The 'Two Societies' Today
Published: February 29, 1988
It has been 20 years since the Kerner commission's report on urban riots predicted that America was heading toward ''two societies, one black, one white - separate but unequal.''
That conclusion remains both controversial and difficult to assess. But experts interviewed by The New York Times argue that the state of race relations in America today is both better and worse than in 1968.
Many racial barriers have fallen, leading to greater prosperity for a larger black middle class.
At the same time, substantial segments of black society have fallen into a state of profound despair. It is a group cut off from the mainstream, ever sinking, causing puzzlement and fear, among blacks as well as whites.
In predicting the division of American society into black and white societies, the commission did not foresee another trend that has grown apparent in the intervening decades: the division of black America into divergent classes with little in common other than race.
The anniversary of the Kerner report falls at a time of great uncertainty. Racial tensions, in cities, on college campuses and elsewhere, seem to be on the increase. And while legal segregation is long gone, the society is still divided along racial lines into two communities, uncomfortable, often suspicious, frequently fearful of each other.