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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. With us now, New Yorker staff writer and Columbia university journalism professor Jelani Cobb, who has a new book that's an edited version of the Kerner Commission report on civil unrest in the United States that came out in 1968. The main point is that the Kerner Commission got a lot right back then about race and racism in America if only the government and white society had followed through.

Before we hear from Jelani directly, here's about a minute of President Johnson announcing the formation of the commission in 1967 following riots in Newark and Detroit and other cities.

President Johnson: In America, we seek more than the uneasy calm of martial law. We seek peace that's based on one man's respect for another man and upon mutual respect for law. We seek a public order that's built on steady progress in meeting the needs of all of our people and not even the sternest police action nor the most effective federal troops can ever create lasting peace in our cities.

The only genuine long range solution for what has happened lies in an attack mounted at every level upon the conditions that breed despair and breed violence. All of us, I think, know what those conditions are; ignorance, discrimination, slums, poverty, disease, not enough jobs. We should attack these conditions not because we are frightened by conflict, but because we are fired by conscience

Brian Lehrer: President Johnson in 1967. Here's one more clip. It's Nathaniel R. Jones, counsel to the Kerner commission, quoting from one of its central findings as he recalled it in a speech in 2013.

Nathaniel R. Johnson: What white Americans have never fully understood, but what the Negro can never forget is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.

Brian Lehrer: The language of the 1968 Kerner Commission report. The new book is called The Essential Kerner Commission Report edited by Jelani Cobb and Matthew Guariglia. It includes a new introduction by Jelani who joins us now. Thanks for coming on for this. Welcome back to WNYC.

Jelani Cobb: Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Jelani, would it cut to the heart of the matter to say the commission was empaneled technically to look at problems in Black America and concluded the main problem was with white America.

Jelani Cobb: No. I think that's a pretty good summation of it actually. What was astounding about this-- I talk about this in the introduction, is that when we look at government reports, they come, they go, they look at serious problems they're issued, but they almost never become a public phenomenon. We can count on one hand essentially the government reports or commission reports that we could expect the public to be familiar with.

We'd say Warren report about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 9/11 report obviously has been coming up on the 20 year anniversary of that, that even people have more consciousness of that one, and then the Kerner Commission report.

The thing that's astounding about that report is that we think about government findings being couched in politic language and bureaucracy speak. This is very directly said, as that quote that you played summarized, that the ghetto is a product of decisions that have been made by white Americans.

That was an audacious thing to say in 1968. It could possibly be-- when we look at the debates around critical race theory or what people are calling critical race theory, it could probably be even more audacious to say [unintelligible 00:04:48] something like that in 2021.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take a few phone calls for a Jelani Cobb, editor now of The Essential Kerner Commission Report. I'm curious if anyone's listening who's old enough to remember the Kerner Commission or anyone else with a take or a question about this history and its relevance to today. 646-435-7280. 646-435-7280. This is WNYC FM, HD, and AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River.

We are New York and New Jersey public radio. Jelani, you cite Gunnar Myrdal's mid-20th century book, An American Dilemma, as helping to define the liberalism of the LBJ era, which produced the Kerner Commission report. What kind of liberalism was that looking back, if you can put it in to words?

Jelani Cobb: Well, it's an interesting idea because it sounds quaint now, but it was the new deal liberalism in essence that had belief that government had a role to play in ensuring prosperity, particularly in aiding or mitigating the worst dynamics of the market in ways that they would impact on American regular citizens, everyday people.

In addition to that, it was a particular racial awareness that came by and large as an outgrowth of the experience of Nazism and seeing what unmitigated racism had done in Germany during World War II. Those two things were constituent elements of a liberalism that came to the fore that the civil rights movements took advantage of and helped shape and mold in their own right. The text that really summarizes that is American Dilemma.

20 years later when the Kerner Commission report comes out, they really are the last gasp for the liberalism that American Dilemma had represented and had called for.

Brian Lehrer: President Johnson enacted a long list of social programs designed, I think, to be the manifestations of that kind of liberalism and address the systemic inequality from Head Start to Medicaid, to promoting affirmative action and many other things. Did they fail? Did they succeed, but not enough? How would you describe the fate of the LBJ Great Society programs generally in the context of what we're talking about?

Jelani Cobb: What's interesting about this is it's almost a tale of two presidencies or tale of two LBJs because famously, Lyndon Johnson ignored the Kerner report. He created the commission and then all but forgot about it or overlooked its findings. He declined to meet with them when the findings were released.

