From the wild Irish slums of the 19th-century Eastern seaboard to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles, is one unmistakable lesson in American history: a community that allows large numbers of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future–that community asks for and gets chaos. Crime, violence, unrest, disorder. . .are not only to be expected, they are very near to inevitable." - Daniel Moynihan-1965.
It's a statement that rings true today, just as it did forty years ago.
I think everyone should read the Moynihan Report. This document, known then as "The Negro Family: The Case For National Action," held that many of the problems of American blacks resulted from the instability of black urban families. The report was leaked to the media in July 1965, one month before the devastating riots in Watts, and called for more government action to improve the economic prospects of black families.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a sociologist and assistant secretary for policy planning and research at the Labor Department. He became a prominent U.S. Senator representing New York and later served as an adviser to President Richard Nixon.
Moynihan urged that the Federal Government adopt a national policy for the reconstruction of the black family. He laid out clear arguments, noting that the real cause of the troubles in the black community was not so much segregation or a lack of voting power. He recognized the structure of the Negro family was highly "unstable and in many urban centers…approaching complete breakdown."
Moynihan presciently revealed that…
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Clayton Craddock is a father, independent thinker, and the founder and publisher of the social and political commentary newsletter Think Things Through and host of the Think Things Through Podcast.
He's an alumnus of Howard University and is the drummer for the Broadway musical Ain't Too Proud - The Life and Times Of The Temptations.
Other musicals include: "Tick, tick…BOOM!, Altar Boyz, Memphis The Musical, and Lady Day At Emerson's Bar and Grill. Also, Clayton has worked on: Footloose, Motown, The Color Purple, Rent, Little Shop of Horrors, Spongebob Squarepants, The Musical, Evita, Cats, and Avenue Q.
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