I’m getting a fair number of hits for Kay Hymowitz, so I decided to investigate. In the search results is a link to post I wrote called The Mission: Middle-Class vs. Lower-Class Families. I discussed an article written by Hymowitz titled What’s Holding Black Kids Back?
She has another black-themed article in the Summer 2005 issue of City Journal, The Black Family: 40 Years of Lies. I always thought the information in the article was common knowledge, but apparently it’s still new to some people, denied by others, or just plain ignored by die-hard socialists:
So why does the [New York] Times, like so many who rail against inequality, fall silent on the relation between poverty and single-parent families? To answer that question — and to continue the confrontation with facts that Americans still prefer not to mention in polite company — you have to go back exactly 40 years. That was when a resounding cry of outrage echoed throughout Washington and the civil rights movement in reaction to Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s Department of Labor report warning that the ghetto family was in disarray. Entitled “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,†the prophetic report prompted civil rights leaders, academics, politicians, and pundits to make a momentous — and, as time has shown, tragically wrong — decision about how to frame the national discussion about poverty.
Oh yes, the Moynihan Report. The late Moynihan, a Democrat, presented a thesis for which he was maligned and branded a racist. His crime? He warned that the collapse of the black family, already at a critical point 40 years ago, would have devastating consequences. Anyone with half a brain can see that family structure plays a role in the well-being of children in particular and society in general, but we’re not suppose to discuss the fact that 70 percent of black babies are born out of wedlock.
I don’t agree with everything Moynihan wrote, but he was an intellectual giant compared to vacuous liberal politicians running things today, with their hare-brained, more-money-will-solve-the-problem schemes.
Before you comment on this post, I encourage you to take the time to read the City Journal article and the entire Moynihan Report. It’s a lot of reading, but I think if you’re at least familiar with the material, it will make for a better discussion.
Just a suggestion.
Jeff Goldstein wrote a thoughtful post on the matter. Another at TrueGrit.
