I decided to wait on discussing Darkstar's question, because I'm still annoyed at McWhorter's polemic. This

Moreover, black rioters in Watts ruined black-owned businesses as lustily as white ones, even when stores had "Soul Brother" signs in the window. How was this a rebellion against racism?

...has been bothering me since Saturday evening.

I can't find a copy of The Kerner Report online, so I'm going to give you a chunk of The Occupation of Newark By Tom Hayden, as published by the New York Review of Book in 1967...when it happened...because you know I'm a stickler for context and accuracy.

The most obvious act of deliberate aggression was the police destruction of perhaps 100 Negro-owned stores Saturday and Sunday. One witness followed police down Bergen Street for fifteen blocks, watching them shoot into windows marked "Soul Brother." Another storeowner observed a systematic pattern. On his block three white-owned stores were looted Thursday night; no Negro stores were damaged. There were no other disturbances on his block until well after midnight Saturday when he received calls that troopers were shooting into the Negro-owned stores or were breaking windows with the butts of their guns.

Was it because the police hated black people indiscriminately? Was it because the police wanted to teach middle-class Negroes that they must take responsibility for what "criminal" Negroes do? Or because the police wanted to prevent Negro-operated stores from gaining an advantage over the looted white merchants? Whatever the reason, the result was summed up clearly by Gustav Heningburg, a Negro who is a lay official of the Episcopal Church. He told the Newark News of July 17 that "the non-rioting Negroes are more afraid of the police than the rioters" because the police were retaliating instead of protecting.

Governor Hughes said on Sunday that all reports of excessive behavior would be handled by the troopers' own investigative unit. If charges were proved true, "and after all the police are only human," the Governor was sure that "justice will be done." As for himself, "I felt a thrill of pride in the way our state police and National Guardsmen have conducted themselves."

The stores marked "Soul Brother" were in Newark, not Watts. And it was the troopers that destroyed them...that was in the Kerner report as well.

This is the sort of misrepresentation that really bothers me. I don't even know why McWhorter feels free to do that.

You should read The Occupation of Newark. It's long, and you're not going to be happy with anyone's performance but you'll have a real idea of what was going on a mere 40 years ago.