Jagged Orbit by John Brunner

Author:John Brunner [Brunner, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-08-28T15:29:32.201000+00:00

Danger of US 'apartheid with martial law'

From Alistair Cooke: New York

The country has had three days in which to absorb the shock of the first instalment, the official summary rather, of the report of the President's National Advisory Comon Civil Disorders, shortly to be known as the Kerner Commission, after Governor Otto Kerner of Illinois who preover the seven-months' investigation by nine whites and two Negroes.

Today, for those who hope for more light and a finer perspective on the Comfindings, there fell the blockof the whole report: 1,489 pages of exhaustive and exhausting investigation of riots in cities big and small. Riots that hardly materialised, riots that shook the social and economic life of the cities to their roots.

Very few people on the outside looking in are likely to stagger through this fascinating and depressing testament; and the fewer people on the inside of State and city government will be too busy trying to decide between the "three choices" which the Commission concludes now conAmerican society.

First, there is a continuation of present policies, with the same or a little more money going into the rehabilitation of the cities, and the same methods, bordering on suppression by arms, being used to hold the riots. This way, the Commission is convinced, will do little "to raise the hopes or absorb the energies" of the inpopulation of young city Negroes; will lead to more violence; and "could lead to urban apartheid and the permanent esof two societies."

Little hope

The second choice would be to work at once for the "enrichment of the slums" and "a dramatic improvement" of the people's lives by substantial increases in public moneys for education, employment, housing and the social services. The Comsees little hope of permanent imthrough this approach either.

The third choice, and in the Commission's view the only one that can save the United States from "two societies-separate and unequal" (probably maintained by martial law) is reinforced time and again in the report's detailed documentation of city grievances. These include the pervading bigotry of white attitudes, the rising numbers of young Negroes doomed never to be employed at all (one third of all emyoung Negroes in the 20 biggest cities are today unemployed), the flight of the whites to the suburbs from which they are unlikely to vote more taxes for cities reduced to decaying ghettoes for Negroes only.

This third choice requires nothing less than "a massive national effort" to integrate the social and economic life of the two races and the officers of the law who must protect it.

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