Freedom Is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and America's Struggle Over Black Family Life--From LBJ to Obama

by James T. Patterson

A Bancroft Prize-winning historian narrates the birth, life, and afterlife of the explosive report that permanently altered the way we talk about race in America

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Race, American History, Sociology

Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

James T. Patterson is an American historian, who was the Ford Foundation Professor of History at Brown University for 30 years. He was educated at Harvard University. His research interests include political history, legal history, and social history, as well as the history of medicine, race relations, and education.

Reviews

[Walter · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the history of American public policy, few reports have been as seminal and controversial as what became known, after its initial publication in 1965, as the Moynihan Report. In it, then Labor Department visionary bureaucrat and future senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan painted a harrowing picture of one of the most concerning societal developments of the time: the decline of the Black family and the concomitant social dysfunction that resulted from it. Initially developed solely to influence senior members of the Johnson Administration by calling vivid attention to the problem, the report was admittedly written in a purposely provocative style, but it was also very well-researched and grounded in more than just the author's opinions. This being said, its depiction of the state of the Black family was so dire that, particularly after the Watts Riots that occured shortly after its initial publication, once it gained a wider audience, many Blacks and liberals reacted vehemently, quite a few going so far as to accuse Moynihan of being a racist. The resulting controversy escalated to such a point that it killed both the liberal social/political promise that peaked in 1965 and the ability to have a constructive public dialogue or to do research about the problem for many years to come. Suffice it to say that the Moynihan Report is one of the early examples of the politics of polarization that has become an all too familiar feature of our modern society. It is also one of the finest and most prescient examples of social research and analysis ever created, especially by our government.

Examining this seminal and controversial work is James T. Patterson, a renowned and (Bancroft Prize) award-winning professor of history. Simply put, he does a masterful job. This is a complex, potentially mine-strewn topic that the author handles deftly. For example, while one can glean Patterson's views, throughout the work he goes out of his way to present the historical evidence in an evenhanded way (and, occasionally, perhaps in too evenhanded a way). Further, the book is so well-written that it was literally a page-turner that I only put down when biological needs (like food and sleep) asserted themselves.

Is it a perfect book? No. There are occasional editing lapses (i.e., one government social program's budget is described as being in the millions instead of the correct denomination, billions, etc.), some repetition (as in he shares one of Moynihan's observations about the post-WWII trends in Black male unemployment something like a half-dozen times [and thereby leaves the reader saying, "Yeah, yeah, I get it!":]) and the last few chapters, frankly, seem less inspired than those that precede them (some of which may have to do with the reality that they chronicle the more recent periods of the 90s and 00s for which the data is less voluminous or credible and therefore the arguments less grounded). This being said, though, I would give it a 9.5 on a scale of 10 and say that it is one of the best books of social/historical analysis that I have ever read (and certainly the best one since William Julius Wilson's More Than Just Race last year).

It will appeal to non-fiction readers, history enthusiasts, those interested in social analysis and criticism, civil rights buffs, liberals, conservatives, Moynihan fans and just about anyone else who is concerned about our society and the way that we evaluate and support various segments of it. Frankly, it reads so well and easily that it should have a broader appeal than most books in its ostensible genre. Even fiction fans will find it intriguing as, as is often the case in life, reality is stranger than fiction and definitely reads so in this retelling. Accordingly, I highly recommend it to all.

[Frank Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

I fully admit to having an almost pathological interest in the Moynihan report, the 1965 Department of Labor essay that warned about problems in lower-class black families that could undermine the civil rights advances of previous years. For me, after all, it was a conference on "The Moynihan Report Revisited" sponsored by Harvard in 2007, which I listened to by podcast and which I later read the essays from, that probably pushed me to a final break with my old liberalism. So when I read that James Patterson, notable poverty historian and Bancroft-prize winner, was going to put out a whole book on the report's reception over the past 40 years I knew I had to get it.

It's a fascinating and complicated piece of work: part biography of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, part history of welfare policy since the 60s, and part history of social science research on lower-class families. It is clear from the book that Patterson, like most of the authors he chronicles, is coming from an FDR liberal/social democratic perspective, but he also believes, again like his subjects, that serious problems in the lower-class black community, mainly out-of-wedlock births and crime, have been unfortunately ignored by liberals even as these issues have been used by conservatives and racists to devastate any attempt to assist this group. He presents a comprehensive history of research into this issue stretching back nearly 100 years, from both black and white researchers, from W.E.B. DuBois to William Julius Wilson, that demonstrates how serious these problems are, how they have gotten worse, and how they have to be faced in any attempt to fight black poverty. He also shows that while these researchers, including Moynihan, traced these problems to the legacy of slavery, white discrimination, and economic exclusion, they all understood that inner-city cultural and social issues separate from white racism had to be recognized and faced to solve them. In one sense, the book is a long lament on the suppression of the discussion of these problems and the unfortunate consequences of this for our anti-poverty efforts.

