Jelani Cobb on The Kerner Report: An Unheeded Warning About the Consequences of Racism
Link to tweet
Brooke Binkowski
@brooklynmarie
1967 is also around the same time the racist lie of "overpopulation" started to get pushed really hard
The New Yorker
@NewYorker
The Kerner Report, from 1967, named white racism—no euphemisms—as the root cause of unrest in the United States. It called for sweeping changes and investments in jobs, housing, policing, and more. Then it was shelved. http://nyer.cm/ukFTFbU
2:18 PM · Sep 20, 2021
https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/political-scene/jelani-cobb-on-the-kerner-report-an-unheeded-warning-about-the-consequences-of-racism
In 1967, in the wake of a violent uprising in Detroit, President Lyndon B. Johnson assembled the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders to investigate what had happened. This seemed futile: another panel to investigate yet another uprising. “A lot of people felt that way—‘We don’t need more studies, nothing’s going to come out of that commission,’ ” Fred Harris, a former senator from Oklahoma and the commission’s last surviving member, tells Jelani Cobb. But the conclusions were not typical at all. In the final analysis, known as the Kerner Report, the commission named white racism—no euphemisms—as the root cause of unrest in the United States, and said that the country was “moving toward two societies, one Black, one White—separate and unequal.” The report called for sweeping changes and investments in jobs, housing, policing, and more; the recommendations went so far beyond Johnson’s anti-poverty programs of the nineteen-sixties that the President shelved the report and refused to meet with his own commission. The Kerner Report, Cobb says, was “an unheeded warning,” as America still struggles today to acknowledge the reality of systemic racism.
Jelani Cobb co-edited and wrote the introduction to “The Essential Kerner Commission Report,” which was published this year.
Audio at link
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That is, that concerns about overpopulation was racist.
Given that several scientists have provided those warnings, and only about 6% of scientists in this country are Republicans, I think that's a delusional and paranoid idea.
Having one less child has a greater impact on fewer carbon emissions than NEVER driving a car and never flying on a plane, combined, at least with current technologies and government policies.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children
And later comments in that same thread of tweets implies that global warming concerns arose out of racist concerns too. 
Very bad race riots for weeks: shootings, lootings, fires, people evacuating their homes because of the danger. The National Guard had to quell the disturbances. It was bad. Detroit wasn't the only riot that year, but it was the worst.
It's too bad Lyndon Johnson didn't release this report. It might have made a big difference in the country. It might have turned our attention away from Vietnam, and people might have taken a greater interest in domestic issues.
