Daniel Patrick Moynihan in "A Portrait In Letters" presents an agonizing. frustrating but ultimately enlightening world of thought.
What is agonizing is that he was writing 53 years ago about the plight of the Negro in American society and what he said then is still current now.
He cites numbers without references (this are letters, not treatises) but he is academic enough for me to trust the general thrust of what he says:
1/ During the year he was writing (1965) 1/3 of all Negro males were unemployed at least 1/3 of the year, where employment for Black women was not nearly as high. Black males were woefully unemployed.
2/ Not more than 1/3 of Negro youth reached age 18 having lived all their lives with two parents. At a time when the white of of wedlock children was 3% , 43% of children in Harlem were born out of wedlock. One quarter of non white families were headed by women and 40% of Negro children were living in homes where one or both parents were missing. Sixty percent of Negro youth receive Aid to Families of Dependent children, while only 8% of white children did. Of those drafted, 56% of Negro youth failed the military's mental test, where only 14% of whites did.
Seventy five percent of all murders in the United States were committed by Negroes.
Of course, even today, we hear about the disproportionate number of black males in jail; the implication is Blacks are jailed because the judicial system is stacked against them, because, for example, crack cocaine will get you 30 years whereas the white version of cocaine barely gets you a slap on the wrist. All that may be true, but the answer from those either less sympathetic to Blacks, or simply more objective truth seekers, has been, Blacks are disproportionately jailed, in part at least, because more crimes are committed by Blacks, or by poor people who happen to be Black.
All this, even in 1965 when it was written was politically incorrect, explosively so, however true it may have been.
Of course, Moynihan was suggesting that a two parent family with a father and mother both present is more stable, superior and a better place to raise children and that having a child out of wedlock was a serious disadvantage and in the 21st century that may no longer be true. But in 1965 he was dealing with the numbers the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics could provide, and when taken with other data, like the portrayal of the disintegration of stable families or any family life at all, seen in documents like "The Wire" all this really does suggest Black life in America is a very disadvantaged life, at least for the large Black underclass.
Unwed motherhood may not today be as useful a surrogate for family dysfunction as it was in the 1960's but just because it is now commonplace among whites and Hispanics does not mean it is an antiquated measure, at least in America.
In Iceland, you don't have to be married or even living with a mate, to raise children successfully, but that is because day care, health care, employment for the mother are so widely available, raising a child alone does not condemn you and that child to a life of economic and social deprivation. In the USA, it probably does for many, if not most who attempt it.
Moynihan notes there are places in the country where a very substantial Black middle class is doing very well. He was happy about that, of course, but he was focused on the problem, and the problem was the Black underclass. For looking at that honestly, reporting what he saw, he was called a racist.
He then addresses the difference between the two movements in the Civil Rights movement: the one toward Liberty and the other toward Eqaulaity,
These are not the same.
Lincoln and the 13th and 14th amendments bestowed Liberty without bestowing Equality.
And what is Equality? Equal wealth, mostly.
Lyndon Johnson faced the problem of demands which went beyond the need for equal opportunity to demands for equal Results.
You can remove quotas against admissions for Blacks to the Ivy League, but if those Blacks are judged by the standards of SAT exams, grade point averages, education at competitive high schools, you still see the same result in the end.
Moynihan drifts off into a discussion of ethnicity, what it means and he mentions along the way that the Civil Rights Act forbade discrimination based not only on race but on "national origin."
Americans have a way of rejecting their own ethnicity, while at times reclaiming it. It's a masterful accomplishment, and very true, when you think about it.
Moynihan focuses, in his advice to Presidents and academics, on the Black family as central to solving the great racial divide in America, which he correctly sees as a divide in economic reality more than race.
He knows the emasculation of the Black male, rooted in the deep seated fear of white slave owners of the Black male as the potential sexual partner for white womanhood, is the core problem. Black males have done "male work" i.e. manual labor, construction, blue collar jobs, which have disappeared with technological progress, while Black women have done office work, then professional work, and they typically out earn the Black male, who leaves the home.
Other forces have wrecked the lives of Black males. One of the things Moynihan focuses on is moving Black families out of the Ghetto and into the suburbs. Of course, what he may not have realized is the very federal government he was part of established that urban/suburban divide by refusing to lend mortgages to Black families in the post war suburban housing boom, relegating the Black family to rental apartments in inner cities.
But the biggest frustration, reading Moynihan today, is the same frustration expressed by Howard Colvin in the 21st century "Wire." Moynihan is an academic, and while he wants to use his knowledge to help people in the real world, he has not lived enough in the real world to know how.
Moynihan repeatedly identifies a problem: Black families are given welfare checks if the father leaves the home, but not if the father remains in the home bringing home an inadequate income. Then he moves to the solution: Let's have a conference, or make a speech, as if that were a solution.
Ironically, the fictional character, Colvin (who of course is not really fictional but an amalgam of real people) lives in the trenches and without having a theoretical basis for his experiment, he simply takes action which is dictated by what is staring him in the face: If drug sales and violence are occupying his city like an army of occupation, then he will simply move those drug dealers from the corners they hold and concentrate them in three discrete drug zones, and the flowers bloom in the desert; neighborhoods freed of the corner boys selling drugs, shooting each other and passerby, spring back into life, like the tundra after the winter frost withdraws.
At the end, Colvin, having found work with academics studying children in the Baltimore schools, is disgusted by the remove of these academics who, being unable to solve the problems they find, are content to simply describe, write papers and amuse each other, advance their own careers, leaving their study subjects as desperate and doomed as ever.
It is hard to read Moynihan today and not see Howard Colvin's face, in a montage at the end of the last season of the "Wire" as he listens to academic papers given by white scholars, describing what he has seen every day of his 30 years in service, as if they are describing some exotic new species of life, before they return to their comfortable offices, homes and lives.
