ABSTRACT
The Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, commonly known as the Kerner report after Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner, the Commission's chair, has become a landmark in commentary about race relations and the law. The Kerner report makes for compelling reading 30 years after its publication, even in a field littered with reams of articles and books about The Race Question and even in a political environment that has changed considerably from that which existed in the final year of the Johnson administration. To satisfactorily address the isolation, discrimination, unemployment, poverty and other social ills that beset black city dwellers would require 'programs on a scale equal to the dimensions of the problems', and 'new attitudes, new understanding, and above all, new will'. Many race-relations pessimists maintain that the Kerner report's forecast of racial polarization has, unsurprisingly, materialized.
