Patrick Moynihan, Patrick Moynihan, The Negro FamilyThe Negro Family (1965) (1965)

Photograph of a Black Family During the Great Depression

Moynihan, D. P. (1965). The negro family: The case for national action. U.S. Department of Labor. Retrieved October 17, 2002 from http://www.dol.gov/asp/programs/history/webid-meynihan.htm.

Moynihan, D. P. (1965). The negro family: The case for national action. U.S. Department of Labor. Retrieved October 17, 2002 from http://www.dol.gov/asp/programs/history/webid-meynihan.htm.

Source: Moynihan, D. P. (1965). The negro family: The case for national action. U.S. Department of Labor. Retrieved October 17, 2002 from http://www.dol.gov/asp/programs/history/webid-meynihan.htm.

Source: Moynihan, D. P. (1965). The negro family: The case for national action. U.S. Department of Labor. Retrieved October 17, 2002 from http://www.dol.gov/asp/programs/history/webid-meynihan.htm.

Photograph of a Black Family During the Great Depression

Patrick Moynihan, The Negro Family (1965)

Main Points:

1.The role of the family is central to shaping the character of people, and “[a]t the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro Society is the deterioration of the Negro family.”

• The role of the family in shaping character and ability is so pervasive as to be easily overlooked. The family is the basic social unit of American life; it is the basic socializing unit…. But there is one truly great discontinuity in family structure in the United States at the present time: that between the white world in general and that of the Negro American.

• …the family structure of lower class Negroes is highly unstable, and in many urban centers is approaching complete breakdown….

•  …There is considerable evidence that the Negro community is in fact dividing between a stable middle-class group that is steadily growing stronger and more successful, and an increasingly disorganized and disadvantaged lower-class group….

2. A long history of discrimination and segregation has worked against the emergence of a strong father figure in the African American family.

 The Negro was given liberty, but not equality. Life remained hazardous and marginal. Of the greatest importance, the Negro male, particularly in the South, became an object of intense hostility, an attitude unquestionably based in some measure on fear.

When Jim Crow made its appearance toward the end of the 19th century, it may be speculated that it was the Negro male who was most humiliated thereby.…

Unquestionably, [Jim Crow humiliation of the Negro male] worked against the emergence of a strong father figure. The very essence of the male animal, from the bantam rooster to the four-star general, is to strut. Indeed, in 19th century America, a particular type of exaggerated male boastfulness became almost a national style. Not for the Negro male. The “sassy nigger” was lynched.

The White Man’s Double StandardThe White Man’s Double Standard

“We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life.”

--Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life

White mobs murdered some 500 blacks between 1870 and 1900, and more than 100 black people between 1900 and 1910.

White prejudice included animosity toward black troops in the U.S. Army. Brownsville whites, for example, objected to the stationing of the all-black Twenty-fifth Infantry at Fort Brown. In anger, they charged that the troops had raided the city in 1906 in protest of discriminatory practices. Later evidence demonstrated the unfairness of the charges, but at that time President Theodore Roosevelt had dishonorably discharged 160 of the troops. (The History of Texas, 189, 261-262)

THE DECLINE IN AMERICAN MORALS?

The general failure of prohibition enforcement brought home to many Texas what they defined as a decline in American morals. The rapidly increasing urbanization seemed to blur what were once clear moral and community values. Migration to the city disrupted the neighborhoods of rural America and, coupled with more and better transportation facilities, broke up the extended family. Historians have cited the urban growth of the United States as creating tensions between rural and urban Americans. The anxiety emanated not only from the countryside, but also from developing southern cities filled with recent foreign immigrants. The anti-city focus of rural Texans resulted from their perception of urban areas as hotbeds of disloyal foreigners, religious modernism, illegal speakeasies, organized crime, morally suspicious “New Women,” and corrupting modern music. These tensions were further abetted by the post-World War I Red Scare and reinforced by the progressive drive for social control. (The History of Texas, p. 310)

Percentage of Texans living in metropolitan areas:

1900: 17.1%

1939: 41%

The Ku Klux KlanThe Ku Klux KlanThe Klan professed as its goals the preservation of patriotism, the purity of women, white supremacy, and law and order. It opposed radicals, Catholics, Jews, blacks, Mexicans, the wearing by women of short skirts, the consumption of “demon rum,” and continued foreign immigration. By 1922, the organization had 700,000 members and by 1925, possibly as many as 5 million. (p. 311)

A group of men dressed in full Klan regalia march down the street at night with torches, crosses and flags. A crowd of people line the street to watch. Source: http://www.texasrecord.org/results_single.asp?co=US&ci=Breckenridge&st=TX&s=119

3. Unemployment of the African-American male has largely contributed to the present crisis of the African-American family, which has been forced into a matriarchal structure.

