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    The Moynihan Report

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    Kent Huffman
    The document summarizes the Moynihan Report, which was written in 1965 by Daniel Patrick Moynihan and analyzed the state of African American families. It sparked significant debate for its discussion of racial inequality in terms of family structure. While some saw it as advocating for policies to address economic inequalities, others argued it justified inequality or reinforced racist stereotypes. Fifty years later, the report is still discussed and debated by thinkers and policymakers with differing views on its analysis and relevance. The Atlantic is publishing an annotated version of the report to allow readers to explore the issues it raised in more depth.

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    The Moynihan Report

    Uploaded by

    Kent Huffman
    137 views3 pages
    The document summarizes the Moynihan Report, which was written in 1965 by Daniel Patrick Moynihan and analyzed the state of African American families. It sparked significant debate for its discussion of racial inequality in terms of family structure. While some saw it as advocating for policies to address economic inequalities, others argued it justified inequality or reinforced racist stereotypes. Fifty years later, the report is still discussed and debated by thinkers and policymakers with differing views on its analysis and relevance. The Atlantic is publishing an annotated version of the report to allow readers to explore the issues it raised in more depth.

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    encyclopedia of Social Sciences article on Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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    The document summarizes the Moynihan Report, which was written in 1965 by Daniel Patrick Moynihan and analyzed the state of African American families. It sparked significant debate for its discussion of racial inequality in terms of family structure. While some saw it as advocating for policies to address economic inequalities, others argued it justified inequality or reinforced racist stereotypes. Fifty years later, the report is still discussed and debated by thinkers and policymakers with differing views on its analysis and relevance. The Atlantic is publishing an annotated version of the report to allow readers to explore the issues it raised in more depth.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    137 views3 pages

    The Moynihan Report

    Uploaded by

    Kent Huffman
    The document summarizes the Moynihan Report, which was written in 1965 by Daniel Patrick Moynihan and analyzed the state of African American families. It sparked significant debate for its discussion of racial inequality in terms of family structure. While some saw it as advocating for policies to address economic inequalities, others argued it justified inequality or reinforced racist stereotypes. Fifty years later, the report is still discussed and debated by thinkers and policymakers with differing views on its analysis and relevance. The Atlantic is publishing an annotated version of the report to allow readers to explore the issues it raised in more depth.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 3

    The Moynihan Report: An Annotated

    Edition
    A historian unpacks The Negro Family: The Case for National Actionon its 50th anniversary.

    On New Year’s Eve, 1964, Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan
    assembled his staff in his office to announce that they were going to help him write a
    report on African American families. The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,
    completed in March, 1965, became one of the most controversial documents of the
    twentieth century. Best known as the “Moynihan Report,” it launched the career of its
    author, who became a professor at Harvard University, a top adviser to President Nixon,
    and a four-term U.S. senator representing New York.

    Moynihan wrote the report on his own initiative hoping to persuade White House officials
    that civil-rights legislation alone would not produce racial equality. He succeeded in getting
    President Johnson’s attention. On June 4, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson gave a major
    address at Howard University based largely on the Moynihan Report and co-written by
    Moynihan and Richard Goodwin. Echoing civil-rights leaders of the time, Johnson
    declared, “Freedom is not enough”: Equal citizenship for African Americans was
    incomplete without the ability to make a decent living.
    However, the Johnson administration quickly disowned the Moynihan Report when it
    sparked heated debate after becoming public in August, 1965. Distracted by the Vietnam
    War, Johnson never followed up his stirring rhetoric at Howard with significant new
    policies. The Moynihan Report became a lightning rod for civil-rights activists frustrated
    with Johnson’s inaction.

    Moreover, the report’s ambiguities and contradictions as well as Moynihan’s decision to discuss racial
    inequality primarily in terms of family structure produced confusion over its aims. Many liberals
    understood the report to advocate new policies to alleviate race-based economic inequalities. But
    conservatives found in the report a convenient rationalization for inequality; they argued that only
    racial self-help could produce the necessary changes in family structure. Some even used the report
    to reinforce racist stereotypes about loose family morality among African Americans. Meanwhile, left-
    wing critics attacked Moynihan for distracting attention from ongoing systemic racism by focusing on
    African Americans’ family characteristics: Moynihan’s leading critic, William Ryan, famously charged
    him with “blaming the victim.”

    The Moynihan Report is a historical artifact best understood in the context of its time. Yet it remains
    relevant today amidst current discussion of why racial inequality persists despite the passage of civil-
    rights legislation. Even those who do not see the report’s analysis as pertinent to the present can
    learn how it shaped contemporary discourse. Fifty years later, the Moynihan Report is still a
    contested symbol among American thinkers and policymakers, cited by everyone from Barack
    Obama to Paul Ryan. Earlier this month, New York City’s police commissioner and mayor
    publicly sparred over the report with the former calling it “prescient” and the latter dismissing it as
    outdated. Liberals and conservatives alike praise the report’s analysis, but it is still anathema to many
    on the Left.

    To aid readers interested in exploring the report and the issues it raises, The Atlantic is
    publishing this annotated copy of The Negro Family. Please note that this version differs
    from the original in that many of the report’s tables and charts are not reproduced.
    he Negro Family:
    The Case For National Action

    Office of Policy Planning and Research


    United States Department of Labor

    The United States is approaching a new crisis in race relations.

    CHAPTERS

    I. The Negro American Revolution


    II. The Negro American Family
    III. The Roots of the Problem
    IV. The Tangle of Pathology
    V. The Case for National Action

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