The Moynihan Report and America's Struggle over Black Family Life — from LBJ to Obama
February 22, 2010
Despite the author's caveat, “this is not a biography,” it is the life story (and afterlife story) of a document commonly named “The Moynihan Report”—its conception as a memo, its delivery in 1965 as a report entitled “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action” by Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Moynihan, and its independent, later development. Bancroft Prize-winning historian Patterson (Grand Expectations
) reviews the report's perspectives on “the woes of lower-class, inner-city black families”—at the center of which are nonmarital births—rooted variously in the historic past (slavery, migration to urban centers), contemporaneous economic forces (joblessness), or “black culture.” Patterson's wide scouring through the scholarly literature and the popular media, from the mid-1960s to the Obama era, results in a generous survey of the sociological and historical treatment of “lower-class black family life” and a reappraisal of whether the report scuttled LBJ's civil rights agenda. Alas, Patterson's thorough account is dulled by a plethora of repetitive statistics concerning out-of-wedlock births and a surfeit of reports concerning media handling; while it remains useful documentation, it is a tiresome read.
April 1, 2010
In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then a young assistant secretary of labor, drafted an internal report, "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action", or the Moynihan Report, as it became known, which greatly impressed President Johnson for its bold call for action to end urban poverty. Patterson ("Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore") presents a history of this controversial, now vindicated, report, which for decades informed and roiled the debate over black poverty in the nation's cities. Politicians, academics, and activists took quotes out of context to accuse Moynihan of blaming the victims for their circumstances. Actually, Moynihan claimed that black poverty was rooted in lack of employment opportunities and centuries of white oppression, which led to female-dominated single-parent families. In recent years, prominent African American leaders, including President Obama, credit Moynihan for his appraisal of urban decay. VERDICT This is the story of the Moynihan Report and not Moynihan himself. For an excellent biography, see Godfrey Hodgson's "The Gentleman from New York: Daniel Patrick MoynihanA Biography". This book, with its many descriptions of statistics about urban families and poverty, will appeal mostly to scholars and policymakers.Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA
Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
February 15, 2010
An astute, timely study of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's important 1965 jeremiad.
Written when Moynihan was serving as assistant secretary of labor in Lyndon Johnson's administration, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action decried the ills that beset black urban America, including the legacy of slavery, discrimination, cycle of poverty, unemployment, out-of-wedlock children and absent fathers. At the time, Johnson was riding high on his Great Society agenda, touting the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and galvanizing the country in the War on Poverty. Although Johnson incorporated many of Moynihan's ideas into an important speech at Howard University's commencement on June 4, the eruption of violence in the Watts ghetto and widespread criticism of Moynihan's outspoken report soon eclipsed its prophetic message that a"unity of purpose" in federal programs was needed to arrest the crumbling structure of the black family, which would only"feed on itself" in the future. The report aroused the ire of critics and militant civil-rights leaders, who accused Moynihan of victimizing blacks and advocating preferential treatment—a"conversational Gulag." As a result, for years he was relegated to the status of neo-conservative. Bancroft Prize–winning historian Patterson (Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush vs. Gore, 2005, etc.) traces Moynihan's career through successive administrations, from Nixon to Clinton, and his tireless work for welfare reform."The moment lost" to address the dysfunctional black family was only regained with the publication of William Julius Wilson's The Truly Disadvantaged (1987) and other books. The final chapter,"From Cosby to Obama," addresses current troubling trends and public-policy strategies that work.
An excellent revisiting of a prescient report.
(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
May 15, 2010
In 1965, having just passed major civil-rights laws, President Johnson spoke at Howard University asserting that those laws were not enough to guarantee equality. Johnsons war on poverty lost out to the real war in Vietnam even as domestic unrest grew into riots and white conservatives resisted any efforts to further address issues of racial inequality. Against that backdrop Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an assistant secretary of labor, issued a report that would famously come to bear his name and would be vilified for its suggestion that the government adopt a policy of benign neglect toward the problems of black families. Moynihan feared that the rise of out-of-wedlock births among black Americans was an indicator of the deterioration of urban black family life. Black-power advocates attacked Moynihan and his report for its perceived focus on black pathologies. But historian Patterson offers a careful analysis of the report, highlighting Moynihans emphasis on the need for economic development in black communities with particular focus on black men and arguing for welfare assistance that did not disrupt family structures.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)