The Long Shadow
Review of Daniel
Geary, Beyond Civil Rights: The Moynihan
Report and Its Legacy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2015. 288 pg. and Susan Greenbaum, Blaming
the Poor: The Long Shadow of The Moynihan Report on Cruel Images About Poverty,
New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2015.
In Rochester NY where I live, a recent
poverty initiative has been proposed to address some of most deeply entrenched
poverty areas of this country. History
casts its long shadow over the understanding of poverty embodied in these
initiatives. Short on proposals to empower the community, the reading list for
the working groups are filled with reports that view poverty as an individual.
psychological or social problem rooted in family structure and individual
psychological trauma. You can find Paul Ryan and the Cato Institute as well as
the work of several liberal think tanks on their suggested reading list, but
nothing of the tradition of Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward. The role of
political economic structure in the creation of inequality and the continuing
prevalence of poverty gets nary a mention.
Much of this history, according to both Daniel
Geary and Susan Greenbaum, was shaped by the views first formulated in Daniel Patrick
Moynihan’s infamous 1965 “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,”
which has generally come to be called “the Moynihan Report.” Moynihan was working
at the Department of Labor in the Johnson administration when he prepared a
report for the President hoping to influence Johnson’s War on Poverty. The
report exerted a tsunami-like effect on thinking about poverty in America,
sweeping away more critical and radical views of poverty. It brought the
concept of the pathological black family into mainstream discourse. Moynihan
subsequently was a major force in the culture wars of the later 60’s and 70’s,
leading the charge of neo-conservative intellectuals. The two interesting books
under review here look back on 50 years of influence of the Moynihan report and
attempt to assess its impact on public policy and culture. How did this report, which was first meant
for a small circle of government officials and itself short on prescription,
come to have such a profound influence on the political debates of its time?
The Moynihan Report argued that the
breakdown of family structure in African American communities was the main
source of its persistent poverty. As Greenbaum notes in her lucid summary,
despite the general rise in prosperity in the country, African American
families were not prospering. In fact,
increases in employment lead to increases in welfare. Moynihan argued that jobs
alone would not end welfare “dependency”: “The fundamental problem . . .. is
that of family structure” (Greenbaum, p. 3). The economic progress of the
African American community was being held back by the high number of fatherless
families. Wherever such a family structure exists, a “tangle of pathologies”
follows; including crime, delinquency, teenage pregnancy, and elevated school dropout
rates. Men without jobs were stripped of their masculinity and boys reared in
matriarchal families were set on a path of failure that reached across
generations.
Both venerated and vilified, Moynihan was
a complex figure whose exact views are not easily pigeonholed. He was a
Kennedy/Johnson liberal with social democratic leanings who later became
associated with the neo-conservatives, yet as a Senator in later life he opposed
Bill Clinton’s regressive welfare reform. In the early stages of his career he
retained elements of social democratic theory. He agreed with civil rights leaders like
Martin Luther King, Jr. that the question of equality required more than just
civil rights, but social and economic ones. Moynihan supported measures that
would strengthen social rights such as a family wage and even a guaranteed
annual income while seeing cultural differences as crucial. The difference
between Moynihan’s view and the more radical versions of social democracy lies
both in his cultural conservatism and in his elitist and technocratic approach,
which was typical of many intellectuals of the cold war era.
Understanding the conflicts and even
contradictions in Moynihan’s work requires seeing the interrelation between several
different elements of his approach: his social democratic version of vital
center liberalism which accepted the pluralistic approach to ethnicity and was
uneasy with social protest against pluralism; his Catholicism which
simultaneously encompassed commitments to social equality and a culturally
conservative paternalist notion of the family; and a technocratic view of
social reform in which social science and not popular mobilization was the
motor of social change.
In Daniel Geary’s reading, Moynihan’s
position reflected the tensions in the postwar liberal conception of
equality. Moynihan, like other liberals,
understood the barriers to equality that African Americans faced, but he
retained a liberal commitment to meritocracy. He believed that individuals had
to be able to compete in an open marketplace. These ambiguities made Moynihan’s
theory usable by many different groups. As Geary notes, “The report contained
the seeds of a left-wing challenge that deepened liberals’ war on poverty and a
neo-conservative attack on the welfare state” (p. 9). Like many left intellectuals, Moynihan moved
from the New Deal Left to the so called vital center. These vital center liberals
were strongly anticommunist and sought order and valued consensus over
conflict. They were often at odds with the protest movements of the time.
Moynihan was highly critical of community action programs in his work Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding. He
believed in a regulated capitalism and in the importance of integrating labor
unions as a buttress against communism. But this labor accord was to be
strictly capitalist. The Moynihan Report articulated tensions that are still
with us today.
