Word: moynihan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Moynihan report was one of the boldest documents on the American race problem-and one of the most divisive. In it Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel P. Moynihan, now Senator-elect from New York, argued that economic aid alone could not bring equality for blacks in America. His reason: the black family, marked by female-headed households, high illegitimacy and absent fathers, had been destroyed by slavery and left trapped in "a tangle of pathology" that impeded real progress for black Americans...
...report was denounced for a variety of reasons by many angry blacks, but Moynihan's analysis of the black family was a conventional one for its time. Scholars and political leaders alike depicted blacks as demoralized victims of racism. As late as 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. could declare: "The shattering blows on the Negro family have made it fragile, deprived and often psychopathic...
That kind of rhetoric soon disappeared as blacks and increasing numbers of scholars, black and white, stressed the achievements of black families. Now Moynihan's basic premise-that slavery destroyed black family structure-has apparently been laid to rest by City University of New York Historian Herbert G. Gutman in his new book, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925. Gutman's conclusion: from the earliest days of slavery until the eve of the Great Depression, the black family was surprisingly close, strong and intact...
...just nonsense to say that poor black families are nice sturdy institutions. Scholars know they are going to be attacked by black leaders if they don't come down on the right side." While conceding that it was not slavery that weakened the structure of black families, the Moynihan advocates say that post-1925 migration to the north and urbanization took a terrible toll, and that Moynihan's characterization of the black family today remains essentially correct. Says Moynihan: "Gutman's thesis does not centrally affect...
Gutman disagrees. He argues that Moynihan's false history of black home life led to a dangerous policy recommendation: the Moynihan report's startling call for the Government to help restructure black families. Though no program was spelled out in the report, Moynihan wanted to shore up the role of males in the black family. One of his ideas: every able-bodied black man should have a job, even if it meant reducing employment of black women. But Gutman thinks that because the severe problems of black families go back only to the Depression, they...