Word: benignantly
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...accomplishments are far outweighed by other acts: the go-slow on desegregation, the attempt to dilute the Voting Rights Act, the Haynsworth and Carswell nominations, the general lack of warmth, concern and responsibility for blacks on the part of the White House. When Presidential Adviser Daniel P. Moynihan counseled "benign neglect" in his now famous memo, his stated intention was only to remove hysteria from both sides of the racial struggle. But the phrase seems to describe the Administration's attitude on race in general- and most blacks even question the accuracy of the word benign...
...benign manifestations, it can be outrageously comic-as in the picaresque adventures of Percival Brownlee who appears in William Faulkner's story The Bear. Exasperating to his white masters because his aspirations and talents are for preaching and conducting choirs rather than for farming, Brownlee is "freed" after much resistance and ends up as the prosperous proprietor of a New Orleans brothel. In Faulkner's hands, the uncomprehending drive of Brownlee's owners to "get shut" of him is comically instructive. Indeed, the story resonates certain abiding, indeed tragic themes of American history with which...
...thinking of his times. This is demonstrated both by his reliance upon the concept of race in his analysis of the American dilemma and by his involvement in a plan of purging the nation of blacks as a means of healing the badly shattered ideals of democratic federalism. Although benign, his motive was no less a product of fantasy. It envisaged an attempt to relieve an inevitable suffering that marked the growing pains of the youthful body politic by an operation which would have amounted to the severing of a healthy and indispensable member...
...Counsellor to the President could not resist the fetching phrase "benign neglect" to describe his notion of the proper attitude the Government should now have toward race relations. Predictably enough, the document caused a sensation. Last week two more of his papers trickled out of the federal bureaucracy. Both were dated just before Richard Nixon was inaugurated as President, but they nevertheless drew fire from both conservatives and liberals and kept Moynihan a foremost topic of national controversy (TIME, March...
...increased; the number of Negroes in professional and technical jobs doubled. Moynihan allowed that bitter hostility toward whites was widespread among young blacks and that the Nixon Administration had done little to reassure the Negro community. Nevertheless, he wondered if it was not time for "a period of 'benign neglect' "* on the subject of race. "We may need a period in which Negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades...