The Moynihan Report Revisited: Cultivating Mediocrity and Sexism

I have been mulling over this post for a few weeks now. In previous discussions in the blogosphere, I have noted that in my view, the Moynihan Report (1965) has been responsible for cultivating mediocrity in the black community and sexism against black women.

In this essay, I will explain why I make this argument, that the black community's response to the Moynihan Report has resulted in the degeneration of the community since then: an acceptance of mediocrity, ie., in the form of rejecting personal responsibility as the cause for social problems, including a rise in single-parent families headed by black women, and the perspective that one can hear on occasion that black women are not victims of racism in the same way that black men are, that indeed, they benefit from racism, and that sexism does not affect them.

1965 must have been such a year. The Civil Rights Movement was transitioning into Black Nationalism, with Stokely Carmichael of SNCC calling for "Black Power" that year and the Moynihan report being drafted.

The Moynihan Report was drafted in 1965 as a response to a sense among policy makers that notwithstanding the recent civil rights gains, ie., the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, African Americans might become a community populated primarily by an underclass. The report argued that the next frontier lay in ensuring that African Americans established firm family foundations in order that they might take advantage of the new rights and opportunities becoming available.

Here is a link to the report: link.

The report admitted that the unique situation of African Americans as slaves had a detrimental effect upon family formation: the separation of families and the failure of families to be kept together resulted in social and familial instability. Economic oppression heightened the detriments in that employment opportunities differed for blacks and whites, and because black women had always been workers, blacks' family formations differed from those of most whites. The argument was that African Americans' differences could place them at a disadvantage.

Controversial was the argument about the "tangle of pathology," that black families tended to be matriarchies headed by employed women supporting families as single heads of households, due to abandonment, ie., men seeking opportunities elsewhere or men's failures to find employment.

The report garnered its own "cottage industry" of scholars who took the report and then used it as a point from which to address such disparate fields as African American history, sociology, culture and psychology. These coincided with an important rising interest in the significance for black nationalist thought in all these fields, including linguistics as an example, where the argument developed among some that "Ebonics" as a black cultural retention from slavery, was a legitimate form of black speech which should be recognized in schools or even taught there. See ie., link, or link, or link or link and link.

Here are some responses to the report over the course of the years, meaning the 1960s onwards:

1. The report did not consider the persistent significance of racism. Its supporters acted as though familial formation was the only problem, and that policy to ensure that black men and women had economic opportunities available to alleviate the stress of economic oppression was not as important. Scholars like William Julius Wilson fit into this group: racism as compared to class and economics.

2. The report proved that welfare policies encouraged the persistence of pathology, in the form of matriarchal households. This became the mantra of conservatives, both black and white, who led the successful fight for Welfare Reform in 1996. This was the underlying message of the late 1980s Bill Moyers' documentary: The Vanishing Family: Crisis in Black America, link. By this time, the message of the report seemed to bear out 20+ years later: numbers of African Americans comprised an underclass, with generations of families in poverty and living on assistance, all headed by matriarchal families where the men were absent, due to abandonment, crime, or chronic unemployment.

3. The report amounted to an attack upon the black community. Rather than admit that in a society where most successful families were headed by married couples raising their children, families headed by black single mothers were less effective, argue that this family formation proved the resilience of black family life in the face of stress: the stress of slavery, the stress of racism, the stresses of the Great Migration as African Americans moved from the rural South to the urban North. Single parenting was just as legitimate, because black women and black men could be effective parents under those circumstances, especially in light of extended family and community networks. This argument underpinned many arguments being raised throughout the 1970s as divorce rates began to rise: single and divorced parent households were just as effective as intact married families.

As a result, black out of wedlock pregnancy rates increased from 1965 to 60% by 1986, to about 66% (or more) today.

How did all this result in accepting mediocrity and anti-black women sexism?

It was not a major step for the resilience argument to become popularized as "acting black." How? If those coping mechanisms stemming from racism and discrimination came to be seen as a legitimate expression of the black experience, those who wanted to maintain an oppositional culture to whiteness (in a bastardized version of black nationalist consciousness) could argue that the mainstream cultural values (which many African Americans had adhered to for the longest while) were really "white" values that blacks need not be concerned about.

