The Negro Family: The Case For National Action
Encyclopedia
The Negro Family: The Case For National Action, also known as the Moynihan Report was written by then-sociologist and later U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
and released in 1965. It focused on the deep roots of black poverty in America and concluded that the relative absence of nuclear (that is, husband-wife)
families would greatly hinder further progress toward economic and political equality.
Moynihan generally concluded in the report: "The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States".
, now consider the report one of the more influential in the construction of the War on Poverty
.
, and the Rev. Al Sharpton
. Among the complaints lodged at the "Moynihan Report" are the stereotyping of the black family and black men, inferences of inferior academic performance by Black-Americans, portrayals of endemic crime and "pathology" in the black community, and a failure to recognize both cultural bias and racism in standardized tests. The report was criticized for threatening to undermine the place of civil rights on the national agenda, leaving "a vacuum that could be filled with a politics that blamed blacks for their own troubles."
African-American economist and writer Walter E. Williams
has praised the report for its findings. He has also added in response, "The solutions to the major problems that confront many black people won't be found in the political arena, especially not in Washington or state capitols."
Political commentator Heather MacDonald wrote for National Review
in 2008, "Conservatives of all stripes routinely praise Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s prescience for warning in 1965 that the breakdown of the black family threatened the achievement of racial equality. They rightly blast those liberals who denounced Moynihan’s report".
Sociologist Stephen Steinberg explained in 2010, that the Moynihan report was condemned "because it threatened to derail the black liberation movement."
Criticism of the specific claims made in the report helped draw attention away from the ghetto and toward white researchers. The report has since been commonly understood by US sociologists as driven by an emphasis on the effects of structural inequality and the historical context from which "deviant" activity emerges.
, where he said: "My view is we had stumbled onto a major social change in the circumstances of post-modern society. It was not long ago in this past century that an anthropologist working in London – a very famous man at the time, Malinowski – postulated what he called the first rule of anthropology: That in all known societies, all male children have an acknowledged male parent. That’s what we found out everywhere... And well, maybe it's not true anymore. Human societies change."
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick "Pat" Moynihan was an American politician and sociologist. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first elected to the United States Senate for New York in 1976, and was re-elected three times . He declined to run for re-election in 2000...
and released in 1965. It focused on the deep roots of black poverty in America and concluded that the relative absence of nuclear (that is, husband-wife)
Nuclear family
Nuclear family is a term used to define a family group consisting of a father and mother and their children. This is in contrast to the smaller single-parent family, and to the larger extended family. Nuclear families typically center on a married couple, but not always; the nuclear family may have...
families would greatly hinder further progress toward economic and political equality.
Contents
According to the book Representing: Hip hop culture and the production of black cinema by S. Craig Watkins:The report concluded that the structure of family life in the black community constituted a 'tangle of pathology...capable of perpetuating itself without assistance from the white world,' and that 'at the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family. It is the fundamental source of the weakness of the Negro community at the present time.' Further, the report argued that the matriarchal structure of black culture weakened the ability of black men to function as authority figures. This particular notion of black familial life has become a widespread, if not dominant, paradigm for comprehending the social and economic disintegration of late twentieth-century black urban life. (pp.218-219)
Moynihan generally concluded in the report: "The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States".
Importance
The Moynihan Report has had long-lasting and important implications. Writing to President Lyndon Johnson, then-Assistant Secretary of Labor Patrick Moynihan argued that, without access to jobs and the means to contribute meaningful support to a family, black men would become systematically alienated from their roles as husbands and fathers. This would cause rates of divorce, abandonment and out-of-wedlock births to skyrocket in the black community (a trend that had already begun by the mid-1960s)—leading to vast increases in the numbers of female-headed households and the high rates of poverty, low educational outcomes, and inflated rates of abuse that are associated with them. Moynihan made a compelling contemporary argument for the provision of jobs, job programs, vocational training, and educational programs for the Black community. Modern scholars, including Douglas MasseyDouglas Massey
Douglas S. Massey is an American sociologist. Massey is currently a professor of Sociology at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and is an adjunct professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania...
, now consider the report one of the more influential in the construction of the War on Poverty
War on Poverty
The War on Poverty is the unofficial name for legislation first introduced by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964. This legislation was proposed by Johnson in response to a national poverty rate of around nineteen percent...
.
Reception and following debate
From the time of its publication, the report has been sharply attacked by Black-American and civil rights leaders as examples of white patronizing, cultural bias, or even racism. The report has, at various times, been condemned or dismissed by the N.A.A.C.P, The Rev. Jesse JacksonJesse Jackson
Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to...
, and the Rev. Al Sharpton
Al Sharpton
Alfred Charles "Al" Sharpton, Jr. is an American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and television/radio talk show host. In 2004, he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. presidential election...
. Among the complaints lodged at the "Moynihan Report" are the stereotyping of the black family and black men, inferences of inferior academic performance by Black-Americans, portrayals of endemic crime and "pathology" in the black community, and a failure to recognize both cultural bias and racism in standardized tests. The report was criticized for threatening to undermine the place of civil rights on the national agenda, leaving "a vacuum that could be filled with a politics that blamed blacks for their own troubles."
