Taking Stock of Black Life and Racism in America 50 Years After a Pivotal Moment

Guest: Nathan Connolly, PhD, Associate Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University, Author, “A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida,” Co-host, BackStory podcast Fifty years ago this month, the Kerner Commission report came out. It was a group organized by President Lyndon B. Johnson and led by Illinois Governor Otto Kerner to investigate why young black men were rioting in more than 150 cities around the country.  The report was very direct. “White racism is essentially responsible for the explosive mixture which has been accumulating in our cities since the end of World War II,” it said. Racial discrimination in housing, employment and education had led to pent-up frustration in low-income black neighborhoods. And the report warned that the riots would continue if something didn’t change.  Fifty years later, that legacy is not behind us. In fact, when it comes to homeownership, unemployment and incarceration, there’s been no progress for African Americans compared to whites, according to new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.