Racial gaps remain 40 years after riots

February 29, 2008
The Detroit News

Kerner report gives U.S. poor grade for progress, cites job and education disparities.
Some progress has been made for African-Americans, but 40 years after riots filled urban cities across the country there is still a gap between blacks and whites in areas such as poverty, education, crime and unemployment, according to new findings from the Kerner Commission.
Despite an emerging black middle class and increases in black entrepreneurs and public officials at all levels, the commission that famously warned the United States is moving toward "two societies, one black, one white -- separate and unequal" found that few goals have been met since its bombshell 1968 findings.

President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed the original commission during Detroit's 1967 riots. The panel investigated what led to the city's six days of civil unrest and 43 deaths. When the commission reconvened last year, it made Detroit its first stop.

The commission's grade on progress across the country for African-Americans: D+. It's a mark that resonates in metropolitan Detroit, the nation's most segregated region.

"There is nothing I can point to in our present-day experience that tell us that we are significantly better off today than we were (then)," said Arthur Johnson, a former president of the NAACP Detroit branch.

"The income gap is real and something we have the right to argue about. It has come to a point where we must tell this nation that we are not going to accept the miseducation and the misdirection of education resources."

Last year, the Washington, D.C.-based Eisenhower Foundation reconvened the commission during the 40th anniversary of the 1967 riots. The initial 11-member panel warned the nation faced a "system of apartheid" in major cities and urged legislation to create jobs and improve housing. The commission was named after its chairman, Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner. Johnson rejected its findings and they further languished the next year with the election of Richard Nixon.

The updated findings were compiled through hearings in Detroit, Newark and Washington, D.C., which had riots in the 1960s. Some have suggested the incidents were a rebellion against a lack of jobs and education in Detroit.

The commission's report, which will be released in full this year, found:
• Some employers still "steer" minority applicants into the worst jobs; real estate agents send them to less desirable neighborhoods and mortgage lenders accept fewer applications than those from similar whites.

• Unemployment and underemployment were the most important causes of poverty, yet African-American unemployment has remained twice as high as white unemployment during each of the four decades since 1968. About 37 million Americans live in poverty, while 46 million Americans are without health insurance.

• Educational disparities remain linked to funding. The wealthiest 10 percent of school districts in the United States spend nearly 10 times more than the poorest 10 percent.
• Poor African-Americans are three times as likely as non-Hispanic whites to live in deep poverty, below half of the poverty line.
• Minorities receive longer sentences than whites for the same crimes.

The report called for the following remedies: boosting the $5.85 an hour minimum wage beyond the $7.25 an hour the U.S. has set to increase to in 2009; passing laws to require the Federal Reserve to take action whenever unemployment rises above 4 percent; approving the Employee Free Choice Act to make it easier to form unions; increasing job training and college grants for low-income students and make funding for public school districts more equitable.

The Eisenhower Foundation report echoes findings by The News in a two-day series published last July that found the white-black gap still persists. Black incomes in Detroit are down since 1970, while they're up for whites. More blacks are going to college than before, but nearly twice as many whites are too. The white-black employment gap is the same now as it was in 1960.
"It's kind of telling given all of the bickering and finger-pointing by some that (suggest) Detroit has gotten into the predicament by itself," said the Rev. Horace Sheffield III, Michigan chapter president of the National Action Network.

"It's not new to me, (but) it's something suburbanites want to ignore and say we alone are responsible for the deplorable plight of the city, which is not true."
Maureen Taylor, who served on Detroit's panel last November, said the Eisenhower findings weren't harsh enough. She would have recommended a D-.

"There is no war against poverty in America," said Taylor, the state chairwoman of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization. "There is a war against the poor. We have to go and change the circumstances of poverty."

But others are still optimistic. A Detroit News poll found six in 10 African-Americans said they feel blacks have made at least some economic progress since 1967.

Ulysses Chauffe, a west side Detroit resident, said he doesn't see it as a lack of progress, but rather people who are not taking advantage of the resources available.

"This generation is more informed and has more tools available to them than past generations," said Chauffe, 54. "It's whether or not you grasp onto that. I don't think that more so than (in the past) it's we're under some type of glass ceiling that keeps us from progressing. It's ourselves."
You can reach Darren A. Nichols at (734) 462-2190 or dnichols@detnews.com.