He politically felt like it was too much of an indictment that it didn't jive well with the political moment, even though he was responsible for the Great Society and doing many of the things that Kerner said needed to happen on a larger scale. When I had the opportunity to talk to Senator Fred Harris, who is the only surviving member of the Kerner Commission and former Oklahoma senator who was 90 years old and still very vividly remembers his service on the commission.

He said that LBJ really felt frustrated for signing the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and for the promotion of the Great Society and so on, and still there is this pandemic of uprisings that you see happening in American cities. It's almost [inaudible 00:09:08] get to the bottom of it, find out what's going on here, even as he feels like his own efforts may have been too little too late or may have been underappreciated and he doesn't really know.

There's a tone of frustration with him in terms of understanding what exactly will make these things stop.

Brian Lehrer: Tragically, you recall that the political consensus that emerged after the Kerner commission report was released was not the liberal one it aimed for, but a conservative law and order one that helped get Richard Nixon elected president that same year. Why did the law and order narrative win?

Jelani Cobb: I think there are a few things at play there. For one, the Kerner report was issued at- -a really fascinating moment. People tend to conflate because it came out in 1968, they tend to conflate it with everything that happened ill that year. Really, the report came out just a month or so before the assassination, actually less than a month before the assassination of Martin Luther King, where there were hundreds of other uprisings in American cities that happened.

It was predictive. It was not reactive of those things. I think that it was the tide of the response to King's death that made for a certain portion of white voters just made the idea of more liberalism or more enfranchisement a bridge too far, which was already a idea that was waning. It was the pressure of Vietnam, the economic concerns attached to it. There were all of those things that combined are making people feel antsy about the path that the country is on.

Carter comes down right in the middle of it. That's why I said it's last gasp of that form of liberalism because to read it and to read the manifold recommendations they make and the real idea of there being a more expansive society that reaches out and brings in everyone and creates programs to make up for the lack. It's a fabulously idealistic approach to societal concerns and societal problems. Then six months after that, we're on our way into the Nixon era.

Brian Lehrer: Joseph in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with Jelani Cobb. Hi, Joseph.

Joseph: Yes. Good morning, Brian, and to your guests, Mr. Cobb. I have vivid memories of the issuing of that report. I wanted to ask a question and then ask a minor one. In the report, as I understood it or remember it, I'm pretty good at this, there's a passage there where Moynihan makes a recommendation that Black communities actually be broken up-- I think this is near a quote, broken up in order to avoid future civil unrest and such.

I'm struck by the fact that you mentioned the right wing interpretation of much of what the report had to offer and we see gentrification and things of that type coming into fruition today. That's the first comment. The second one is, it's my understanding that there were two editions of the report. Could you clarify that? There was an earlier one and then there was one that was, I think, published by in or by The Times. Could you clarify that for me?

Jelani Cobb: Sure. No, I'm not articulating the right wing version of it. I'm saying how this report has been perceived and the reaction that people had to it. I think that the interesting thing about it-- Firstly, about the two reports, there were not two reports. There was a single report but the Washington Post got access to it. It was leaked before it was due to come out.

The version of the story that the Post was going to run with was going to highlight essentially that, the point that we've been making, "Oh, it's white America's fault." They thought that this would be terrible. This would be disastrous, politically speaking, for the report itself, so the commission implored the Post to hold off on it. They refused. They said, "We're going to run with this story."

Then as a countermeasure, they sent out a synopsis of the report to every other newspaper they could find. Their idea was, to the Post, like if we can't persuade you to hold off on publishing this, then what we'll do is deny you having an exclusive. That was never a separate version of the report, but that was a earlier portion of it that came out and then the bigger part of it that came out.

Now, subsequent to that, I should say there've been many versions of the report. Mine is the essential-- ours, mine and Matthew Guariglia, my collaborator is The Essential Kerner. We were trying to distill it down to just the parts that were most pertinent that had endured and were most relevant in the post George Floyd moment and we got to about 300 pages.

The original version is about 900 pages and there are several versions that have come out that are in the 500 page range since then. Those are all based on the one original 900-or-so-page document. As for the Moynihan report, the Moynihan point of it, I don't recall Moynihan specifically calling for the breakup of Black communities, but certainly, his ideas about Black families are significantly influential.

