It has been very well documented that the 1960’s was one of the most tumultuous times in Black American History. After centuries of white supremacist terrorism and abuse, the 1960’s was a time in which Black people collectively decided that “enough is enough”, and openly rebelled in many major cities throughout Amerikkka. As a result of the numerous riots in Los Angeles, Chicago, Newark, NJ and Detroit among other places, then-President Lyndon B. Johnson commissioned a report on those riots in 1968, with the commission chaired by then-Illinois Governor Otto Kerner, to find out why these riots were happening, and how they can be prevented in the future. The Kerner commission then produced a 426 page document, which essentially was a scathing indictment of the horrific conditions that Black people in America suffered under the system of racism/white supremacy. It cited unequal and unjust conditions in which Black people being subjected to vicious and often violent discrimination, denied employment opportunities, saddled with inadequate educational opportunities, poor housing, and being victimized by general, overall white supremacy as the main culprits for this civil unrest and rebellion. President Johnson, suspected racist/white supremacist, apparently did not receive the answers that he wished for, because he rejected the findings of the report, and did absolutely nothing that was suggested in the report to fix the conditions of the Black areas.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of this report. To commemorate the anniversary, there recently was a follow up on the Kerner report conducted by Fred Harris, the sole living member of the original Kerner commission, and Alan Curtis, CEO of the Milton Eisenhower Foundation, which is essentially a permanent continuation of the original Kerner commission. The report essentially proves the old cliché’, “the more things change, the more they stay the same”. The new report asserts that conditions for Black people in Amerikkka have not improved since the original report, and in many respects have deteriorated since the report. The new report states that the unemployment rate among Black people is even higher than it was in 1967 (7.5% today as opposed to 6.7% in 1967). Black people are lagging 30% behind whites in home ownership. The incarceration rate has tripled for Black people, Black men especially, since 1967, while the wealth gap between Black people and whites has also tripled since 1967, as according to the report, the median net worth of white families ($171,000) is 10 times that of Black families.
Now with all of these huge problems that Black people are facing in 2018, you would think that the revolutionary energy of the 1960’s would come bubbling back up to the surface. And to be correct and honest, there has been an upswing of interest in certain kinds of Black consciousness in recent years with Black Lives Matter, and the whole #staywoke movement/ongoing meme, regardless of how ineffectual and compromised that I or whoever else may perceive them to be. But there are still too many people who look at today and see that Black people are now allowed to shop in white stores and eat at white restaurants, hang out with and be “friends” with white people, and even can have a white person in their bed for sexual encounters (gutter sex) in 2018 without being lynched or suffering too many other social or physical consequences as signs of huge progress. Here lies the trick of integration, one of the most devious tools ever devised to hurt Black people in Amerikkka. It has been said time and time again that integration was one of the worst things to ever happen to Black people, as many Black-owned businesses were forced to shut their doors due to Black people taking advantage of their new found “freedom” to give their money to whites, and the toxic trashy culture of Amerikkka became much more accessible to Black people, causing all kinds of issues that are still being dealt with today.
But the worst symptom of integration was the amount of sheer confusion that Black people suffered through this ideal. Part of the system of racism/white supremacy is about making it so that Black people and other victims cannot and will not see the system for what it is, which is a total system designed to oppress through institutions, policies, economics, and all of the other areas of people activity. The personal/social mistreatment that Black people suffer through racism/white supremacy, while very damaging in its own right, is just one aspect of the system of racism/white supremacy, and depending on your proximity to them as well as how much or how little you desire to associate with them socially, may not even be that significant. If you have little desire to be around them socially, then them not liking us personally without the ability to adversely affect our lives is relatively meaningless. But unfortunately, the white supremacists figured something out about Black people a long time ago that many Black people are loathe to admit; that many Black people are frankly uninterested in acquiring power, and are selectively blind to and have no interest in eliminating the systemic issues that plague us. Many of us simply want whites to be nice to us, give enough of us some money to keep the masses of us quiet, and to have a chance to have sex with them (let’s keep it a stack, shall we?).
This is why the results of the 50th anniversary of the Kerner commission report are so significant, perhaps even more so than the findings of the original report. It serves as a stark reminder to Black people paying attention that regardless of whatever emotional satisfaction that we got from seeing a bi-racial man with an Afrikan parent become President (and subsequently ignore us for 8 years), or how many white “friends” that we have, or how many sexual encounters that we have with whites, or how much money that we received from the white supremacists, that we are then able to spend in white stores, buying white junk with white brand names stitched on it, that until we go about the hard, perhaps unpleasant work of truly attacking the system of racism/white supremacy at its institutional core, then there will be the same results 50 years from now when they do the 100 year anniversary of the Kerner report. We will still collectively be poor, be subjected to poor educational opportunities, and be just as vulnerable to the sadistic whims of our eternal enemies. Or perhaps, by that time, if things do not change, there may not even be enough Black people left to even be relevant enough to be able to effectively change our condition on a large scale. This is serious, and this is war. And sometimes, we just need a reminder written in black and white to let us know exactly where we stand and how we are doing within this war, and to let us know how far we have come, and how far we must go.
Osei, 21st Century Race Man