This is an absolute MUST read.
“When it comes to race, there are so many lessons our nation has either failed to remember or willfully ignored.
Nearly 50 years ago, riots shook up our country as cities like Newark and Detroit burned following confrontations between the police and local Black residents.
To understand the roots of the unrest, President Lyndon Johnson created the Kerner Commission to study what happened, why it happened, and what could be done to prevent this kind of conflict from surfacing again.
And in its 1968 report, the commission found that discrimination and segregation “had long permeated much of American life,” threatening “the future of every American.” It also found that the media contributed to the turmoil by neglecting to cover the “causes and consequences of civil disorders and the underlying problems of race relations.”
Now, nearly half a century later, it’s easy to question how much has really changed. Over the past year, police brutality has drawn national media coverage following the killings of unarmed Black men, women and children. And the subsequent protests have also grabbed the press’ attention.
But activists of color are troubled that so much of the reporting has framed protesters as criminals and failed to address the larger issues of systemic racism, such as the over-policing of communities of color.”
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