Edited by: Alan Curtis
Foreword by: Wes Moore
Publication Date: November 22, 2024
Pages: 528
American democracy is at an inflection point. Will we stride toward the 22nd century with evidence and will? Or will we lurch fearfully backwards, reinscribing the white supremist domination of the 19th century?
After hundreds of urban protests in the 1960s, the presidential Kerner Commission, composed mainly of privileged white men, concluded, “It is time to make good the promise of American democracy to all citizens—urban and rural, white and Black, Spanish surname, American Indian and every minority group.” Today it still is time—to reduce racial injustice, economic inequality, and poverty.
Since the Kerner Commission, there has been little or no progress in some areas, and in other ways things have gotten worse. Yet the visionaries on these pages are passionate about how the problem is not lack of resources, nor a dearth of knowledge on the economic, education, youth investment, criminal justice, public health, and housing policies that work. Rather, the problem is that America still does not have the “new will” the Kerner Commission concluded was needed to scale up what works.
How to create “new will”? We need to identify those who are thwarting majoritarian preferences. Use strengthened voter rights and new messaging techniques to advance Dr. King’s economic justice movement based on both class and race. Weave the middle class into the coalition. Know that perfect unity is not necessary for effective collaboration. Better expose the exploitation of Americans by the privileged and the rigged system with its big myth of market fundamentalism. Make clear how that exploitation is smoke-screened by cultural deniers. Build moral language and moral fusion coalitions to revive the heart of democracy and advance a Third Reconstruction. Recover a moral commitment to long-term struggle. Balance outraged intensity with bridge-building persuasion. Don’t just preach to the choir—but recognize that the choir is where, to use John Lewis’ phrase, good trouble starts. Strengthen the role of nonprofit organizations. Base action on evidence and science, not on ideology, supposition, disinformation, and misinformation. Advocate for how universities can better engage their communities. And create a Harry Belafonte-like infrastructure of hope and empathy through the visual arts, monuments, and the performing arts. Through this book, and through its companion volume—the republication of the original Kerner Report of 1968—we commit to enhancing the movement and healing our divided society.
Book Features:
Contributors:
William Barber, Director , Center for Public Theology and Public Policy , Yale University , Co-Chair , The Poor People’s Campaign , MacArthur Fellow
Branville Bard, Jr., Vice President Public Safety & Chief of Police, Johns Hopkins University
Sindy M. Benavides, President and CEO, Latino Victory
Jared Bernstein, Chair , White House Council of Economic Advisors
Cornell William Brooks, Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership and Social Justice , Kennedy School of Government , Harvard University
LaTosha Brown, Co-Founder , Black Voters Matter Fund
Elliott Currie, Professor of Criminology, Law and Society , University of California, Irvine
Linda Darling-Hammond, President and CEO , Learning Policy Institute , Professor of Education Emeritus , Stanford University
Robert Faris, Senior Researcher , Berkman Center for Internet and Society , Harvard University Law School
Michael Feuer, Dean , School of Education and Human Development , George Washington University
Nazgol Ghandnoosh, Co-Director of Research, The Sentencing Project
Neil Gross, Professor of Sociology, Colby College
George Huynh, Executive Director, Vietnamese American Initiative for Development (VietAid)
John Jackson, President and CEO , Schott Foundation for Public Education
Judith LeBlanc, Executive Director, Native Organizers Alliance
Carlton Mackey, Co-Creator/Co-Director, Arts and Social Justice Fellows Program, Emory University
Justin Milner, Executive Vice President of Evidence and Evaluation. Arnold Ventures
Margaret Morton, Director , Program on Creativity and Free Expression , Ford Foundation
Janet Murguia, President and CEO , UnidosUS
Naomi Oreskes, Professor of the History of Science , Harvard University
Claudia Pena, Executive Director , For Freedoms
Lisa Rice, President and CEO , National Fair Housing Alliance
Loretta Ross, Professor for the Study of Women and Gender , Smith College , MacArthur Fellow
Richard Rothstein, Senior Fellow , Economic Policy Institute , Author , The Color of Law
Anat Shenker-Osorio, Founder , ASO Communications
Brooke Smiley, Lecturer, Department of Theater and Dance, University of California, Santa Barbara
Herbert C. Smitherman, Professor of Medicine, Wayne State University
Dorothy Stoneman, Founder , YouthBuild , MacArthur Fellow
Ray Suarez, Former Anchor, PBS News Hour, Host, World Affairs KQED-FM
Kim Taylor-Thompson, Professor of Clinical Law, New York University Law School
Lisa Richards Toney, President and CEO, Association of Performing Arts Professionals
Randi Weingarten, President and CEO, American Federation of Teachers
Michelle Williams, Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health , Harvard University
Valerie Wilson, Director , Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy , Economic Policy Institute
Felicia Wong, President and CEO , Roosevelt Institute
Julian Zelizer, Professor of History and Public Affairs , Princeton University , CNN Analyst
President of the Eisenhower Foundation in Washington DC, Alan Curtis was an appointee in the administrations of Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter. Dr. Curtis is an author or editor of many books and holds degrees from Harvard, the University of London, and the University of Pennsylvania.
“The Commission did what few had done before and few have done after: They engaged in an honest, thorough investigation of the truth. . . . Together, with the values and vision of the Kerner Commission as helpful guides, we can—and we will—build the kind of society that those who came before us dreamed of and that those who come after us deserve.”
