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Moynihan was prescient, but pilloried for facing hard facts The so-called "Moynihan Report," released in 1965, remains the most salient document on family breakdown in the United States since the days of President Lyndon Johnson, in whose administration Daniel Patrick Moynihan served. This is so for both sound and unfair reasons: for what the study actually argued, as well as for the routinely confused and deeply offensive way it was received. In truth, nothing Moynihan said in his less than 50 pages of text and tables was dramatically new, as he wrote about the effects of family disintegration in the tradition of distinguished black scholars such as E. Franklin Frazier and Kenneth Clark. Nevertheless, the ugly commotion generated by the report led directly to two decades of near total silence -- in public, anyway -- on the pivotal matter of father absence, particularly in the African-American community. Because of the absurd charges of racism thrown at Moynihan, as well as a frequently gross misreading of his argument overall, few academics, elected officials or other public figures went out of their way, literally until the 1980s, to openly discuss fatherlessness. Moynihan also was undercut by some of his own colleagues in the Johnson administration, who scampered like scared pups once the slurs began. What did he argue to provoke all this? "At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society," Moynihan wrote, "is the deterioration of the Negro family. It is the fundamental source of the weakness of the Negro community at the present time." Citing census and other data, he noted that while one-tenth of all white children were then living in "broken homes," one-third of all nonwhite children were living in such situations in 1960. Similarly, he showed how the nonwhite out-of-wedlock birth rate was almost eight times higher than that for whites in 1963: 23.6 percent compared with 3.1 percent. Yet for all the anger it provoked among "progressives," the Moynihan Report was an exquisitely progressive cry of a social scientist's heart. In no way did Moynihan place blame on blacks themselves; in every way he indicted the nation's history of slavery and racial sin. Moreover, by focusing on the need to achieve equality of results, not just opportunity, the report helped lay the very foundation for affirmative action. Put aside current debates about the wisdom of affirmative action, including its fairness and actual benefit to people of color: Setting the stage for racial preferences more than a generation ago was the very last thing any self-respecting racist might seek to do. In similar spirit, the study spoke with not-yet-chastened confidence about the capacity of government -- especially the federal government -- to make the lives of African-Americans measurably better via programs to increase employment, improve education, and the like. Still, while some on the left defended Moynihan, criticism from that direction was often severe. As a soon-to-be coined stricture would put it, he allegedly had "blamed the victim." But Moynihan had done no such thing. He had forcefully declared discrimination to be the prime reason for instability among black families, which, in turn, contributed to various "pathologies." It goes without saying that Moynihan himself deserved far better, as the report that quickly came to bear his name didn't contain a racially suspect punctuation mark, much less a single sentence lacking in goodwill. He was prescient, but he was pilloried. Or, more accurately, in order to forewarn what was sadly in store for our country, he did what good scholars and public servants are supposed to do: He bravely faced hard facts. (Just two numbers: About two-thirds of all African-American boys and girls are now born out of wedlock. About one-third of all American children now come into this life out of marriage.) But it was also our nation that deserved far better than the politically correct ambush, followed by the timorous silence, which succeeded the report. Almost certainly, fewer children -- regardless of race -- would now be growing up with parents scattered every which way if the very subject of family breakdown had not been driven mute for so long. -- Mitchell B. Pearlstein is president of Center of the American Experiment, a conservative think tank in Minneapolis. |