Full Citation
Title: The Kerner Commission Report Fifty Years Later: Revisiting the American Dream
Citation Type: Journal Article
Publication Year: 2018
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ISSN:
DOI: 10.7758/rsf.2018.4.6.01
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Abstract: The 1968 account of the 1967 race riots, authored by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (the Kerner Commission, thus the Kerner report), directly called into question the fundamental premise of the American Dream. “The idea of the American dream has been attached to everything from religious freedom to a home in the suburbs, and it has inspired emotions ranging from deep satisfaction to disillusioned fury. Nevertheless, the phrase elicits for most Americans some variant of Locke’s fantasy—a new world where anything can happen and good things might” (Hochschild 1995, 17). The premise of the American Dream rests on three fundamental tenets: the equal opportunity to participate and the ability to start over, a reasonable anticipation of success, and the notion that success is under one’s control (Hochschild 1995). The basis of each of these tenets is strongly refuted in the report first released on February 29, 1968 (commonly referred to as the Kerner Commission report in reference to the commission chairman, Otto Kerner). Understanding the shortcomings of American society in implementing its democratic ideals relative to African Americans was advanced long before the Kerner report. Writings by W. E. B. DuBois (1903), Franklin Frazier (1940), Gunnar Myrdal (1944), Kenneth Clark (1965), and Gary Marx (1967), for example, expose a deep-seated disconnect between philosophy and practice. In his 1890 commencement address at Harvard University, DuBois reflected on a “nation [that] was founded on the loftiest ideals, and who many times forgot those ideals with a strange forgetfulness” (1903, 19).
Url: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7758/rsf.2018.4.6.01
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Authors: Gooden, Susan T.; Myers, Samuel L.
Periodical (Full): RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
Issue: 6
Volume: 4
Pages: 1-17
Data Collections: IPUMS CPS
Topics: Other, Race and Ethnicity
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