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

Journal of Policy History

Volumn 8, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 81-105

  Scott, Daryl Michael ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84937279675     PISSN: 08980306     EISSN: 15284190     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0898030600005042     Document Type: Article

References (125)

1. Lyndon Johnson, “To Fulfill These Rights,” in The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy, ed. Lee Rainwater and William L. Yancey (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 425–432.
2. See Peter Steinfels, The Neoconservatives: The Men Who Are Changing America's Politics (New York, 1979), 50, 126
3. Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America (New York, 1991)
4. Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall, Chain Reaction (New York, 1992), 54.
5. The Edsalls view Moynihan as calling for jobs, but they make no mention of welfare reform. Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York, 1984), 195.
6. Rainwater, and Yancy, eds., The Moynihan Report, x, 7.
7. Adam Yarmolinsky, “How Good Was the Answer? How Good Was the Question?” in Controversies and Decisions: The Social Sciences and Public Policy, ed. Charles Frankel (New York, 1976), 262.
8. Lawrence M. Mead has also held that to mention the family issue was to “strike a nerve.” See The New Politics of Poverty (New York, 1992), 234.
9. While he emphasizes the role of the riots in shaping policy decisions, Charles Murray does not mention the influence of Watts on the reception of the Moynihan Report. See Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 (New York, 1984), 30, 129–30.
10. Matusow, Unraveling of America, 196–97. Nicholas Lemann gives virtually no attention to the attitudes of black leaders before the riot, and he emphasizes the response of younger black intellectuals afterward.
11. See Lemann, Promised Land, 176–177.
12. Promised Land, 59–72.
13. Like Moynihan, Frazier is more often denounced than read. For a similar reading of Frazier's work as emphasizing the temporary nature of disorganization, see Walter Jackson, Gunnar Myrdal and America's Conscience (Chapel Hill, 1990), 303
14. William J. Wilson, “A New Urban Poverty and the Problem of Race,” Michigan Quarterly Review (Spring 1994): 248.
15. Charles S. Johnson, Growing Up in the Black Belt (Washington, D.C., 1941)
16. E. Franklin Frazier, Negro Youth at the Crossways (Washington, D.C., 1940)
17. W. L. Warner, Buford H. Junker, and Walter A. Adams, Color and Human Nature: Negro Personality Development in a Northern City (Washington, D.C., 1941)
18. Allison Davis and John Dollard, Children of Bondage (Washington, D.C., 1940).
19. For a discussion of the shift on self-hate findings, see William E. Cross Jr., Shades of Black: Diversity in African-American Identity (Philadelphia, 1991), 20–22.
20. Scott, “The Damaged Black Psyche: The Liberal Creation and Use of a Social Science Imagery, 1890–1970” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1994), 24–56.
21. Scott, “Damaged Black Psyche,” 86–87.
22. For Myrdal's discussion of black social and family pathology, see Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (New York, 1944), 927–935.
23. For the most authoritative study of Gunnar Myrdal and An American Dilemma, see Jackson, Gunnar Myrdal.
24. Sol W. Ginsberg, “Mental Health: Theoretical Assumptions,” in Sol W. Ginsburg, A Psychiatrist's Views on Social Issues (New York, 1963), 5.
25. Gerald N. Grob, “Psychiatry and Social Activism: The Politics of a Speciality in Postwar America,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine (Winter 1986): 477–501.
26. Robert H. Felix, Mental Illness: Progress and Prospects (New York, 1967), 56–57.
27. Wilfred M. McClay, The Masterless: Self and Society in Modem America (Chapel Hill, 1994), 226–268.
28. Gerald N. Grob, Mental Illness and American Society, 1875–1940 (Princeton, 1983), 318.
29. Abram Kardiner and Lionel Ovesey, The Mark of Oppression: Explorations in the Personality of the American Negro (Cleveland, 1962).
30. E. Franklin Frazier, “Problems and Needs of Negro Children and Youth Resulting from Family Disorganization,” in Frazier on Race Relations, edited with an introduction by G. Franklin Edwards (Chicago, 1968).
31. Scott, “Damaged Black Psyche,” 204–241.
32. “Damaged Black Psyche”.
33. For examples, see Harry Passaw, Education in Depressed Areas (New York, 1963)
34. Joe L. Frost and Glenn R. Hawkes, The Disadvantaged Child: Issues and Innovations (Boston, 1966).
35. For an extremely useful discussion, see James Gilbert, Cycles of Outrage (New York, 1986).