As a matter of fact, there's a note in our version where we talk about the substantial and fairly reactionary perspective that Moynihan brought to Black families that does suffuse the report. Some of that is being kept as a pointer, but most of that, we did not keep. That was how that came about.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you Joseph. Ann on Cape Cod remembers the original Kerner Commission report. Ann, thank you for calling in. You're on with Jelani Cobb.

Ann: Hi. Well, thank you for having the rebirth. The original one came out between my freshmen and sophomore year in college. A bunch of us came back to our community concerned about issues of racism and finally learned what the term had meant. Now, we talk about critical race theory. At that point, racism was almost a new term to wrap your brain around.

One of the local churches let us use a furnished room in their basement. We had an open book club on the Kerner Commission report for the community. Every week, we would gather once a week in the church basement and we would assign a different chapter and we would read it together and then discuss the implications of it. Then as an outcome of that, I think there were a bunch of things, but I remember there was some high school students there, the parents were there.

Some of the students started an alternative newspaper for the high school, another member decided to burn his draft card. That original printing is very present in my mind and still an important lens. In fact, I use critical race theory when I did my [unintelligible 00:16:58] dissertation. There you go.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for that memory. Can I ask what was the rough racial makeup of that church-based reading group?

Ann: It was really white. It was a white suburb outside of Boston.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think it influenced more people than just those who were in your immediate group? Did it ripple out at all or looking back, are you more frustrated with how insular it remained?

Ann: It's hard to know because it was a long time ago, but again, it was a multi-generational group. As I said, some of the high school students went back and started an alternative paper to start conversations. The fact that somebody decided to burn his draft card very publicly in the community started additional dialogue about things that were going on at that time. I think we know a lot of things didn't change, but that's all I can say.

Brian Lehrer: Ann thank you. I'm going to go right on to Africa in Newark. You're on WNYC with Jelani Cobb. Hi, Africa.

Africa: Hey, all power to the people. Hey, how are you doing, Jelani?

Jelani Cobb: Okay, how are you?

Africa: I'm okay. I'm an activist in Newark, New Jersey. Black people, we never had to be told what the problem in our community is and who's responsible for them. Before the Kerner report came out, Malcom X, Stokely Carmichael, Kwame Ture, Dr. King, everybody told us what the problem was in our communities. They told us how we fix our own problems.

They told us to build our own institutions to take care of our own people because the government will never do it. We are watching the people of Afghanistan fall off planes, listening to the white people that came in there, the American government that came in there and promised them a different way of living. 20 years later, they're fleeing and people are falling off planes because they broke another promise with another people.

I'm asking you as a Black man, why haven't our intelligentsia decided to organize our people, to build our own institutions like schools to help our own people instead of continuing-- it's over 50 years now, instead of continuing to wait for the government that we know never cared about us to build institutions to liberate us. I needed you to really please answer this for me, because I'm an activist on the front line, working daily in these communities that still see these problems persisting.

People getting kicked out of their homes, people with no jobs, people at the bottom of the bottom and nobody is doing anything to take care of these people. When I hear the intelligentsia in my community- -in the Black community they tell us to go vote for these institutions and people that don't support us. Please, why do they keep doing that? Why would they refuse to build our own institutions?

Brian Lehrer: Africa, thank you. Jelani, we've got about two minutes left in the segment, so go for it in any way you want to wrap up.

Jelani Cobb: I hear you in terms of independence and so on, but let's just be real. A week [unintelligible 00:20:24] before Dr. King, when I had talk about in the introduction to this, WEB Dubois, Sinclair Drake, they're people who were making these points about these institutions long before this, but the fundamental fact of it is we pay taxes in this society. We have seen those taxes be deployed for the creation of wealth in other communities.

If you're saying that you shouldn't ask the government for anything, it's essentially like saying you should open a bank account, put all of your money into that bank account, and then have no problem with the bank says, "We will never allow you to make a withdrawal." We have the ambivalent status of citizens in this country. However that [inaudible 00:21:07] true, we have a claim, there's a debt.

Our ancestral labor produced the wealth in this country and it is immoral to walk away and in the name of self-empowerment refuse to further that claim and say that we demand that our community have the same wealth produced within it that has been used to create wealth in other communities for their benefit.

Brian Lehrer: The new book edited by Jelani Cobb and Matthew Guariglia is The Essential Kerner Commission Report, an edit of that original report that came out after civil unrest in the 1960s in the United States under the Johnson administration. The book includes a new introduction by Jelani Cobb that is very relevant to today. Thank you so much for joining us to discuss this.

Jelani Cobb: Thank you.

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