•  The impact of unemployment on the Negro family, and particularly on the Negro male, is the least understood of all the developments that have contributed to the present crisis…. The fundamental, overwhelming fact is that Negro unemployment, with the exception of a few years during World War II and the Korean War, has continued at disaster levels for 35 years…. As jobs became more and more difficult to find, the stability of the family became more and more difficult to maintain….

• [The African-American community has paid a fearful price] for the incredible mistreatment to which it has been subjected over the past three centuries.

• In essence, the Negro community has been forced into a matriarchal structure which, because it is so out of line with the rest of the American society, seriously retards the progress of the group as a whole, and imposes a crushing burden on the Negro male and, in consequence, on a great many Negro women as well.

Picture by King, Edward, 1848-1896Source of picture: http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/king/king.html

4. A national effort should be made to help the problems faced by the African-American family.

 

• It was by destroying the Negro family under slavery that white America broke the will of the Negro people. Although that will has reasserted itself in our time, it is a resurgence doomed to frustration unless the viability of the Negro family is restored….

• …[A] national effort towards the problems of Negro Americans must be directed towards the question of family structure. The object should be to strengthen the Negro family so as to enable it to raise and support its members as do other families. After that, how this group of Americans chooses to run its affairs… is none of the nation’s business….

Questions:

•What is wrong with having female heads of households?

•What are the origins of “the tangle of pathology” in the black community?

•How can the government alter familial relations?

Single Parents

Single parents account for 27 percent of family households with children under 18.

More than two million fathers are the primary caregivers of children under 18, a 62 percent increase since 1990.

One in two children will live in a single-parent family at some point in childhood.

One in three children is born to unmarried parents.

Between 1978 and 1996, the number of babies born to unmarried women per year quadrupled from 500,000 to more than two million.

The number of single mothers increased from three million to 10 million between 1970 and 2000.

Divorced ParentsNearly half of all marriages end in divorce.

More than one million children have parents who separate or divorce each year.

More than half of Americans today have been, are or will be in one or more stepfamily situations.

Poverty Rates of Single Mother Families by Race (based on cash income)

Children Under 18 Living in Poverty, 2004

CategoryNumber (in thousands)

Percent

All children under 18 13,027 17.8

White only, non-Hispanic

4,507 10.5

Black 4,049 33.2

Hispanic 4,102 28.9

Asian 334 9.8

Children represent a disproportionate share of the poor in the United States; they are 25 percent of the total population, but 35 percent of the poor population. In 2004, 13 million children, or 17.8 percent, were poor. The poverty rate for children also varies substantially by race and Hispanic origin, as shown in the table below.

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Darryll Vann is in a shrinking minority group--African-American men who teach youngsters. Only 11 percent of elementary school teachers are male and a much smaller percentage of them are African-American. Photo by David Snider http://www.aliciapatterson.org/APF1901/McCarthy/McCarthy.html

New Boston PrisonNew Boston Prison

Construction of a new Texas Prison

Texas' June 2003 incarceration rate also was the highest in the nation, with 692 inmates per 100,000 population. Mississippi ran a close second with an incarceration rate of 688 per 100,000 residents.....Overall, the report said the nation's federal, state and local prisons and jails were holding more than 2 million people on June 30, 2003, the largest number in four years.

A federal study released Thursday shows that Texas led the nation in the number of inmates incarcerated in state prisons and county jails in June 2003.

Texas had 164,222 inmates on the last day of that month. The Texas inmate population was up by 4.2 percent, or 6,578 inmates, from June 2002, according to the study by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.