[Posted Mar. 5, 2008]

40 Years After Report; Societal Ills Persist

By Hazel Trice Edney

NNPA Editor-in-Chief

    WASHINGTON (NNPA)—It was the summer of 1967 and riots raged across America.
Watts, Milwaukee, Detroit, Plainfied and Newark were all sites of explosive racial violence, rooted in social ills emanating from race discrimination.
    As elected and civil rights leaders scrambled for answers, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed an 11-member commission, headed by Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner Jr., that issued its observations 40 years ago this week, Feb. 29, 1968.
    The commission pointed out that it was a climate of race discrimination in police practices, unemployment and underemployment, inadequate housing, inadequate education and poor recreation facilities and programs that had led to the anger.
    It also pointed to ineffectiveness of the political structure and grievance mechanisms, disrespectful White attitudes, discriminatory administration of justice, inadequacy of federal programs, inadequacy of municipal services, discriminatory consumer and credit practices, and inadequate welfare programs.
However, the most memorable conclusion in the document that has become known as the Kerner Report is as follows: “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one Black, one White—separate and unequal.”
   “In 40 years there has been no plan to heal the breach,” says Rainbow/PUSH President the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. “Today, we still have essentially two societies, one half in a surplus and the other half in a deficit. Essentially in the city and suburbs, there is Black and Brown on the one hand and White on the other.

   
    “Our infant mortality rate is higher. Our life expectancy is shorter, less access to good jobs, less access to the board of directors, less access to capital. Our cities have been essentially abandoned. Manufacturing jobs are out, investment out, guns and automatic weapons made legal; taxes up and services down, first class jails and second class schools.”
    Amidst euphoria over the candidacies of Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, social ills based on racial disparities are still among the most vivid reminders of how far America has not come in 40 years.
   “There is a new America emerging who are willing to cross the color line to vote. Men voting for women and Whites voting for Blacks. That’s a good thing,” says Jackson.
   “But, to close the educational gap, the health care gap, the business gap, the jobs gap, it will require a commitment of investment.”
    Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, agrees, pointing to current events that most vividly depict the estranged societies.
   “The mortgage foreclosure debacle is just the latest example of racially-tinged inequality, in this instance, resulting in the greatest single loss of wealth by African-Americans and Latinos ever recorded, [some $213 billion]. The recent downward adjustment in crack cocaine sentencing by the Federal Sentencing Commission suggests that thousands of African-Americans previously sentenced under the old regime were the victims of unequal justice,” Henderson says.
    He too particularly sees the Obama candidacy as a sign of hope. But, only with action.
While racial disparities remain clear, some believe that the Kerner prophecy on race separation has become more clouded by economic class separations.
   “Blacks are on the bottom, but the disparities in the income are now multi-racial,” says the Rev. Joseph Lowery, civil rights icon and co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “A small group of White elitist people now control more than 80 percent of the wealth. And we’re in a situation where a handful of people have more than they will ever need while masses of people have less than they always need.”

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