James Baldwin In 1968. Brilliant. Articulate. Angry. He Defends Why He Protested

The speaker is American poet and writer, James Baldwin. He is commenting on a government report which had just been released on the causes of the inner-city riots and what the government could do to improve things. The time was 1968. America was in the midst of two protest movements. One was against the Vietnam War where just about 50% of Americans indicated that they were against the continuation of the war. The other was inner-city violent and nonviolent protests which culminated after the assassination of Martin Luther King, in an nationwide outburst of rage.

In 1967 President Lyndon Johnson and a bipartisan group in Congress established a National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders known as the Kerner Commission to investigate the riots and come up with recommendations for what the government could do in the future. The report was released in 1968. It attributed the riots to lack of economic opportunity for African Americans and Latinos, failed social service programs, police brutality, racism, and the orientation of national media to white perspectives. The 426-page report was a bestseller.

President Johnson appointed the commission on July 28, 1967 while rioting was still underway in Detroit, Michigan. Mounting civil unrest since 1965 had resulted in riots in the black and Latino neighborhoods of many major U.S. cities, including Los Angeles (Watts riots of 1965), Chicago (Division Street Riots of 1966, the first Puerto Rican riot in U.S. history); and Newark (1967 Newark riots). Johnson asked for answers to three basic questions about the riots: "What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again and again?" It was widely believed by the American public (without any supporting evidence) that the riots were part of an organized effort.

The commission's final work was issued on February 29, 1968. The report became an instant bestseller. Its primary finding was that the riots resulted from black and Latino frustration at the lack of economic opportunity. Martin Luther King Jr. pronounced the report a "physician's warning of approaching death, with a prescription for life.

The report berated federal and state governments for failed housing, education, and social-service policies. The report also aimed some of its sharpest criticism at the media. "The press has too long basked in a white world looking out of it, if at all, with white men's eyes and white perspective."

The report's best-known passage warned: "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal." The report was a strong indictment of white America: "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."

Its results suggested that one main cause of urban violence was white racism and suggested that white America bore much of the responsibility for black rioting and rebellion. It called to create new jobs, construct new housing, and put a stop to de facto segregation in order to dismantle the destructive ghetto environment. In order to do so, the report recommended that government programs provide needed services, police forces should be improved by hiring more officers and educating them about their neighborhoods, and, most notably, to invest billions in housing programs aimed at breaking up residential segregation.

Conservative news groups did not like the report blaming racism from white people & thought rioters were "let off the hook". The response of black news groups would be mixed towards the report overall. Some black newspapers like the New York Amsterdam News and those they interviewed thought that the report did not have any new findings & was simply mirroring what black people already knew.This was the feeling that James Baldwin reflected in this video.

In a Gallup poll respondents were asked if they thought the nation was moving into two different societies as stated by the report. 36% of all US adults agreed, 52% disagreed.

Johnson had a slow response to the report compared with Vice President Hubert Humphrey who said that: "If this nation can afford to spend $30 billion to put a man on the moon it can afford to spend what it takes to put a man on his feet right here on earth" and "It's not enough just to open the doors. You also have to help the people walk through those doors”. Politicians Ronald Reagan & Richard Nixon would criticize the report. Nixon said that the report was giving undue weight on the idea that "we are in effect a racist society" with Reagan saying that it was not able "to recognize the efforts that have been made by millions of right-thinking people in this country."

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