Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan Vindicated After 50 Years

Senator Daniel P. Moynihan, who served as U.S. Senator of New York and U.S. Representative of Illinois, authored one of the most controversial reports during the 60's called "The Negro Family: The Case For National Action", which informed us of the alarming rate of single mother families and lack of fathers' participation rates were increasing due to the fact where black women were basically being subsidized to become single mothers, thus not want to be married or have fathers in the home. He proposed that black families should be encouraged to be intact, have programs to help black men get education and better jobs. He was publicly crucified by the media and drew the ire from liberals and feminists during his day.

Black feminists hated him, and even called him a "powerful enemy" due to being white and disclosing on how increasingly matriarchal the black family was becoming:

Source: Feminist Literacies, 1968-75

After 50 years, and black communities having the highest rates of single mother homes, crimes, incarceration, all due to demonizing and ostracizing black fathers from their own children, Moynihan has been vindicated. The Wall Street Journal was one of the few papers that had some courage to clear his name:

 “'The fundamental problem is that of family structure,' wrote Moynihan, who had a doctorate in sociology. 'The evidence—not final but powerfully persuasive—is that theNegro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling.'

For his troubles, Moynihan was denounced as a victim-blaming racist bent on undermining the civil-rights movement. Even worse, writes Harvard’s Paul Peterson in the current issue of the journal Education Next, Moynihan’s 'findings were totally ignored by those who designed public policies at the time.' The Great Society architects would go on to expand old programs or formulate new ones that exacerbated the problems Moynihan identified. 

Marriage was penalized and single parenting was subsidized. In effect, the government paid mothers to keep fathers out of the home—and paid them well. 

'Economists and policy analysts of the day worried about the negative incentives that had been created,' writes Mr. Peterson. 'Analysts estimated that in 1975 a household head would have to earn $20,000;—or an inflation-adjusted $88,000 today—'to have more resources than what could be obtained from Great Society programs.'

History has proved that Moynihan was onto something. When the report was released, about 25% of black children and 5% of white children lived in a household headed by a single mother. During the next 20 years the black percentage would double and the racial gap would widen. Today more than 70% of all black births are to unmarried women, twice the white percentage.

For decades research has shown that the likelihood of teen pregnancy, drug abuse, dropping out of school and many other social problems grew dramatically when fathers were absent. One of the most comprehensive studies ever done on juvenile delinquency—by William Comanor and Llad Phillips of the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2002—concluded that 'the most critical factor affecting the prospect that a male youth will encounter the criminal justice system is the presence of his father in the home.'

In 2012 the poverty rate for all blacks was more than 28%, but for married black couples it was 8.4% and has been in the single digits for two decades. Just 8% of children raised by married couples live in poverty, compared with 40% of children raised by single mothers. 

One important lesson of the past half-century is that counterproductive cultural traits can hurt a group more than political clout can help it. Moynihan was right about that, too."

We previously reported about Senator Moynihan's findings in this blog back in 2013, in an article titled, "The US Department of Labor on the Destructive Components of the Matriarchal Black Family Structure" .