Beyond Civil Rights: The Moynihan Report and Its Legacy

by Daniel Geary

Shortly after the 1964 Civil Rights Act Daniel Patrick Moynihan authored a government report titled The Negro Family A Case for National Action that captured the attention of President Lyndon Johnson Responding to the demands of African American activists that the United States go beyond civil rights to secure economic justice Moynihan thought his analysis of black families highlighted socioeconomic inequality However the reports central argument that poor families headed by single mothers inhibited African American progress touched off a heated controversy The long-running dispute over Moynihans conclusions changed how Americans talk about race the family and poverty Fifty years after its publication the Moynihan Report remains a touchstone in contemporary racial politics cited by President Barack Obama and Congressman Paul Ryan among others Beyond Civil Rights offers the definitive history of the Moynihan Report controversy Focusing on competing interpretations of the report from the

Genres: Nonfiction, History

288 pages, Paperback

First published June 5, 2015

Reviews

[Spicy T AKA Mr. Tea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I realized that as I was reading Heather Mac Donald's "The War on Cops" she kept referencing to Daniel Patrick Moynihan and his report on the Black family published in 1965. This is important, because the Moynihan Report is an underlying, fundamental assumption bolstering her argument about the War on Cops. I then read the Moynihan Report.

That thing has issues. He conflated facts, made false claims, and was ambiguous enough that both the left initially praised the report before criticizing it and the right picked it and Moynihan up claiming, and I'm paraphrasing from Geary's book, that no amount of government-driven full-employment programs would lift up Black people, because the issue was the need for racial uplift, not economic equity. So Moynihan's report gave ammunition to the neoconservative argument that the reason for Black folks' problems wasn't economics or structural racism, but rather their own lack of trying to raise themselves up as people. It was an inherent flaw.

That's my spin above.

After reading the report, I wanted to better understand who he was, the times he lived in, and why he wrote the report. A friend of mine suggested that I read Daniel Geary's book. I wasn't disappointed.

Geary is far more balanced and scholarly in his approach to Moynihan the person and the report than I am. He does a tremendous job sketching Moynihan, his life, and the currents that took him to the Department of Labor where he began to look at full employment job programs, not equal opportunity programs, as a way to create economic equity between white and Black folks. His race analysis was faulty and he started to work with sociologists who also had faulty analysis. This bad analysis was used in his books and reports and because his report was vague enough and didn't specify specific action, it was left to folks on both the left and right to claim it for their purposes. Eventually, Moynihan was sharply criticized by the left for his report and he started being supported by the right. By the 1980s he was apart of the neoconservative movement, turning away from his left wing roots.

Like I said, Geary's treatment is much more fair and fascinating. In some ways, he tells the story of the rise of the right and their claim that the problem with Black folks is their own fault, not the fault of an inherently racist system.

I highly recommend this book. Since the report is still being referenced today and some of the bullshit stems directly from this period of time and the report, it makes for an eye-opening historical perspective. Very well written with information bursting from the seams. Great job. Please read!

[Eddie Bennett · Rating 4 out of 5]

The cost of reading this book is priceless. In the 1960s Daniel Patrick Moynihan became one the nations leading social scientists on African American sociology and the pathologies that he felt plagued its urban demographic with the release of his report. Throughout its lifecycle as a topic in the mainstream media, the report has been viewed as the catalyst to a new and more pervasive form of racism. On the back drop of the militant arm of the civil rights movement the report was viewed as a referendum of the urban African American and their need for racial self help with a push to provide African American men with jobs even at the expense of African American women. Government elites with very skewed data and even less interaction with the African American community offered theories that perpetuated bias and undermined the efforts to rally support for services that were specific to the needs of the community.

This book talks about the report, the reaction to the report, and the legacy or lack thereof in maintaining a definite plan of action to secure a better life than the disenfranchised and impoverished ones they were living. The book goes into detail about the pulse of the nation at that time and how race relations were deliberately misunderstood, albeit with some of the best intentions. It is a very good study on how an unassuming document aimed at galvanizing support was used to reinforce systemic racism and clear a path from overt aggression to a more pervasive form.

It’s hard to tell if Moynihan truly understand how his report could have been used by neoconservatives who felt it necessary to blame the victim, a term coined by William Ryan specifically in response to the report. It was seen by Ryan and other African American intellectuals as an effort to absolve themselves or the US government of any responsibility they had in creating the dire circumstances African Americans were living in during that period or even before the African diaspora.