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The Essential Kerner Commission Report
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About The Essential Kerner Commission Report
Product Description Recognizing that an historic study of American racism and police violence should become part of today’s canon, Jelani Cobb contextualizes it for a new generation. The Kerner Commission Report, released a month before Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 assassination, is among a handful of government reports that reads like an illuminating history book―a dramatic, often shocking, exploration of systemic racism that transcends its time. Yet Columbia University professor and New Yorker correspondent Jelani Cobb argues that this prescient report, which examined more than a dozen urban uprisings between 1964 and 1967, has been woefully neglected. In an enlightening new introduction, Cobb reveals how these uprisings were used as political fodder by Republicans and demonstrates that this condensed edition of the Report should be essential reading at a moment when protest movements are challenging us to uproot racial injustice. A detailed examination of economic inequality, race, and policing, the Report has never been more relevant, and demonstrates to devastating effect that it is possible for us to be entirely cognizant of history and still tragically repeat it. Review "This version of the landmark report features a superb introduction by Cobb and a closing section of frequently asked questions―e.g., ‘How come nothing has been done about these problems?’ The book contains plenty of fodder for crucial national conversations and many excellent ideas for much-needed reforms that could be put into place now. A welcome new version of a publication that is no less important now than it was in 1967." ― Kirkus Reviews, starred review " New Yorker staff writer Cobb ( The Substance of Hope) presents an astutely abridged and incisively contextualized version of the 1968 Kerner Commission Report . . . Cobb’s concise introduction delves into the origins of the commission and highlights key findings . . . The report itself is startlingly blunt . . . and remarkably prescient . . . In the appendix, Cobb briskly and persuasively tackles 'frequently asked question' . . . The result is an essential resource for understanding what Cobb calls the 'chronic national predicament' of racial unrest." ― Publishers Weekly "With a perceptive introduction by historian Cobb... this version of the report, co-edited by historian Guariglia, is indeed essential for what it presents and why its findings still matter... this version of the report might point the way toward a national resolution, if the United States summons the will and wherewithal to make change." ― Randall M. Miller, Library Journal From the Back Cover “Jelani Cobb’s Essential Kerner Commission Report is more than essential. Today its relevance is existential.”―David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography 1868–1963 “Jelani Cobb, as one of the nation’s preeminent journalists and scholars, reminds us in The Essential Kerner Commission Report that knowing history is no guarantee of not repeating it, especially when the majority of voters and politicians refuse to take heed to the facts, time and time again. Perhaps with this must-read volume in the era of Ferguson and Floyd, things will be different.”―Khalil Gibran Muhammad, author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime and the Making of Modern Urban America “Much of what is in the Kerner Commission Report is as relevant today as in 1968. Jelani Cobb’s powerful introduction provides the context, and his clear presentation of the report is stunning in illuminating the ongoing problems of racial injustice.”―Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law About the Author A staff writer at The New Yorker, Jelani Cobb is the Ira A. Lipman Professor of Journalism at the Columbia Journalism School. The recipient of fellowships from the Fullbright and Ford Foundations, he lives in New York.
