An Enduring Error | City Journal

An Enduring Error | City Journal

"The Kerner Commission hinted at, but never pursued, the most likely explanation for the disorder: 'the unfulfilled expectations aroused by the great legislative and judicial victories of the Civil Rights Movement and the dramatic struggle for equal rights in the South.' Those expectations were overwhelmingly economic. Martin Luther King himself fused the civil rights movement with efforts to promote black gains in the workplace. Coming to the aid of striking black sanitation workers in Memphis, King declared: 'Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality.' And President Johnson, in an extraordinary speech at Howard University, declared that the 'next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights' would seek 'not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.' This sort of talk by national leaders raised expectations beyond anything that government and the law were capable of providing. It is much easier to legislate rights than jobs or wealth. Civil rights laws could ensure that blacks may be seated at lunch counters, but they could not guarantee that blacks would own or manage those establishments.

"In one sense, the Kerner Report reflected the liberal optimism of its era: federal programs to provide job training, social welfare, and slum clearance would right the wrongs of racism, it was widely believed. But in its bleak analysis and failure to account for the profound changes that had already been set in motion, the report also signaled the liberal pessimism that has become predominant on racial matters ever since. It's easier to see, looking back 50 years later, that the United States was headed in the right direction. The great crusade for civil rights not only drove down residential segregation; it also created opportunities for genuine African-American socioeconomic advancement. Yet the Kerner Report remains somehow deathless, its erroneous predictions taken as prophecy, its misguided prescriptions still blocking more constructive approaches to the problems that remain."