IN THE FACE of protests composed largely of young people, the presence of America’s military on the streets of major cities has been a controversial development. But this isn’t the first time that Generation Z — those born after 1996 — has popped up on the Pentagon’s radar.
Today we’re facing the exact same questions that Americans were asking just over fifty years ago, in 1967 and 1968, as riots took place all across America, resulting in over 70 dead and untold injured.
In order to understand how civil unrest had reached such proportions, and how to prevent it from occurring in the future, President Lyndon B. Johnson established the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders — known as the Kerner Commission, after its chairman, Otto Kerner Jr., who was governor of Illinois at the time.
We are witnessing the head-on collision between the story America’s political, media and educational institutions tell Americans about what their country is, and the reality of what their country actually is.