Admittedly there is not much that is new here. All of these elements have been told elsewhere, and the book shows some signs of haste (sloppy footnoting, unsourced quotes), yet no one else has brought so much of this history together in one sweeping book. I, of course, disagree with some of his conclusions about welfare and other liberal social policies (he obnoxiously puts the 1996 welfare "reform" in quotes throughout the book. Even if you don't like it, don't you have to at least admit it was a "reform"? Also, his own sources seem to indicate that even if welfare didn't encourage out-of-wedlock births, it did encourage poor fathers' desertion of lower-class females.) Yet, like Patterson, I continue to believe that inner-city black poverty is the most pressing social issue facing America, and that only by understanding the comprehensive history Patterson chronicles here can we hope to fight it.

[Temple Dog · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book because James Patterson was on NPR and President Obama referenced Patrick Moynihan in his book The Audacity of Hope.

Although Patterson does an exceptional job of quoting statistics and referencing innumerable scholars, politicians, pertinent activists and Moynihan’s detractors, he provides little if any analysis of his own.

To his credit, Patterson does contend that Moynihan’s 1965 report on the Negro Family has proved prescient, however, the books continued focus on the family and to some degree apathy on the part of government and to a lesser degree racism and slavery, like the Moynihan report provide what I found to be myopic data points and to be riddled with fallacy. For example, he continues to attribute African American poverty to the increase in out-of-wedlock births, however, with the exception of one brief chapter on the US vs. other Western countries in this regard, he falls to acknowledge that these rates have increased globally without having an adverse impact on these population’s economic status.

I am glad that I read it, but perhaps it might have been more efficient to Moynihan’s 1965 report.
TD

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read if you want to understand how the welfare state got from the good idea it was to the institutionalized slavery it has become.

[Marilyn]

“On June 4, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson delivered what he and many others considered the greatest civil rights speech of his career.

[Vannessa Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "You are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.

Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.

This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. 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.

How profound was that!

Freedom Is Not Enough is a factual accounting of how slavery and racism destroyed and continues to destroy the structure of the Black American family.

Patterson based his research on the writings of Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Moynihan outlined how Blacks can't catch up, "It was by destroying the Negro Family under slavery that white America broke the will of the Negro people..." Moynihan also wrote that Black men should have been allowed to enter the military but Moynihan failed to include how the qualifying tests were biased against blacks instead saying that the cognitive difficulties of blacks, stemming from familial and social problems, were deeply embedded.

Freedom Is Not Enough is a must read for those who can embrace a book that serves you food for thought.

[Juan Pablo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an okay book. Informative for sure but not really anything special. I thought in addition to it being about the Moynihan Report, it would go into the issues that black people face & how it relates to his report & where he went right & where he went wrong. It is basically about the fallout from the report & his subsequent career. It does gives some time to issues with his approach & what he got wrong but I feel it is minimal. His belief in patriarchal family structure was definitely flawed. It was his concerns about women heading family that served as confirmation for conservatives that the problem was mainly with black people & how they do things as opposed to structural issues. He did talk about structural issues but not in a way that wouldn't allow for his report to be used in the way it was, especially because of his phrasing. There is time given to his background early in the book, which to me could have been used in the introduction as opposed to a near 20 page chapter about it. It shows why he had sympathy, considering he grew up in poverty himself & with a single mother. As much as he had good intentions, his report did not adequately account for different cultural bases & how these change, especially when operating in countries where other aspects of a larger culture are dominate.

It's not a must read but if you're interested in the fallout & backlash of the report, then this a decent place to go. Not sure how strongly I'd recommend it for reading if one has other issues or aspects of black life in the U.S. that one wants to understand. It can add a little to larger understanding but is by no means a necessary read.

[Donna Jo Atwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Moynihan Report caused a big furor in the USA's look at race and poverty. It might have led to a genuine dialogue about both, but the timing couldn't have been worse--The Watts Riots took over the headlines. The Moynihan Report, and Patterson's book about it, is not about easy answers, but a claim about culture and religion.
Fifty years after the Report, in a time of not just black culture, but of many growing ethnic communities, we need to learn how to truly listen to each other

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

"'The great, guilty, hateful secret ... is that Negroes are not swingers. They are Southern Protestants. They like jobs in the civil service. They support the war in Vietnam, approve the draft, [and] support the President.'" (quoting Moynihan, 102)

"'We understand the weather far better than we used to, after all, but while better understanding has produced better forecasts, it has not produced better weather.'" (quoting Ellwood and Jencks, 196)

[Charlotte Osborn-bensaada]

Patterson traces the interplay of class, race and politics through the lens of Sen. Patrick Moyihan's 1964 report on the Black Family. The issues of the underclass in America defy resolution both because what can't be addressed and what many don't want to pay for. Worth reading for the perfidy on both the left and right and how easy it is to not face the impact of social change.

[Mike Horne · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are interested in the Moynihan report, the black under class, or welfare this is an excellent book. The Finch actually used the Moynihan Report when she was teaching in the 70S.

"The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, which determines the success of society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself." Moynihan

[Steve Churchill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome book!

[Julie]

Not THE James Patterson. Sounds intriguing though..