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The Politics of Pathology: The Ideological Origins of the Moynihan Controversy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Extract

On 4 June 1965, President Johnson, in his famous speech at Howard University, endorsed preferential treatment for black Americans and the idea of equality of results. To justify a departure from the ideal of a colorblind state, Johnson offered an alternative that might be called black exceptionalism. In response to the widely held view that blacks, like immigrants, should receive no assistance from the state in their quest to enter the mainstream of society, Johnson asserted that the oppression suffered by blacks made them unique. At the core of his justification was the plight of the black family in slavery and freedom and its impact on black children. “When the family collapses,” he stated, “it is the children that are usually damaged.”1 With words freighted with importance for the future of liberalism, he articulated a new conception of equality, one enforced by an activist state: “We seek not just freedom but opportunity–not just legal equity but human ability–not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and as a result.” Toward this end, he called for a conference to chart the future of racial liberalism.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1996

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References

Notes

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35. Glazer, Nathan, Introduction, in Elkins, Stanley, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (New York, 1959), xviGoogle Scholar. For an example of a work about the lower class that was primarily a study of poor blacks, see “The Disadvantaged Child and the Learning Process,” in Passaw, Education in Depressed Areas, 163–77.

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45. Lomax, Louis, The Negro Revolt (New York, 1962), 211–12.Google Scholar

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50. Graham, Hugh Davis, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960–1972 (New York, 1990), 105.Google Scholar

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52. Bayard Rustin, “Why Don't Negroes …” in The Moynihan Report, ed. Rainwater and Yancey, 423.

53. Hentoff, Nat, The New Equality (New York, 1964), 97.Google Scholar

54. Silberman, Charles E., Crisis in Block and White (New York, 1964), 231.Google Scholar

55. Ibid., 235.

56. Moynihan, Daniel P., “The President and the Negro: The Moment Lost,” Commentary 43 (February 1967): 35.Google Scholar

57. Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (Washington, D.C., 1965), 1529Google Scholar, in Moynihan Report, ed. Rainwater and Yancey.

58. Moynihan, The Negro Family, Introduction, 43.

59. Moyihan, The Negro Family, 47–48.

60. Ibid., 62.

61. Ibid., 64.

62. Ibid. 16.

63. Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, “Poverty and Progress,” American Scholar 33 (Autumn 1964): 596.Google Scholar

64. Moynihan, Daniel P., “The Case for a Family Policy,” in Coping: Essays on the Practice of Government (New York, 1973), 71Google Scholar; and Moynihan, “The President and the Negro,” 36.

65. Two years after the controversy, Moynihan stated that the report first contained a list of policy recommendations, which included full employment, birth control, adoption, and a family allowance to replace Aid to Families with Dependent Children. The former would have given aid to all families; the latter gave assistance only to single-parent families. See Moynihan, “The President and the Negro,” 36.

66. Rainwater and Yancey, Moynihan Report, 147.

67. Moynihan, The Negro Family, 86–89.

68. Glazer, Nathan, Foreword to The Negro Family in the United States by Frazier, E. Franklin (Chicago, 1966), xviiGoogle Scholar. While he would become the darling of the right, Moynihan embraced ideas antithetical to conservatism. In recounting the political developments after Watts, Moynihan affirmed the conservative pundits Rowland Evans's and Robert Novak's belief that the report envisioned more than equality of opportunity. In Moynihan's words: “The report, said they, had raised, as indeed it had, the explosive question of preferential treatment.” In an article warning against extreme race consciousness that would lead to racial quotas, Moynihan defended the basic premise of affirmative action. He held that prudence dictated “recognizing our potential for racialism, and guarding against it, while responding to real and legitimate racial needs. Thus Negroes need preferential treatment in some areas, and deserve it.” Referring to the manner in which the government had aided earlier groups, he wrote, “The good sense of the country in the past has been to do this kind of thing by informal arrangements, a balanced ticket.” He pointed to the example of Israel arranged to show favoritism to Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Moynihan, “The President and the Negro,” 39; and Moynihan, , “The New Racialism,” in Coping: Essays on the Practice of Government (New York, 1973), 206.Google Scholar

69. Washington Post, 26 February 1964.

70. Lemann, Promised Land, 155.

71. Moynihan, “Poverty and Progress,” 606.

72. Moynihan, “The President and the Negro,” 36; and idem, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding (New York, 1970).

73. Moynihan, The Negro Family, 3. Interestingly, Nathan Glazer, responding to Charles Murray's Bell Curve, recently embraced affirmative action on these grounds. Glazer, Nathan, “The Lying Game,” The New Republic, 31 October 1994, 1516.Google Scholar

74. Hill, Gladwin, “Relief Job Begun,” New York Times, 17 August 1965.Google Scholar

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78. Leo Despres was an expert on British Guiana (now Guyana). Whitten, Norman E. Jr. and Szwed, John F., Afro-American Anthropology: Contemporary Perspectives (New York, 1970), viii.Google Scholar

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84. Ibid., 443.

85. Ibid., 383.

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87. Whitney Young, “The ‘Real’ Moynihan Report,” in The Moynihan Report, ed. Rainwater and Yancey, 415–16.

88. Bill Moyers, quoted in Lemann, Promised Land, 182.