It was not a major step then for this perspective to become popularized. Just as many black nationalists came to see their civil rights movement predecessors as assimilationist and "bourgie," those who adhered to those traditional values could be seen as not being legitimately "black." Slavery and discrimination could become an argument among many liberals, black as well as white, that all African American dysfunctionality could be explained away as "natural and authentic" responses to racism and discrimination. This view became common not only within the popular consciousness, but among academics in fields like psychology, sociology and criminology.

Recall too, the arguments for "cultural relativism" used in this sphere, especially among anthropologists and others, that each culture must be respected equally as all others and that to judge meant that one engaged in some form of cultural imperialism. "Cultural relativism" has not been only about westerners confronting Islam. An early manifestation lay in claims that all differences between blacks and others lay in African heritage.

This, without question, is quite true, there are cultural retentions that people of African descent have kept over the centures. But there is a difference between legitimate ones (hair styles, music, food and religious practices) and acceptance of pathology in the name of "culture". Recall as an example, some contemporary arguments that African Americans should pursue polygamy. Jill Nelson spoke of this in Straight: No Chaser.

[A modern day social and cultural commentator who speaks in this vein is Ta-Nehisi Coates, who writes for the Atlantic. In a recent article about Michelle Obama, he wrote about her presentation to the public as being "white," insofar as she once gave a speech in which she spoke about her family values, growing up in a black working class family headed by a civil servant father and a stay-at-home mother. I was troubled because this classic "acting white" argument has been used to disparage blacks with middle class values as being "outsiders" to the "acting black crew": "he talks like a white boy"; "she thinks she's a white girl," ad nauseum. Coates supports the use of Ebonics. His father was a black nationalist who fathered children by different women over time: the elder Coates was a part-time father to all the children he had by the women. The younger is in a long-term relationship with a woman by whom he has a child; they have not married. He wrote a book in which he talked about these approaches to fatherhood as being just as legitimate as that of a stable two-parent family.]

I believe the report encouraged many African Americans to see themselves as helpless victims when that had not been the primary trend during the civil rights movement, when black people saw themselves as capable of agency and activism. As a result of this new perspective, policy was needed to improve black families, and discrimination stemming from slavery and its aftermath became an excuse for everything; thus, what role could there be for activism and discussion of how might those detriments be surmounted? Blame the government for failing to solve the problem, or wait for the government to come and do something.

Doesn't this in some respects seem to be the position of traditional civil rights groups? They have done a great job over the years of focusing on those attacks from outside the community and using the force of law and policy to correct them, from litigation to statutes. But what happens when litigation and statutes can only go so far? Perhaps in today's world it is a matter of making an observation: comparing the strategies developed by Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Dubois and Marcus Garvey, Dubois and the NAACP got African Americans only so far, Garvey's message has been bastardized, and perhaps Booker T. needs to return, as the hosts of the blog Booker Rising have argued! See link: link.

The report made an argument that black women were matriarchs, pathological women in the face of the prevailing system of social organization: patriarchy. Prior to this, civil rights movement and black nationalist activists did not see black women in this way. There was no race to win the "who suffers more" sweepstakes. Suddenly, black women were being blamed for black men's failure to become patriarchs. For race women, they were told that it was time for them to get in line behind the men, because they benefitted from the racism that kept black men down. Michelle Wallace's Black Macho and the Superwoman spoke of this, as did Jill Nelson.

This argument contributed to an enmity between black men and women that did not help any. The year before, the National Organization of Women had been founded in 1964, raising the consciousness of many women, black women included, who thought about the ways sexism affected them. But for race women, they were urged to believe that racism was the only problem they faced, even though there was clear evidence that the race movements' male leadership engaged in sexism and that what affected American women as a whole affected black women too.

Yet, the traditional "race woman/race man" within "civil rights movement/black nationalist" thought believed that black women only experienced racism vis a vis the white community and that sexism within the black community did not exist, because the shared experience of racism made the community egalitarian or even ensured black women's superiority (in light of the Moynihan report). Thus, feminism was an alien ideology that threatened the community's cohesion. Some of the men argued that once the race question was resolved, then the gender question could be tackled. Are we still waiting?

[It didn't help any of course, that the women's movement became associated with white women exclusively. At the same time, though, there were black women who spoke of sexism and racism. But were they universally accepted, the Alice Walkers, the Flo Kennedys, the Audre Lordes, etc.? What was the response? They were lesbians and race traitors.

