issues….
And then there’s
Trump. Last year, he said of the Black Lives Matter movement: “I think they’re
trouble.. In the coming months, Trump instead will likely continue to play to
the worst racial sentiment in the electorate and use this moment to build
support for expanding rather than reforming the way that criminal justice is
administered in America…. During the late 1960s,
the United States saw firsthand what could happen when institutional racism was
allowed to persist. The string of racial violence Americans have witnessed in
the past three years has brought the nation to another crossroads.
Unfortunately, the political winds could easily blow the electorate in the
wrong direction—again.
“All of us, as
Americans, should be troubled by these shootings, because these are not
isolated incidents,” said President Barack Obama following the horrific
shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. “They’re symptomatic of a
broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal-justice system.”
In an American tragedy of the nation’s own making, Obama will end his historic
presidency with racial turmoil rocking the nation. The person whose election
brought so much hope about the trajectory of race relations in the United
States, a country that has perpetually suffered from the original sin of
slavery, is spending these days desperately trying to calm the anger over
police killings of African Americans and the protests and violence that have
ensued.
Today, America has a
president who understands the urgent need to address the problems of
institutional racism that have been broadcast to the entire world through
smartphones and exposés of a racialized criminal-justice system. But this
conflict is taking shape right in the middle of a heated election season—one
that includes a candidate who has made draconian proposals for national
security and who appeals to the “Silent Majority.” Following the events in
Dallas, Donald Trump released a statement that read: “We must restore law and
order. We must restore the confidence of our people to be safe and secure in
their homes and on the street.” Trump will no doubt conflate the Black Lives
Matter movement with those responsible for the murder of the police, capitalizing
on events in Dallas to rile up his supporters even more.
This is not the first time this has
happened. When questions over race and policing were front and center in a
national debate in 1968, the federal government failed to take the steps
necessary to make any changes. The government understood how institutional
racism was playing out in the cities and how they exploded into violence, but
the electorate instead was seduced by Richard Nixon’s calls for law and order,
as well as an urban crackdown, leaving the problems of institutional racism
untouched. Rather than deal with the way that racism was inscribed into
American institutions, including the criminal-justice system, the government
focused on building a massive carceral state, militarizing police forces,
criminalizing small offenses, and living through repeated moments of racial
conflict exploding into violence.
In July 1967, during
the aftermath of the devastating race riots in Detroit, Michigan, and Newark,
New Jersey—each of which started after incidents of police brutality against
African Americans—President Lyndon Johnson established the National Advisory
Commission on Civil Disorders, known popularly as the Kerner Commission (for
the chairman, Otto Kerner), to examine the roots of the violence. The rioting
had taken place at a politically fraught time for Johnson. Southern Democrats
and Republicans were leading a resurgence of the conservative coalition
following the midterm elections of 1966. The disastrous Vietnam War had
consumed all of the president’s remaining political capital, and conservatives
on Capitol Hill were forcing him to make a decision between spending for guns
or butter. Meanwhile, the civil-rights crusade had splintered, with the Black
Power movement insisting that activists needed to take a bolder stand on issues
like housing discrimination, policing, and unemployment.
Desperate to do
something, but not in a position to do much more than defend his existing
accomplishments, Johnson created the high-profile commission. The president
stacked the commission with established political figures who were moderate and
committed to the existing economic and political system. He wanted them to
demonstrate to the public that the administration took the problems
seriously—but he also wanted them to avoid recommendations that would embarrass
him. Johnson was deeply cognizant of the economic and racial problems
afflicting cities, but he felt that there was not much more he could do
politically at that moment in time. Which is why the first version of the
report was killed.
Commission staffers
had produced a blistering and radical draft report on November 22, 1967. The
176-page report, “The America of Racism,” recounted the deep-seated racial
divisions that shaped urban America, and it was damning about Johnson’s beloved
Great Society programs, which the report said offered only token assistance
while leaving the “white power structure” in place. What’s more, the draft
treated rioting as an understandable political response to racial oppression.
“A truly revolutionary spirit has begun to take hold,” they wrote, “an
unwillingness to compromise or wait any longer, to risk death rather than have
their people continue in a subordinate status.” Kerner then nixed the report,
and his staff director fired all 120 social scientists who had worked on it.
Nevertheless, the
final Kerner
Report was still incredibly hard-hitting: “This is our basic conclusion:
Our Nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and
unequal.” Though the commissioners had softened the language from the first
draft, much of the data remained the same and the overall argument was still
incredibly powerful. The report focused on institutional racism. This meant
that racism was not just a product of bad individuals who believed that African
Americans were inferior to white Americans, but that these racial hierarchies
were literally embedded in the structure of society.
“Segregation and poverty,” the report said, “have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans. 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.” The riots in Newark and Detroit, the report continued, “were not caused by, nor were they the consequences of, any organized plan or ‘conspiracy.’” The rioters were educated and had been employed in recent years; most of them were furious about facing constant discrimination when seeking new employment, trying to find a place to live, or, worst of all, interacting with hostile law-enforcement officials.
The police received
the most scrutiny in the report. In a haunting section, the report explained,
“Negroes firmly believe that police brutality and harassment occur repeatedly
in Negro neighborhoods.” The rioting had shown that police enforcement had
become a problem not a solution in race relations. More aggressive policing and
militarized officers had become city officials’ de facto response to urban
decay. “In several cities, the principal response has been to train and equip
the police with more sophisticated weapons.” The report stressed that
law-enforcement officers were not “merely a spark factor” to the riots but that
they had come to symbolize “white power, white racism, and white oppression.”..
read more:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/is-america-repeating-the-mistakes-of-1968/490568/