Moynihan had earlier analyzed the problems
of ethnic groups in American society when Nathan Glazer invited him to write a
chapter for Beyond the Melting Pot, a
role which expanded to coauthor. Like Glazer he equated the situation of
African-Americans with other ethnic groups in American society who had
experienced upward mobility and integration into American society. In the north
at least Glazer and Moynihan saw fewer impediments to this advancement than in
the Jim Crow south. Thus, the failure of the African Americans to advance in
the north needed a different explanation. In addition to an insensitivity to
the uniqueness of the African American experience in society Geary argues that
this view of American society as a pluralistic competition of ethnic groups was
inconsistent with Moynihan’s economic assessments of the effects of inequality
and class. Like many liberals of his time he thought that the problems of
inequality could be solved within the bounds of elite pluralism through the
application of social science.
Moynihan’s biography combined with his
politics to shape his perspective. He was the product of a broken family. His
father left the family when he was young, throwing the family into chaos. He
was raised a Catholic and attended Catholic school as a youth. He absorbed elements
of Catholic social teachings which lead him in diverging directions. He was
influenced, on the one hand by the progressive aspects of catholic social
philosophy, especially the emphasis on the rights and dignity of workers. On
the other hand, he also shared the patriarchal assumptions of the church. The
male dominated family was the basic unit of society, and the pillar of economic
and social stability. While Moynihan’s fusion of new deal economic liberalism
and social conservatism was not unique it decisively shaped his interpretation
of ethnic and racial matters and later lead him in a different direction,
Like many of his fellow Kennedy/Johnson
liberals, Moynihan took a technocratic approach to reform, trusting the power
of social scientific knowledge to diagnose and remedy social ills. Moynihan and
his peers in the policy community felt that use of statistics provided precise
and irrefutable proof of social patterns. As Geary argues the legitimacy of the
policy intellectual was linked to the perception that they were neutral
scientific advisers, not political partisans. They were social technicians,
using their knowledge to fine tune society. In Moynihan’s view the statistical
evidence in favor of what came to be called “Moynihan’s scissors” –the view
that welfare usage increased at the same time as employment increased -- was
definitive evidence that the mother-centered families in African American
culture led to a pathological dependency on government aid. Of course,
Moynihan’s evidence did not in fact “prove” this in any definite way. But his
assumption that a statistical correlation established a causal connection, and his
unexamined commitment to a patriarchal family structure, had lasting impacts on
welfare policy.
By the late 60’s Moynihan’s outlook began
to change. After Nixon was elected, Moynihan went to work for him, and while supporting
Nixon’s notion of a basic minimum income for all, he also famously counselled
Nixon to employ benign neglect in dealing with problems of race and poverty.
How did Moynihan’s analysis change its meaning and purpose? One answer is rooted in a changing perception
of what government can do to bring about change. Post war liberals’ faith in
scientifically directed social change and government intervention declined.
They felt that social engineering had failed. Now the source of social ills more
persistent; it was found in an excessive demand on government services it was
unable to fulfill. Radical groups wanted too much too fast. African-Americans
like other immigrant groups were supposed to “wait their turn” to get ahead.
Moynihan allied with the journal. The
Public Interest, the leading voice of neo-conservatives. Since centrist
liberals were also skeptical of the capacity of popular action to achieve
social change yet retained the pluralist model of liberal democracy, they had
no option but to preach quiescence. They had no answer to the demands for
greater equality and political participation by social movements.
Along with Glazer who felt that the ''The breakdown of traditional modes of behavior is the
chief cause of our social problems”, Moynihan
had become skeptical of creating change though deliberate social policy. While
Moynihan’s commitment to equality as well as civil rights still seems apparent
in his advocacy of a minimum wage, he was offended by the criticism of his work
as racist. In contrast, he was pleased by the praise of conservatives like
William Buckley who agreed with his emphasis on the moral deficiencies of the
African American family. In allying with the right Moynihan gave credence to a
fundamental rejection of equality that undermined his own position. His views were used to lend credence to the
conservative backlash against both civil rights and racial equality.
Greenbaum takes these issues in a more
radical direction than Geary. The Moynihan report is less a reflection of the
tensions in liberalism then its abandonment. She stresses the reception and use
of Moynihan’s ideas and not its inner tensions. For Greenbaum,
Moynihan’s
report came at a turning point in US history when funding for the adventurous
social programs of the Johnson administration was cut to provide funding for
the Vietnam war, and the urban riots of the 60’s were eroding support for
social programs. Moynihan’s report
fueled a backlash: “Framed as a policy document to help uplift poor black
families and correct past discrimination, it came to be regarded by both
supporters and distractors as an indictment of African American culture, a
pessimistic warning that legal rights and safety net programs would not be
enough.” (p. 2)
Certainly, both Greenbaum and Geary give attention
to the reception of Moynihan’s work. Critics challenged not just the causal
explanations contained in the report, but the interpretive frameworks and
normative commitments employed by Moynihan and his supporters. Black sociology
for example, challenged the privilege of liberals to interpret African American
experience to African Americans in an elitist way. Feminists challenged the
patriarchal assumptions about the family and extensive changes in family life. Moynihan
and his fellow centrist liberals however, proved singularly unable to
acknowledge some of the legitimate issues these critics raised.
