The Moynihan Report and Political Controversy, by Lee Rainwater and William Yancey
Freilich, Morris
THE MOYNIHAN REPORT AND THE POLITICS OF CONTROVERSY, by Lee Rainwater and William Yancey. Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. 493 pp. Cloth, $12.50; paper,...
...For the scientist facts and reason must be the prime movers of events...
...His analysis in most of its essentials is in line with the available social-science literature...
...Moynihan's political history and academic credentials might have led one to predict great success for him in Washington...
...But if one remembers the problems of the author—to dramatize in order to "sell"—and if one considers that the report was meant originally only for the eyes of a small group of Presidential advisers, and if one knows Moynihan's interest in the idea of child allowances, then a focus on the Negro family is quite understandable...
...The book presents the political context of the Moynihan report, the report itself, the controversies that followed in its wake, and the (hopefully temporary) political burial of both the report and its scholarly and colorful author...
...of ghetto life, with its psychological climate of despair and social inferiority, high rate of illegitimacy, and ever-growing disintegration of the family...
...Moynihan has been an aide to Robert Wagner and Averell Harriman, has helped in Kennedy's Presidential campaign, and at 34 he became Washington's youngest subcabinet member...
...When Johnson came into power, Moynihan was one of a relatively small group in Washington whose ideas the President took into consideration...
...Power, in the words of the British journalist Henry Fairlie, is ugly and brutalizing, shoddy and unintellectual...
...This book is a care• fully presented record of one social scientist's involvement, at the higest level, with governmental planning...
...Cloth, $12.50...
...In brief, of ghetto life with its poor educational facilities, high percentage of unemployed, below-poverty wages for most of its employed population...
...The central purpose of Moynihan's report was to inform the President and his close advisers of the major obstacles to the sociocultural advancement of American Negroes...
...Why then did he fall...
...As Assistant Secretary of Labor he had people such as Ralph Nader as "sounding boards...
...Politically, however, he was quite wrong in focusing on an aspect of ghetto life which is an integral part of lowerclass Negro culture...
...From a purely theoretical point of view, it frequently hardly matters where you start a chain of change...
...The book's message to me is that intellectuals who want successfully to influence governmental decision-making must understand political realities at least as well as those in power...
...Moynihan met the first test successfully...
...These findings are frequently presented as "systems" (we believe that reality is "a system") whose validity are largely measured by their predictive powers...
...Rainwater and Yancey find the answer to this question in an examination of the Report in terms of content and style...
...But the focus on the Negro matri-focal family was unfortunate...
...They also trace its history from the height of popularity—its use by the President in his Howard University address—to its final demise through the combined attacks by members of the press, the permanent government, civil rights leaders, and a variety of intellectuals...
...Academically, Moynihan is well enough versed in sociological research to have been approached to contribute a chapter on the Irish, to Nathan Glazer's book on ethnic groups in New York (Beyond the Melting Pot...
...The report lent itself to easy misinterpretation— Moynihan has been accused (obviously quite falsely) of preaching racism—as well as sociological criticism...
...they must, second, be presented in ways which help governmental elites in attaining their primary goal—keeping power...
...Rainwater and Yancy have done a great service by providing a case his tory of a failure: a failure by govern ment to utilize the knowledge of so cial science and a failure of social science to present such knowledge in a politically sophisticated manner...
...For social-science data to be politically "useful," they must, first, be injected with enough emotion to excite the interest of those in power...
...for the politician facts and reason are slaves to be used to perpetuate power...
...THE MOYNIHAN REPORT AND THE POLITICS OF CONTROVERSY, by Lee Rainwater and William Yancey...
...Moynihan described well the sociocultural system in which the ghetto Negro lives and its historical ante cedents...
...Further, there is the mat ter of systems theory...
...paper, $3.95...
...but, through some bad luck and the deteriorating situation in Vietnam, he broke his political neck on the second...
...The scientist in an ivory tower communicates to his fellows as part of a duty to share information...
...Using hindsight, the theme of the deterioration of the Negro family was probably misguided as a political strategy...
...The answer to this question sheds much light on the problems of the politically active social scientist...
...If a comprehensive new program is sought, care must be taken to build a power base for such a program...
...Further, statements appearing in the press were "leaked" out and frequently exaggerated, and at times they misrepresented Moynihan's position...
...The latter has ranged from quarrels with his use of statistics to denials that the Negro family is disintegrating...
...The scientist in politics must try to gain support for a position, and in such attempts cultural sensitivities as well as political realities must be considered...
...Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press...
...Its message, I think, is not support of Henry Fairlie's position that intellectuals should stay in their ivory towers away from ugly politics...
...All the above information (as well as much more) is carefully documented in the Rainwater and Yancy book...
...As I understand systems theory, in any system there are a number of basic elements or variables connected in such a way that if one element changes so do all the others...
...As a scholarly piece of writing, the report seems to be essentially correct...
...Many aspects of the ghetto system could have been emphasized which would not have implied superiority of white over Negro culture and which would not have bruised the sensibilities of Negro activists...
...The focus on the Negro family and the use of a dramatic title— The Negro Family: The Case for National Action—made the report politically hot...
...The intellectual and the concerned academic have no reasonable alternative to political involvement...
...Since the matri-focal Negro family produces people who do not adequately compete in our highly competitive society, Moynihan may well be scientifically correct when he isolates this unit as requiring help and restructuring...
...In Moynihan's defense he describes all the other ghetto problems of the Negro with considerable skill...
...Why then the great controversy...
...The need, the Report suggested, was clear and pressing: for a comprehensive government program to eradicate conditions which perpetuate second-class citizenship for the American Negro...
...Traditionally, social science attempts to present research findings aesthetically (we believe that "truth is beauty"), objectively, unemotionally, and from a cultural relativistic viewpoint...
...Politics, by contrast, deals with the use and keeping of power...
Vol. 14 • November 1967 • No. 6
