In 1967 after a year of uprisings, LBJ created the “Kerner Commission” to find the roots of the unrest.

What they found was damning: “white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it." All these years later much of what the commission found… that deep inequality, oppression and economic isolation created the environment ripe for an American explosion … remain true today.

I can’t think of a more necessary project in this moment than the NYT Magazine’s #1619Project. It argues, in so many thoughtful ways, that there would be no American democracy without the struggles of black folks to fully clarify what democracy actually is. As the brilliant heart and soul behind this project, Nikole Hannah Jones @nhannahjones puts it, “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true.” nytimes.com/interactive/20…