Greenbaum’s book takes us beyond the
debates of the 70’s, where Geary’s book essentially ends, to demonstrate how
the long shadow of the Moynihan Report has had an impact on policy up to the
present. Whereas the neo-conservatives still supported some version of the
welfare state, the neo-liberalism of the 1980’s and beyond sought to roll it
back. Moynihan’s view of the pathological black family became part of an
activist and reactionary attempt to roll back the social welfare state. Greenbaum
follows these debates from the 80’s through to recent attempts to commodify and
privatize welfare and profit off the new neo-liberal deregulatory environment.
Moynihan’s original view of the mother
dominated family as the prime source of delinquency and crime found its way
into popular consciousness as a fear of the rebellious black man and the
denigration of the poor black women as a welfare queen. The latter revives the
old notion of the deserving poor. The images were carried forward to neo-liberal
approaches to poverty. “Increasingly” Greenbaum writes, “poverty has been
viewed as an individual problem that can be solved only by individuals making
changes that enable their ascension into the middle class – gaining new skills
or overcoming impediments like addiction.” (p 115). Neo-liberals pursue
remedies like improving the manners and motivation for the poor to make them
more acceptable to employers, to show proper work discipline and acceptance of
authority. Other reformers sought to promote marriage, upgrade parenting skills
and support for children to break the generational cycle of poverty. The lack
of personal responsibility, not social inequality and political domination are
the major causes of poverty.
Far from the benign neglect of the
neo-conservative era, Greenbaum thinks neo-liberalism introduces of new forms
of social engineering that are aimed at disciplining and shaping individual
behavior to conform with the neo-liberal behavioral ideals. Greenbaum traces the
consequences of the neo-liberal outlook on several issues, including marriage
promotion programs, which locate the key to poverty eradication in intact
families, the decimation of public housing which displaces the poor, breaks up
their culture (which it sees as the basis of their pathology) and isolates them
in the suburbs, to the criminalization of African American culture especially
youth, in which the stereotype of the pathological black family operates. She
also shows how these developments usher in a new type of governmental
surveillance and management of the poor. Fostered by groups like ALEC,
conservatives have gone on to promote laws that have reduced the discretion of
judges, increased mandatory sentences and created a permanent population of
prisoners incarcerated for relatively trivial crimes. Once the poor, especially
the African-American poor, are seen as criminal and socially deviant, punitive
government action is easily justified to change their behavior. For Greenbaum.
the carcerial state illustrates this a type of neo-liberal paternalism, a form
of governmental management of the poor and minorities. Similarly, the Clinton
era welfare to work reform, reinforced the image of the unproductive welfare recipient
incapable of middle class self-regulation. In order to qualify for aid
recipients are subject to constant testing for drugs and monitored for proof of
their willingness for work.
Still Greenbaum’s characterization of the
Clinton era reforms as reactionary is misleading. However misguided, DLC
centrists thought that by proposing a politics of personal responsibility they
would cut the ground under conservatives and set the stage for renewed
anti-poverty efforts.[1] Even Moynihan, however, by
then a senator, recognized the fallacies in this argument and foresaw the
likelihood that Clinton’s welfare reform would create greater extreme poverty. Counter
to Clinton’s expectations, these reforms did not generate support for
anti-poverty initiatives but served to reinforce preconceptions about the
pathological qualities of those who live in poverty. In her haste to document
the reactionary retrenchment of the welfare state she sometimes misses important
difference between the players.
Under neo liberalism many public
institutions were privatized and marketized including social services. With the
outsourcing of public services, a new group of entrepreneurs stepped in to fill
the lacuna. Greenbaum decries these private and even non-profit groups who benefit
financially from poverty. Her prime example is Ruby Payne’s aha! Process Program.
Although rooted in dubious social science and personal testimony, Payne successfully
marketed an anti-poverty program that claimed to discover the sources of
poverty in the distinctive class cultures of the poor, middle class and wealthy. The poor family is an intergenerational
structure which passes on poverty from its parents to its progeny and is
morally deficient. Greenbaum points out
the condescending character of Payne’s approach. She assumes that middle and upper class
reformers possess a moral and intellectual superiority. They know best how to
mentor poor people and remedy a culture that has left the poor with damaged
capacities and little self-control. Payne ignores widespread evidence the
wealthy are less compassionate and have fewer moral scruples than the rest of
society.