—From the Foreword by Wes Moore, Governor of the State of Maryland
“This book proves beyond doubt that the solutions to our country's most enduring problems are within our reach. We know what works. Let's do it.”
—Kerry Kennedy, president, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights
“This scholarly volume on the quest for a more equal and just society comes at a much-needed time in our nation’s hitory. The many contributors to Creating Justice in a Multiracial Democracy have reminded us of the crucial work of the federal government in the 1960s toward racial equality, but even more important their expertise has provided us with the necessary understanding and recommendations for tackling this work today.”
—Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Victor S. Thomas Professor, Harvard University
“This invaluable compilation of visionary and practical reflections casts in bright relief the halting and imperfect path our nation has traveled in realizing the full promise of justice and equality for all Americans, while illuminating with vivid clarity ideas, practices, and norms that will enable us to draw closer to our highest aspirations. It should be required reading for anyone committed to the hard and enduring work it will take to usher a future rooted in equity and opportunity.”
—Rip Rapson, president and CEO, The Kresge Foundation
Contents
Foreword
Wes Moore
Governor of Maryland
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Alan Curtis
President and CEO
Eisenhower Foundation
PART I: WHAT EVIDENCE-BASED
POLICY WORKS?
Economic and Employment Policy
1. Should the Federal Government Play a Role in Racial Equity?
Of Course
Jared Bernstein
2. The New Economics and the Rebalancing of Power
Felicia Wong and Matt Hughes
3. Guidez-Faire:
Why Capitalism Needs Effective Governance
Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway
4. Worker-Centered and Race-Conscious Policy Are
Essential for Equity and Economic Justice
Valerie Wilson and Adewale Maye
Education and Youth Development Policy
5. The Long Quest for Equitable Educational Opportunity
Linda Darling-Hammond
6. Building Loving Systems to Create One America
for All Children
John H. Jackson and Zakiyah Ansari
7. A New Great Society
Randi Weingarten
8. Action to Reaffirm: Equity, Racial Justice, and the Future
of College Admissions
Dwayne Kwaysee Wright and Michael Feuer
9. Act Now! Invest in America’s Youth
Dorothy Stoneman and Mary Ellen Sprenkel
Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Policy
10. Police Reform: Where Do We Go From Here?
Neil Gross
11. Race, Transparency and Policing: Practical Advice From One
Pracademic’s Point of View
Branville Bard Jr.
12. Two Justice Systems—Separate and Unequal
Kim Taylor-Thompson
13. One in Five: Progress and Pushback in Lowering the
Lifetime Likelihood of Imprisonment for Young Black Men
Nazgol Ghandnoosh
14. Violence in Post-pandemic America: Hard Truths and Enduring Lessons
Elliott Currie
Housing and Neighborhood Investment Policy
15. Scaling Economic and Housing Justice
Lisa Rice, Michael Akinwumi, and Nikitra Bailey
16. What the Kerner Commission Got Wrong and How
We Can Get It Right: Remedying Segregation
Requires Recognizing Its True Origins
Leah Rothstein and Richard Rothstein
Public Health Policy
17. An Accidental Public Health Manifesto
Michelle A. Williams
18. U.S. Health Care Policy, the Evidence, and the Will
for Change: What Will It Take to Transform Decades
of Evidence Regarding U.S. Race-and Income-Based
Health Disparities to a “Will for Change”?
Herbert C. Smitherman Jr., and Anil N. F. Aranha
Latino, Native American, and Asian American Policy Perspectives
19. The Power of Stories
Janet Murguía
20. E Pluribus Unum: Out of Many, (We Are) One
Sindy M. Benavides
21. Kerner Commission Report: 21st-Century
Native American Perspective
Judith LeBlanc
22. United Against Hate: How Asian America
Is Standing Up
George Huynh
PART II: HOW TO CREATE NEW WILL?
Dr. King, Economic Justice and Moral Fusion
23. Reviving the Heart of Democracy
Rev. William Barber II
24. An Email and an Epistle for American Democracy
Cornell William Brooks
Persuasion, Democracy, and Voter Rights
25. Values, Villain, Vision: Messaging to Mobilize Our
Base and Persuade the Conflicted
Anat Shenker-Osorio
26. A New North Star to Lead Us to a Representative
Democracy That Is Just and Equitable for All
LaTosha R. Brown
27. Calling In as Compassionate Activism
Loretta J. Ross
Media, Evidence, and Misinformation
28. When Our “Truth-Tellers” Won’t Tell Us the Truth:
Looking Back at the Kerner Commission Report and
Ahead to a Transformed Media Landscape
Ray Suarez
29. “Little Brother Is Watching Big Brother”:
The Flawed Media Lens on Policing and Racism
Julian E. Zelizer
30. Race and Media in a Polarized Society
Robert Faris
31. A More Evidence Based Policy Agenda
Justin Milner
The Visual Arts, Monuments, and the Performing Arts
32. Carry History, Hold Truth: Art in the Public Realm
Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, Margaret S. Morton, and Lena Sze
33. Healing Toward New Will
Claudia Pena
34. Art as Translation
Carlton Mackey
35. Regenerating the Body of Culture
brooke smiley
36. The Art Will. . . A Musing on Life in the Performing Arts:
A Case Study for NEW WILL
Lisa Richards Toney
Index
About the Editors and Contributors
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