African-American economist and writer Walter E. Williams
Walter E. Williams
Walter E. Williams, is an American economist, commentator, and academic. He is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, as well as a syndicated columnist and author known for his libertarian views.- Early life and education :Williams family during childhood...
has praised the report for its findings. He has also added in response, "The solutions to the major problems that confront many black people won't be found in the political arena, especially not in Washington or state capitols."
Political commentator Heather MacDonald wrote for National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
in 2008, "Conservatives of all stripes routinely praise Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s prescience for warning in 1965 that the breakdown of the black family threatened the achievement of racial equality. They rightly blast those liberals who denounced Moynihan’s report".
Sociologist Stephen Steinberg explained in 2010, that the Moynihan report was condemned "because it threatened to derail the black liberation movement."
Criticism of the specific claims made in the report helped draw attention away from the ghetto and toward white researchers. The report has since been commonly understood by US sociologists as driven by an emphasis on the effects of structural inequality and the historical context from which "deviant" activity emerges.
View that Moynihan was attempting to divert responsibility
Psychologist William Ryan coined the phrase "blaming the victim" in his 1971 classic book of the same title,, specifically as a critique of the Moynihan report. He said it was an attempt to divert responsibility for poverty from social structural factors to the behaviors and cultural patterns of the poor.Counter-response
Moynihan responded to criticism in a 2001 interview with PBSPublic Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
, where he said: "My view is we had stumbled onto a major social change in the circumstances of post-modern society. It was not long ago in this past century that an anthropologist working in London – a very famous man at the time, Malinowski – postulated what he called the first rule of anthropology: That in all known societies, all male children have an acknowledged male parent. That’s what we found out everywhere... And well, maybe it's not true anymore. Human societies change."
See also
- Black matriarchyBlack matriarchyBlack matriarchy was a popular stereotype in the 1950s and 1960s that exemplified black American family structure. This ideology depicted traditional black American households as being dominated and controlled by outspoken and emasculating women....
- American family structureAmerican family structureThe American family structure is considered a traditional family support system involving two married individuals providing care and stability for their biological offspring. However, this two-parent, nuclear family has become less prevalent, and alternative family forms have become more common....
- Research on the African-American FamilyResearch on the African-American FamilyResearch on the African-American Family, by Robert Hill, published in 1968, is the counter-point to The Moynihan Report, or The Negro Family: The Case For National Action...
- Is Marriage for White People?Is Marriage for White People?Is Marriage for White People?: How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone is a non-fiction book by Ralph Richard Banks, a writer and Stanford Law School professor. He concludes that "single is the new black", which poses serious problems for the African American community...
Further reading
- Geary, Daniel. "Racial Liberalism, the Moynihan Report, and the Daedalus Project on 'The Negro American.'" Daedalus, 140 (Winter 2011), 53-66.
- Massey, Douglas S., and Robert J. Sampson, “Moynihan Redux: Legacies and Lessons,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 621 (Jan. 2009), 6–27.
- Patterson, James T. Freedom Is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and America's Struggle Over Black Family Life From LBJ to Obama (Basic Books; 2010) 264 pages
- Wilson, William JuliusWilliam Julius WilsonWilliam Julius Wilson is an American sociologist. He worked at the University of Chicago 1972-1996 before moving to Harvard....
, “The Moynihan Report and Research on the Black Community,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 621 (Jan. 2009), 34–46.
External links
- Office of Policy Planning and Research, United States Department of LaborDepartment of LaborDepartment of Labor may refer to one of the following.*United States Department of Labor*Department of Labour *Georgia Department of Labor*Ministry of Social Protection *Department of Labor and Employment...
(March 1965) "The Negro Family: The Case For National Action" - Office of Policy Planning and Research, United States Department of LaborDepartment of LaborDepartment of Labor may refer to one of the following.*United States Department of Labor*Department of Labour *Georgia Department of Labor*Ministry of Social Protection *Department of Labor and Employment...
(March 1965) " The Negro Family: The Case For National Action" - Moynihan Report hosted by Department of Labor - Kristol, IrvingIrving KristolIrving Kristol was an American columnist, journalist, and writer who was dubbed the "godfather of neoconservatism"...
(August 1971) "The Best of Intentions, the Worst of Results" The Atlantic - discusses Moynihan and his critics - Hymowitz, Kay S. (Summer 2005) "The Black Family: 40 Years of Lies" City Journal - this article argues that early rejection of the Moynihan report caused untold, needless misery in inner city communities.
- Ferguson, Roderick A. (2004) Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique University of Minnesota Press. In chapter 4, Ferguson analyzes the Moynihan Report as a coalition of sociological canons, black nationalism, the civil rights movement, neoconservative resentment, and neo-racist tendencies to initiate a trend that sought to reaffirm heteropatriarchal normativity by suggesting that the problems that plagued nonwhites of the US are sourced primarily in their departures from hetero- and patriarchal- norms.