![]() In 2015, the black homeownership rate was just over 40 percent, virtually unchanged since 1968, and trailing a full 30 points behind the white homeownership rate, which saw modest gains over the same period. ![]() In 2017 the black unemployment rate was 7.5 percent, up from 6.7 percent in 1968, and is still roughly twice the white unemployment rate. In these areas, their situation has either failed to improve relative to whites or has worsened. ![]() With respect to homeownership, unemployment, and incarceration, America has failed to deliver any progress for African Americans over the last five decades.But black workers still make only 82.5 cents on every dollar earned by white workers, African Americans are 2.5 times as likely to be in poverty as whites, and the median white family has almost 10 times as much wealth as the median black family. The substantial progress in educational attainment of African Americans has been accompanied by significant absolute improvements in wages, incomes, wealth, and health since 1968. ![]() They are also more than twice as likely to have a college degree as in 1968 but are still half as likely as young whites to have a college degree. More than 90 percent of younger African Americans (ages 25 to 29) have graduated from high school, compared with just over half in 1968-which means they’ve nearly closed the gap with white high school graduation rates. African Americans today are much better educated than they were in 1968 but still lag behind whites in overall educational attainment.In several important respects, African Americans have actually lost ground relative to whites, and, in a few cases, even relative to African Americans in 1968. While African Americans are in many ways better off in absolute terms than they were in 1968, they are still disadvantaged in important ways relative to whites. Where do we stand as a society today? In this brief report, we compare the state of black workers and their families in 1968 with the circumstances of their descendants today, 50 years after the Kerner report was released. The report named “white racism”-leading to “pervasive discrimination in employment, education and housing”-as the culprit, and the report’s authors called for a commitment to “the realization of common opportunities for all within a single society.” 1 The Kerner Commission report pulled together a comprehensive array of data to assess the specific economic and social inequities confronting African Americans in 1968. The same year, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, better known as the Kerner Commission, delivered a report to President Johnson examining the causes of civil unrest in African American communities. Open singles title, and Shirley Chisholm became the first African American woman elected to the House of Representatives. Arthur Ashe became the first African American to win the U.S. Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in a black power salute as they received their medals at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Rising against this tragedy, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 outlawing housing discrimination was signed into law. was assassinated in Memphis and riots broke out in cities around the country. In April of that year, Martin Luther King Jr. The year 1968 was a watershed in American history and black America’s ongoing fight for equality.
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