36. Not all social scientists were structuralists. A notable exception to this generalization was Walter B. Miller, a social scientist who studied delinquency. Unlike the structuralists, Miller believed the culture of the poor led them to delinquency and unemployment. Unlike the structuralists, whom he opposed, he also doubted the ability of the government to end poverty. Unlike the pathologists, he forthrightly rejected the notion that the poor had a pathological culture or personalities. See Walter A. Miller, “The Elimination of the American Lower Class as a National Policy: A Critique of the Ideology of the Poverty Movement of the 1960s,” in On Understanding Poverty (New York, 1968), ed. Daniel P. Moynihan, 260–315.
37. Richard A. Cloward and Lloyd E. Ohlin, Delinquency and Opportunity: A Theory of Delinquent Gangs (New York, 1960).
38. Peter Marris and Martin Rein, Dilemmas of Social Reform: Poverty and Community Action in the United States (London, 1967), 39–40, 45–50.
39. Dilemmas of Social Reform: Poverty and Community Action in the United States, xxx.
40. Oscar Lewis, The Children of Sanchez (New York, 1961), xxv.
41. Elliot Liebow, Tally's Comer: A Study of Negro Streetcomer Men (Boston, 1967).
42. Elizabeth Herzog, “Some Assumptions About the Poor,” Social Service Review 37 (December 1963): 389–402
43. Elizabeth Herzog, “Unmarried Mothers: Some Questions to Be Answered and Some Answers to Be Questioned,” Child Welfare 41 (October 1962): 339–350.
44. Herzog, “Unmarried Mothers,” 359.
45. See also Clark E. Vincent, Unmarried Mothers (New York, 1961).
46. Hyman Rodman, “The Lower Classes and the Negroes: Implications for Intellectuals,” in New Perspectives on Poverty, ed. Arthur B. Shostak and William Gomberg (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1965), 172.
47. Alvin L. Schorr, “The Nonculture of Poverty,” Journal of Orthopsychiatry 34 (October 1964): 907–912.
48. Frank Riessman and S. M. Miller, “Social Change Versus the ‘Psychiatric World View,’” Journal of Orthopsychiatry 34 (January 1964): 29–38.
49. Frank Riessman, Jerome Cohen, and Arthur Pearl, eds., Introduction, Mental Health of the Poor (New York, 1964), 15.
50. Writing with S. M. Miller, Riessman also put forth a defense of working-class culture, a group often defined as lower class. See S. M. Miller and Frank Riessman, “The Working-Class Subculture: A New View,” Social Problems 9 (Summer 1961): 86–97.
51. Frank Riessman, The Culturally Deprived Child (New York, 1962).
52. For identification of Riessman as a pathologist, see Ralph Ellison, “What These Children Are Like,” in Going to the Territory (New York, 1986), 68.
53. Janet Castro, “Untapped Verbal Fluency of Black Schoolchildren,” in The Culture of Poverty: A Critique, ed. Eleanor Burke Leakcock (New York, 1971), 82.
54. Frank Riessman, “The Strengths of the Poor,” in New Perspectives on Poverty, ed. Arthur B. Shostak and William Gomberg (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1965), 41.
55. See also S. M. Miller, “The American Lower Classes: A Typological Approach,” in New Perspectives on Poverty, 37–39.
56. S. M. Miller, “The American Lower Classes: A Typological Approach,” in New Perspectives on Poverty, 37–39.
57. Nathan Glazer, Introduction, in Stanley Elkins, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (New York, 1959), xvi.
58. 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, 163–177.
59. Kenneth Clark, Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power (New York, 1967).
60. Steinfels, The Neoconservatives, 50, 126.
61. For the white South's use of damage imagery, see Hodding Carter, “Desegregation Does Not Mean Integration,” in Integration Vs Segregation, ed. Hubert H. Humphrey (New York, 1964), 137–138
62. I. N. Berlin, “Desegregation Creates Problems, Too,” in School Desegregation: Documents and Commentaries, ed. Hubert H. Humphrey (New York, 1964), 231
63. I. A. Newby, Challenge to the Court: Social Scientists and the Defense of Segregation, 1954–1966 (Baton Rouge, 1967), 199. In response, the Harvard psychologist Robert Coles stressed the resilence of children.
64. Robert Coles, “The Desegregation of Southern Schools: A Psychiatric Study,” in Humphrey, Integration Vs Segregation, 206–207.
65. Educational Policies Commission, National Education Association, Education and the Disadvantaged American (Washington, D.C., 1962), 28–29.
66. James B. Conant, Slums and Suburbs: A Commentary on Schools in Metropolitan Areas (New York, 1961), 23.
67. Nathan Glazer, “Is ‘Integration’ Possible in the New York School?” Commentary (September 1960): 187, 190.
