NATIONAL GOVERNORS' CONFERENCE 925

technically defined as such, the Kerner Report views it as a self-
contained Negro slum surrounded by an intangible, impregnable wall
of white hostility. However, later in the report it becomes clear that
White America is not the only guilty party. In examining the attitude
of the rioter, the report states that the typical rioter is "almost equally
hostile toward middle-class Negroes... his hostility is more apt to
be a product of social and economic class than of race. "

The Report notes, "While the civil disorders of 1967 were racial
in character, they were not interracial.... [they] involved action with-
in Negro neighborhoods against symbols of White American society —
authority and property — rather than against white persons.... most
of those who attacked white authority and property seemed to be de-
manding fuller participation in the social order and the material
benefits enjoyed by the vast majority of American citizens. "

These facts appear to contest the Commission's dramatic indictment
of prevailing, although unconscious, white racism as the underlying
source of violence. These conclusions put the cause of violence in a
socio-economic context rather than a racial one. Yet we know, two
out of three Americans below the poverty level are white. This opens
the way to new and deeply disturbing questions. Why don't im-
poverished white Americans riot? Could it be that they know they
will not meet with sympathy, that collective white lawlessness will
not be tolerated?

The Kerner Report is a study in black and white, in a world that
is primarily grey. This explains its fascination and its flaws. It has
opted for sweeping generalizations that produce drama but sacrifice
reason.

Who then is the rioter? According to the Kerner Report "The
typical rioter in the summer of 1967 was a Negro, unmarried male
between the ages of 15 and 24.... He was not a migrant. " He was
likely to be a school dropout. If employed, "his employment was
frequently interrupted by periods of unemployment. " "He feels
strongly that he deserves a better job and that he is barred from
achieving it, not because of lack of training, ability or ambition, but
because of discrimination by employers. "

Removing racial identification, this could be the profile of a clas-
sical troublemaker, the malcontent who abuses society for his own
failure. If this is the typical rioter, I cannot believe he is any more
a representative of the Negro majority than the Ku Klux Klansman
is symbolic of white America.