Question

Do you agree with the Kerner Commission’s conclusion that we are ‘‘moving toward two societies, one black [and] one white’’? Explain your answer. Explain the difference between income and wealth. How, according to some analysts, does wealth perpetuate inequality?

Answer 1

President Lyndon Johnson formed an 11-member National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders in July 1967 to explain the racial riots in the cities since 1964 and to provide recommendations for the future. The Commission’s 1968 report, known as the Kerner Report, concluded that the nation was “moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.” the country faced a “system of ’apartheid’” in its major cities. The Kerner report recommended egislations to promote racial integration and to enrich slums in order to reduce economic inequality primarily through the creation of jobs, job training programs, and decent housing for the racial poor.

Although the recommendations of the Kerner Report were rejected, it showed some significant disturbing trends in the US society. The findings of the report can be appreciated for its assessment of a greater problem of racism in urban areas rather than the countryside. Moreover, the Commission found that economic disparity had created greater rifts between the two racial communities and thus a pragmatic alternative was not blind repression or capitulation to lawlessness. Rather, the Kerner Report made a prophetic proposition that a real resolution lay in the realization of common opportunities for all within a single society.