Word: kerner
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...effect of masking the popular consciousness of evil. Traditionally, evil has been something distant, Wholly Other, rather than an enemy within. When Rap Brown complained that "violence is as American as cherry pie," most Americans dismissed the charge as the aberrant nastiness of a Black Power fanatic. When the Kerner Commission proposed that America was a racist nation, the U.S. public reacted with "Who, me?" protests of innocence. But there is a dark underside to American history: the despoliation of the Indian, the subjection of the black, the unwise and probably unmoral insistence on the enemy's unconditional surrender...
Police were circling the area in unmarked cars and motorcycles. Following the recommendations of the Walker and Kerner Reports, police maintained minimum visibility and maximum numbers. They did not mass in sufficient numbers to stop the mob, which had apparently surprised the police by fleeing quickly from Lincoln Park...
...mood to have their consciences addressed. Jews, in particular, feel that for many years they have supported legitimate Negro demands by voting for liberals and financing civil rights causes. It was all very well for Lindsay to be one of the most assertive members of the Kerner Commission and for his aides to take as gospel the commission's key argument: that white racism is at the root of much urban turmoil. Except for the intellectuals and the ultra-liberals?who are already Lindsay supporters?most white New Yorkers do not accept that contention. Marchi says that the commission report...
...fact is that this will demand sacrifices by all white Americans, including the lower middle class. But no permanent domestic accord can be reached if the white lower middle class remains per suaded that it is being called upon for more than its fair share of those sacrifices. The Kerner commission cited "white racism" as the principal cause of racial violence. Up to a point, the charge is just, and the white lower middle class carries its share of bigotry - a moral sin against blacks that will have to be paid for sooner or later as surely as the economic...
...role of the ghetto policeman, said the Kerner Commission report, "is already one of the most difficult in our society. He must deal daily with a range of problems and people that test his patience, ingenuity, character and courage in ways that few of us are ever tested." Patrolman Ronald August, then 28, faced his test on the night of July 26, 1967, when Detroit writhed in the grip of the decade's worst ghetto riot. He was one of three policemen who, with state troopers and National Guardsmen, rushed into the Algiers Motel seeking a reported sniper. They...