68. Eric Hoffer, “The Negro Is Prejudiced Against Himself,” U.S. News and World Report, 28 December 1964: 48.
69. See also New York Magazine, 29 November 1964.
70. Daniel Bell, “Plea for a ‘New Phase’ in Negro Leadership,” New York Times Magazine, 31 May 1964.
71. Quoted in Anthony Lewis, Portrait of Decade: The Second American Revolution (New York, 1964), 275.
72. Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1964 (New York, 1965), 231.
73. See also Theodore H. White, “Backlash,” Life, 16 October 1957, 111.
74. Education and the Disadvantaged, 35.
75. Louis Lomax, The Negro Revolt (New York, 1962), 211–212.
76. Whitney M. Young Jr., To Be Equal (New York, 1966), 16.
77. Whitney M. Young Jr., “Agenda for the Future,” Address delivered before the Urban League, 1 August 1965.
78. Jayme Coleman Williams and McDonald Williams, The Negro Speaks: The Rhetoric of Contemporary Black Leaders (New York, 1970), 185–186.
79. “Interviews: What Negroes in the North Are Really After,” U.S. News and World Report, 10 June 1963, 40.
80. Hugh Davis Graham, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960–1972 (New York, 1990), 105.
81. See James Farmer, Freedom–When?, with an Introduction by Jacob Cohen (New York, 1965), 124
82. James Farmer, “We Cannot Afford to Fail,” New York Times Magazine, 29 September 1963, 31.
83. See also “Crashing Gates to Better Jobs,” Business Week, 22 June 1963, 24–25.
84. Bayard Rustin, “Why Don't Negroes …” in The Moynihan Report, ed. Rainwater and Yancey, 423.
85. Nat Hentoff, The New Equality (New York, 1964), 97.
86. Charles E. Silberman, Crisis in Black and White (New York, 1964), 231.
87. Crisis in Black and White, 235.
88. Daniel P. Moynihan, “The President and the Negro: The Moment Lost,” Commentary 43 (February 1967): 35.
89. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (Washington, D.C., 1965), 15–29, in Moynihan Report, ed. Rainwater and Yancey.
90. Moynihan, The Negro Family, Introduction, 43.
91. Moyihan, The Negro Family, 47–48.
92. The Negro Family, 62.
93. The Negro Family, 64.
94. The Negro Family, 16.
95. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Poverty and Progress,” American Scholar 33 (Autumn 1964): 596.
96. Daniel P. Moynihan, “The Case for a Family Policy,” in Coping: Essays on the Practice of Government (New York, 1973), 71
97. Moynihan, “The President and the Negro,” 36.
98. 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.
99. Rainwater and Yancey, Moynihan Report, 147.
100. Moynihan, The Negro Family, 86–89.
101. Nathan Glazer, Foreword to The Negro Family in the United States by E. Franklin Frazier (Chicago, 1966), xvii.
102. 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
103. Moynihan, “The New Racialism,” in Coping: Essays on the Practice of Government (New York, 1973), 206.
104. Washington Post, 26 February 1964.
105. Lemann, Promised Land, 155.
106. Moynihan, “Poverty and Progress,” 606.
107. Moynihan, “The President and the Negro,” 36
108. idem, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding (New York, 1970).
109. Moynihan, The Negro Family, 3.
110. Interestingly, Nathan Glazer, responding to Charles Murray's Bell Curve, recently embraced affirmative action on these grounds. Nathan Glazer, “The Lying Game,” The New Republic, 31 October 1994, 15–16.
111. Gladwin Hill, “Relief Job Begun,” New York Times, 17 August 1965.
112. A Report by the Governor's Commission on the Los Angelos Riots, Violence in the City–An End or a Beginning? in The Politics of Riot Commissions, ed. Anthony Piatt (New York, 1971), 267.
113. Sydney H. Schanberg, “Sociologists Say Latest Riots Differ from Those of the Past,” New York Times, 17 August 1965, 17.
114. Wall Street Journal, 16 August 1965.
115. Leo Despres was an expert on British Guiana (now Guyana). Norman E. Whitten Jr. and John F. Szwed, Afro-American Anthropology: Contemporary Perspectives (New York, 1970), viii.
116. William Ryan, “Savage Discovery: The Moynihan Report.” Nation 201 (December 27, 1965): 527.
117. Whitney Young, “The ‘Real’ Moynihan Report,” in The Moynihan Report, ed. Rainwater and Yancey, 415–416.
118. Edward S. Skillin, “The Negro Family,” Commonweal 82 (September 1965): 649–650.
119. C. Eric Lincoln, “The Absent Father Haunts the Negro Family,” Sounds of the Struggle (New York, 1967), 164–168.
120. Frank Riessman, “In Defense of the Negro Family,” in The Moynihan Report, 478.
121. The Moynihan Report, 443.
122. The Moynihan Report, 383.
123. William Ryan, “The New Genteel Racism,” Crisis 72 (December 1965): 629.
124. Whitney Young, “The ‘Real’ Moynihan Report,” in The Moynihan Report, ed. Rainwater and Yancey, 415–416.
125. Bill Moyers, quoted in Lemann, Promised Land, 182.