Taken together Geary and Greenbaum are
excellent guides to the career of Moynihan’s concept. They provide a cautionary
tale about the way in which the democratic impulses of postwar American
politics have been subverted by the tensions inherent in its dominant form of
liberal democratic practice. The distrust of popular initiatives and social
movements combined with the assumptions of elite expertise, inhibited movement
towards policies that would have bring structural reform and democratic
inclusion into the American political system. I prefer the historical
complexity of Geary’s approach to Greenbaum’s sometimes blanket characterization
of welfare policy as an uninterrupted process of reaction, but the reader will
profit from both studies. My main reservation concerns the fact that both authors
examine primarily elite and academic discussion and not the reception of these
ideas by ordinary citizens
Geary focuses primarily on the ideological
tensions in liberalism. Greenbaum however, raises questions of the social
construction of knowledge via the question of poverty knowledge: “how do we
know, or think we know what poverty is and, more important what are its causes”
(p 139). This is an important question but Greenbaum too focuses primarily on
how policy professionals and academics construct this knowledge and not the
knowledge of ordinary social actors.
Such an approach to the construction of everyday knowledge would have
fit well with her emphasis on studies that take the perspectives of the poor
seriously When she does take up questions of social construction, she sometimes
falls into functionalist platitudes. She claims that those in power tend to
like ideas that support their point of view even if they are poorly thought
out. While true, this is a circular
explanation. It does not tell us how power interests structure public discourse
for example though control of media, through social and political hegemony in
which issues are defined and their relevance delimited. More important it does not
show how the individuals accept these ideas and give them meaning in their own
lives. Why have many Americans accepted reactionary ideas and the
characterization of African American families as criminal or deviant? Why have authoritarian attitudes also
increased in our society.
Greenbaum rejects the approach of the
elite expert who wants to direct social change from above. Culture based welfare reform like relocating
poor, supporting marriage and individual tutoring are forms of expert driven neo-liberal
social engineering which have by and large failed. They rarely included
reference to the inequalities generated though political economic forces which
continue to undermine viable solutions. Instead of band aid solutions like
mentoring, structural reform is needed:” Without reforming distorted structures
of banking, real estate, criminal justice, public education and civic
participation” Greenbaum notes, “these measures will not stanch the tide of
poverty.” (p142) The real causes lie elsewhere in low wages and the lack of
jobs.
Greenbaum supports a collaborative
community approach, which hearkens back to some of the original anti-poverty
programs of the 60’s. It rests on the idea that “poor people have valuable
insights and creative energy to offer in finding solutions to the problems they
face” (p 145). Community organization and strong involvement by those directly
impacted by policy is a central to this approach to the problems of poverty. Moynihan
rejected community based approaches, and in the ensuing years, Greenbaum
thinks, the matter not has progressed much. Policy researchers do not listen to
the poor and do not take their experiences, feelings and concerns seriously.
Their voices are rarely heard and they often lack political influence. In
ignoring these voices however, researchers often employ their own middle class
assumptions and produce unsubstantiated research and poor policy. The reason
these failed approaches continue is not social scientific but ideological.
The
community based approach also requires that we change the relation of the
researcher and the policy analyst to groups studied. While Greenbaum does not reject empirical
research, she thinks we also need to incorporate interpretive approaches and
participant observation studies. We should try to understand individuals as
they understand themselves in their own social world. She is critical of an
excessive reliance on large date studies and quantitative methods. No matter
how sophisticated its techniques of measurement, social research is an
inherently normative enterprise. It is never value-free technical enterprise. This
is clear in Moynihan’s own work. Although his criticisms of the welfare state
were based in his moral concerns he claimed they were based in neutral
scientific research. Normative issues were concealed as empirical facts. Yet it
is impossible to separate out the normative elements from these policy
proposals.
I suggest that we need to take this idea
further. We need more collaborative notions of social research. Rather than being the subject or recipient of
socially engineered policies in which they study have no say, the members of
the community are active participants in both politics and policy.[2] Researches are co-participants
in this process. Their claims of expertise can never be assumed in advance.
They must be proven in action and discussion. Participants can articulate their
own concerns and organizing for their own benefit, but they also have the
capacity to criticize the assumptions, procedures and conclusions of those who
study them.
[1]
Schram, Sanford and Joe Soss 2006. “Welfare reform as a failed political
strategy: Evidence
and explanations for the stability of public opinion.” Focus
vol 24 no 3 :17-23; and Schram and Soss 2007. “A Public Transformed? Welfare
Reform as Policy Feedback.” APSR Vol
101 no 1:111-127
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