What is agonizing is that he was writing 53 years ago about the plight of the Negro in American society and what he said then is still current now.
He cites numbers without references (this are letters, not treatises) but he is academic enough for me to trust the general thrust of what he says:
1/ During the year he was writing (1965) 1/3 of all Negro males were unemployed at least 1/3 of the year, where employment for Black women was not nearly as high. Black males were woefully unemployed.
2/ Not more than 1/3 of Negro youth reached age 18 having lived all their lives with two parents. At a time when the white of of wedlock children was 3% , 43% of children in Harlem were born out of wedlock. One quarter of non white families were headed by women and 40% of Negro children were living in homes where one or both parents were missing. Sixty percent of Negro youth receive Aid to Families of Dependent children, while only 8% of white children did. Of those drafted, 56% of Negro youth failed the military's mental test, where only 14% of whites did.
Seventy five percent of all murders in the United States were committed by Negroes.
Of course, even today, we hear about the disproportionate number of black males in jail; the implication is Blacks are jailed because the judicial system is stacked against them, because, for example, crack cocaine will get you 30 years whereas the white version of cocaine barely gets you a slap on the wrist. All that may be true, but the answer from those either less sympathetic to Blacks, or simply more objective truth seekers, has been, Blacks are disproportionately jailed, in part at least, because more crimes are committed by Blacks, or by poor people who happen to be Black.
All this, even in 1965 when it was written was politically incorrect, explosively so, however true it may have been.
Of course, Moynihan was suggesting that a two parent family with a father and mother both present is more stable, superior and a better place to raise children and that having a child out of wedlock was a serious disadvantage and in the 21st century that may no longer be true. But in 1965 he was dealing with the numbers the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics could provide, and when taken with other data, like the portrayal of the disintegration of stable families or any family life at all, seen in documents like "The Wire" all this really does suggest Black life in America is a very disadvantaged life, at least for the large Black underclass.
Unwed motherhood may not today be as useful a surrogate for family dysfunction as it was in the 1960's but just because it is now commonplace among whites and Hispanics does not mean it is an antiquated measure, at least in America.
In Iceland, you don't have to be married or even living with a mate, to raise children successfully, but that is because day care, health care, employment for the mother are so widely available, raising a child alone does not condemn you and that child to a life of economic and social deprivation. In the USA, it probably does for many, if not most who attempt it.
Moynihan notes there are places in the country where a very substantial Black middle class is doing very well. He was happy about that, of course, but he was focused on the problem, and the problem was the Black underclass. For looking at that honestly, reporting what he saw, he was called a racist.
He then addresses the difference between the two movements in the Civil Rights movement: the one toward Liberty and the other toward Eqaulaity,
These are not the same.
Lincoln and the 13th and 14th amendments bestowed Liberty without bestowing Equality.
And what is Equality? Equal wealth, mostly.
Lyndon Johnson faced the problem of demands which went beyond the need for equal opportunity to demands for equal Results.
You can remove quotas against admissions for Blacks to the Ivy League, but if those Blacks are judged by the standards of SAT exams, grade point averages, education at competitive high schools, you still see the same result in the end.
Moynihan drifts off into a discussion of ethnicity, what it means and he mentions along the way that the Civil Rights Act forbade discrimination based not only on race but on "national origin."
Americans have a way of rejecting their own ethnicity, while at times reclaiming it. It's a masterful accomplishment, and very true, when you think about it.
Moynihan focuses, in his advice to Presidents and academics, on the Black family as central to solving the great racial divide in America, which he correctly sees as a divide in economic reality more than race.
He knows the emasculation of the Black male, rooted in the deep seated fear of white slave owners of the Black male as the potential sexual partner for white womanhood, is the core problem. Black males have done "male work" i.e. manual labor, construction, blue collar jobs, which have disappeared with technological progress, while Black women have done office work, then professional work, and they typically out earn the Black male, who leaves the home.
Other forces have wrecked the lives of Black males. One of the things Moynihan focuses on is moving Black families out of the Ghetto and into the suburbs. Of course, what he may not have realized is the very federal government he was part of established that urban/suburban divide by refusing to lend mortgages to Black families in the post war suburban housing boom, relegating the Black family to rental apartments in inner cities.
But the biggest frustration, reading Moynihan today, is the same frustration expressed by Howard Colvin in the 21st century "Wire." Moynihan is an academic, and while he wants to use his knowledge to help people in the real world, he has not lived enough in the real world to know how.
Moynihan repeatedly identifies a problem: Black families are given welfare checks if the father leaves the home, but not if the father remains in the home bringing home an inadequate income. Then he moves to the solution: Let's have a conference, or make a speech, as if that were a solution.
Ironically, the fictional character, Colvin (who of course is not really fictional but an amalgam of real people) lives in the trenches and without having a theoretical basis for his experiment, he simply takes action which is dictated by what is staring him in the face: If drug sales and violence are occupying his city like an army of occupation, then he will simply move those drug dealers from the corners they hold and concentrate them in three discrete drug zones, and the flowers bloom in the desert; neighborhoods freed of the corner boys selling drugs, shooting each other and passerby, spring back into life, like the tundra after the winter frost withdraws.
At the end, Colvin, having found work with academics studying children in the Baltimore schools, is disgusted by the remove of these academics who, being unable to solve the problems they find, are content to simply describe, write papers and amuse each other, advance their own careers, leaving their study subjects as desperate and doomed as ever.
It is hard to read Moynihan today and not see Howard Colvin's face, in a montage at the end of the last season of the "Wire" as he listens to academic papers given by white scholars, describing what he has seen every day of his 30 years in service, as if they are describing some exotic new species of life, before they return to their comfortable offices, homes and lives.
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