Hostname: page-component-6766d58669-fx4k7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-15T03:37:50.179Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE MOYNIHAN REPORT AND ITS AFTERMATHS

A Critical Analysis1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2011

Herbert J. Gans
Herbert J. Gans*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Columbia University
*
Herbert J. Gans, Department of Sociology, Columbia University, Knox Hall, 606 W. 122nd Street, MC 9649, New York, NY 10027. E-mail: hjg1@columbia.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Moynihan Report of 1965 will soon be fifty years old, and some social scientists now venerate it as a sterling application of social science data and analysis by the federal government. This author, who was directly involved in events connected with the release of the Report, does not agree; this article examines the shortcomings of the Report. I argue that Moynihan's analysis, which intended to investigate the ties between Black male unemployment and the Black family, actually devoted most of its attention to the high proportion of single-parent families in the poor Black population, treating it as one symptom of a “tangle of pathology” that stood in the way of this population's escape from joblessness and poverty. Today, the Report is being hailed as having predicted the current and still worsening state of the poor Black family. Moynihan's work is also being reinterpreted as an early application of cultural analysis, thereby further drawing attention away from the job-related issues which led Moynihan to undertake his study. Moynihan himself made significant contributions to antipoverty policy later in his career, but his Report does not deserve the worship it continues to receive.

Keywords

Single Parent FamilyTangle of PathologyMale JoblessnessRacial OppressionMoynihan Report

Information

Type
State of the Discipline
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , Fall 2011 , pp. 315 - 327
Copyright
Copyright © W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

1

The author is grateful to Merlin Chowkwanyun and Alice O'Connor for very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper and to Nathan Glazer, Nicholas Lemann, and James Patterson for answers to his several questions about the Report's history.

References

REFERENCES

Clark, Kenneth B. (1965). The Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Cohen, Patricia (2010). ‘Culture of Poverty’ Makes a Comeback. New York Times, October 18, A1.Google Scholar
Drake, St. Clair and Cayton, Horace R. (1945). Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Frazier, E. Franklin (1939). The Negro Family in the United States. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gans, Herbert J. (1965). The Negro Family: Reflections on the ‘Moynihan Report.’ Commonweal, 83: 47–51.Google Scholar
Glazer, Nathan (1963). Introduction. In Elkins, Stanley, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life, pp. ix–xvi. New York: Grosset & Dunlap.Google Scholar
Glazer, Nathan and Moynihan, Daniel P. (1963). Beyond the Melting Pot. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Heckman, James J. (2011). A Post-Racial Strategy for Improving Skills to Promote Equality. Daedalus, 140(2): 70–89.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hodgson, Godfrey (2000). The Gentleman from New York: Daniel Patrick Moynihan—A Biography. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Lemann, Nicholas (1991). The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Lewis, Oscar (1959). Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Lewis, Oscar (1968). The Culture of Poverty. In Moynihan, Daniel P. (Ed.), On Understanding Poverty: Perspectives from the Social Sciences, pp. 187–200. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Massey, Douglas S. and Sampson, Robert J (2009). Moynihan Redux: Legacies and Lessons, In The Moynihan Report Revisited: Lessons and Reflections after Four Decades. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 621: 6–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moynihan, Daniel P. (1965). Employment, Income and the Ordeal of the Negro Family. Daedalus, 94(4): 134–159.Google Scholar
Moynihan, Daniel P. (1967). The Moynihan Report: The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. In Rainwater, Lee and Yancey, William L., The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy, pp. 39–124. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Moynihan, Daniel P. (Ed.) (1968). On Understanding Poverty: Perspectives from the Social Sciences. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Moynihan, Daniel P., Smeeding, Timothy M., and Rainwater, Lee (Eds.) (2004). The Future of the Family. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
O'Connor, Alice (2001). Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patterson, James T. (2010). Freedom Is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and America's Struggle over Black Family Life—from LBJ to Obama. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Patterson, Orlando (2006). A Poverty of the Mind. New York Times, March 26.Google Scholar
Pettigrew, Thomas F. (1964). A Profile of the Negro-American. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand.Google Scholar
Rainwater, Lee and Yancey, William L. (1967). The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Ryan, William (1971). Blaming the Victim. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Small, Mario, Harding, David J., and Lamont, Michele (2010). Introduction: Reconsidering Culture and Poverty. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 629: 6–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steinfels, Peter (1979). The Neoconservatives: The Men Who Are Changing America's Politics. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Weisman, Steven K. (2010). Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary. New York: Public Affairs.Google Scholar
Whyte, William F. Jr. (1943). Street Corner Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, James Q. (2009). Pat Moynihan Thinks About Families. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 621: 28–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, William J. (1987). The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, William J. (2009a). The Moynihan Report and Research on the Black Community. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 621: 34–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, William J. (2009b). More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City. New York: Norton.Google Scholar