So it wasn't a typo in today's TBT title of writing Kerner vs Kernel of Truth because back in 1967 President Lyndon B. Johnson formed a 11 person National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Our household has been talking a lot about what's happening today and the 67's investigation of those riots and their recommendations. These 1968 findings were called the Kerner Report and its truths are the same ones we are facing today because we didn't listen...
Detroit Riots '67
As a Smithsonian article stated the 1968 Kerner Report: They Got It Right, But Nobody Listened as "poverty and institutional racism were driving inner-city violence. 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."
More excerpts from The 1968 Kerner Report follow.
As a Smithsonian article stated the 1968 Kerner Report: They Got It Right, But Nobody Listened as "poverty and institutional racism were driving inner-city violence. 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."
More excerpts from The 1968 Kerner Report follow.
"Black in-migration and white exodus have produced the massive and growing concentrations of impoverished Negroes in our major cities, creating a growing crisis of deteriorating facilities and services and unmet human needs.
A climate that tends toward approval and encouragement of violence as a form of protest has been created by white terrorism directed against nonviolent protest; by the open defiance of law and federal authority by state and local officials resisting desegregation; and by some protest groups engaging in civil disobedience who turn their backs on nonviolence, go beyond the constitutionally protected rights of petition and free assembly, and resort to violence to attempt to compel alteration of laws and policies with which they disagree.
A climate that tends toward approval and encouragement of violence as a form of protest has been created by white terrorism directed against nonviolent protest; by the open defiance of law and federal authority by state and local officials resisting desegregation; and by some protest groups engaging in civil disobedience who turn their backs on nonviolence, go beyond the constitutionally protected rights of petition and free assembly, and resort to violence to attempt to compel alteration of laws and policies with which they disagree.
The frustrations of powerlessness have led some Negroes to the conviction that there is no effective alternative to violence as a means of achieving redress of grievances, and of “moving the system.” These frustrations are reflected in alienation and hostility toward the institutions of law and government and the white society which controls them, and in the reach toward racial consciousness and solidarity reflected in the slogan “Black Power.”
A new mood has sprung up among Negroes, particularly among the young, in which self-esteem and enhanced racial pride are replacing apathy and submission to “the system.”
A new mood has sprung up among Negroes, particularly among the young, in which self-esteem and enhanced racial pride are replacing apathy and submission to “the system.”
"The police are not merely a “spark” factor. Police have come to symbolize white power, white racism and white repression. And the fact is that many police do reflect and express these white attitudes. The atmosphere of hostility and cynicism is reinforced by a widespread belief among Negroes in the existence of police brutality and in a “double standard” of justice and protection—one for Negroes and one for whites." Smithsonian Magazine, March 1 by Alice George
Here we are in 2020... Systemic racism can no longer be ignored, it must be addressed. The Kerner Report was a lot more than a kernel of truth...
Here we are in 2020... Systemic racism can no longer be ignored, it must be addressed. The Kerner Report was a lot more than a kernel of truth...
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