I can be sympathetic to the black women of that period who saw race as the primary factor affecting them. I understand where they were coming from. The civil rights and black nationalist movements proved that race mattered so much in terms of protecting the community and gaining rights. But even if they felt race was most important, I think it was incredibly irresponsible not to think about gender, and to reject it as a tool of analysis. As I have said before, I know of young black women who for example, will not read anything having to do with women's history. Their ignorance has enabled others to bamboozle them.

I think this failure to talk about race and gender was an incredible lost opportunity, one which many black women today are seeing the result of, especially the race women whose words I read in the blogosphere, women in their 30s and 40s who are learning the lesson now. It is as though they bought the ideologies of the elders without thinking about how those ideologies might matter in their lives.]

Some men thus spoke of gender, though, but from their point of view: one which saw black men and women as competitors in the racism sweepstakes and which saw racism from a male-centered point of view. Instead of attacking the racism, they seemed to be attacking black women as being blameworthy. Those women who considered the significance of sexism were further accused of being race traitors, since they "dragged the brothas down" (remember Anita Hill?) and especially if they challenged the arguments that they were the beneficiaries of racism.

Recall of course, that part of men seeing gender from their own point of view is that gender is not an issue for them! They are the default gender. They live in a world where they don't experience gender, because their gender does not disadvantage them! So it was not surprising then that men in the civil rights and black nationalist movements would minimize gender as an important factor, or when they did, they spoke of gender in light of their comparisons to men of the majority group: how their race differentiated them and prevented them from being patriarchs with male privileges. It was about their fight with other men.

Yet, I have heard race women make arguments about gender in light of men's experiences. I recall when I taught African American Studies, and I would hear young "race women" in their twenties talk about the problems of the community in words like these: "the problem is the black man was not (fill in the blank): given/able to..." As race women, they believed the gender issue to be that black men were not able to become patriarchs, and thus, they defined the gender issue in terms of male gender. If black men could have their gender needs met, and if their gender interests were protected, they would be in a position to be leaders in the community.

But have black men been able to articulate the gender interests of both black men and women in these contexts? Arguably, not. And even when they have had their gender interests protected (for example, as found in unconditional love from black women and children who only hope their devotion will be returned), have they become the leaders many black women have been praying for: dedication to family and community? Not always. Thus, it was troubling that the arguments these young women made were grounded in a male point of view. They didn't seem to realize men's traditional perception of gender in this racial context: they silenced themselves when they claim to speak about racial matters but only in the context of male gender.

[A perfect example, I recall Michelle Wallace describing a conversation Susan Brownmiller (who wrote a book Against Our Will, on women and rape) had with a black male librarian/archivist. She was interested in finding some historical materials on black women and rape to discuss in her book. He explained to her that the real story about rape and gender had to do with the lynching of black men wrongfully accused of raping white women. The two stories could not co-exist; only one could, and it was the story of gender and violence from the perspective of a man.]

[Now if I were a conspiracy theorist, I might argue that the report was a nefarious plot to create tensions and confusion within the community. Tell blacks they are the cause of their own problems and tell the men that the real problem was that they did not have their women in line. Thus, some black men with a nationalist consciousness argued that the women's movement was the real conspiracy to cause dissension, not the argument that black women are to blame for the community's problems.]

This trend persists today, and many "race women" can attest to it. Time and time again, race women have said they are black first, and women second. Thus, they were blind from the start to the issues of gender and sexism that have affected them. Believing that racism was the only problem, and buying assessments of racism from men's point of view, they forgot, as I have argued before, that sexism matters too.

A tamer version of the same phenomenon can be found, I believe, in the persistent trend among some civil rights groups to focus on black men as being the perpetual victims of racism, even when they are not victims at all. Consider the cases where civil rights groups become involved, for example, in criminal justice matters where there was no race-based injustice, but anyone viewing the responses would assume the Scottsboro cases were being heard again.

On the resilience front, the argument regarding matriarchy turned into an assessment that black women are "strong" compared to other women and to black men who are considered more vulnerable and perhaps weak in the face of discrimination? Thus, black women need not worry about discrimination and any sexism they experience, because they can "handle it," but black men are to be protected at all costs. Once again, a holdover from slavery, when masters justified their brutalizing black women because they were "strong," and their strength meant that they did not need the protections other women routinely received. What else is going on when black on black crime is ignored as a civil rights issue?

Does this all sound familiar?

Some interesting links on the Moynihan Report and the Moyers documentary: Dorothy Haight and link, or link.