Reflections on Ferguson: What’s Wrong with Black People?

After Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown on August 9, 2014, it seemed as if it was the summer of 1967 again. The same series of events that happened in Newark and Detroit in 1967 happened in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. A white man shot and killed a black man. The predominantly black population protested, rioted, and looted.

The predominantly white police force was overwhelmed. The governor called out the National Guard and imposed a curfew. When these things happened in the summer of 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson, by Executive Order 11365, established what would become known as the Kerner Commission to find out what happened and why it happened. To paraphrase, President Johnson, like much of white America, wanted to know: What’s wrong with black people?

The Kerner Commission’s answer was: “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal.”