WEBVTT

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- Moynihan, as
early as early 1964,

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is writing memoranda about the
need to do something special

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for poor Black people as
opposed to all poor people.

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- I felt that the great crises

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having to do with the
protection of the liberties

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of Negro Americans in the South

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were probably coming to an end.

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Seemed to me that we would
now turn to the problems

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of the northern ghettos,
the northern slums,

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where just passing a law
wasn't going to change things,

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where problems were
much more difficult.

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- [Narrator] Moynihan's
interest in urban Black poverty

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was triggered in part by a
study he had led a year earlier.

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Eager to boost its ranks
during the Cold War,

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the military was concerned
that too many men

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were failing their exams.

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What Moynihan found was
that many of them came

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from single parent homes and
a disproportionate number

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were impoverished Black men.

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(soft piano music)

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- Moynihan sat down to write
his report on the Black family,

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which was titled
"The Negro Family:

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The Case for National
Action," on January 1st,

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or thereabouts, 1965, and
with the help of Paul Barton,

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the chief aid, finished it
in the remarkably quick time

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of a little more
than three months.

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- [Politician]
That report began,

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"The United States is
facing a new crisis

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in race relations."

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(melancholic piano music)

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- Teenage unemployment
in the Negro world today

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is almost 25%.

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That is a social crime.

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That's an outrage.

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- He was one of
the first scholars

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to integrate
structural analysis,

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for example, the problems of
urbanization, joblessness,

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Jim Crow segregation, and so on,

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and their effects on
the Black population.

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And cultural analysis, that
is a way Blacks respond

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to chronic racial and
economic subordination.

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And sometimes the
response is problematic.

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- The very start of the
second chapter says,

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"At the heart of the
deterioration of the fabric

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of Negro society is
the deterioration of
the Negro family."

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- [Narrator] Moynihan
immersed himself

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in a raft of statistics
that convinced him

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impoverished Black families
were under enormous stress,

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their children deeply affected.

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By 1960, nearly 24%
of these families

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were headed by single parents.

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This was some
eight times greater

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than the rate for
white families.

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- How'd you learn how to behave?

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From your father and your mother
and the people around you.

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Well, supposing
there is no father,

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where children are just brought
up without that support,

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which a family gives it,
then what do you end up with?

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You end up a cycle
reproducing itself.

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(somber music)

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- Various columns appeared,
including one by Evans

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and Novak, who were famous
columnists in those days.

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That was titled "The
Moynihan Report."

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That's probably the first time

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that it really became
known that way.

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(somber music continues)

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- And then people started
associating the Watts riot

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with the Black family.

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This is a cause
of the Watts riot.

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The deterioration
of the families

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helped to trigger these riots.

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- If you're, say, in
the activist community

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and you're an African
American, well, the first lens

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that you have on the "Moynihan
Report" is from Mary McCrory

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or, you know, it's
from Evans and Novak.

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That's the lens through
which you read this report.

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(tense music)

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- It came from a
white intellectual

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at what could not
have been conceived

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as anything but poor
timing because it overrode

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what certainly the African
American leadership

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and community believed
needed to be exercised.

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Alright, government, for 150
years, you've done nothing.

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No legislation against
job discrimination.

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No legislation giving
people the right to vote.

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The poll tax still out there.

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If you were a white
man in Mississippi,

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you could go to work
in a laboring job

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and become middle class.

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If you were a Black man that
had the same non-skills,

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you couldn't get a job at all.

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What are you gonna
do about that?

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You're talking about my family?

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Anything.

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The Black family, along
with the Black churches,

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all that kept the
Black community whole.

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- This is Ned Brooks inviting
you to "Meet the Press."

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Our guest today is the author
of the controversial study,

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"The Negro Family,"
Mr. Daniel P. Moynihan.

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- Pat was blindsided by
the reaction of the left

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to what he was saying.

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- What's your
explanation for the fact

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that it is being criticized
for fostering immune racism?

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- I think there may have
been a misunderstanding.

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I was trying to show that
unemployment statistics,

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which are so dull and
you've read so many of them

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and you don't know
what they may mean,

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they're hard to believe,
that unemployment nonetheless

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ended up with orphaned children,
with abandoned mothers,

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with men living furtive lives
without even an address,

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that unemployment had flesh and
blood in it, it could bleed.

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- One of the reasons why
"The Moynihan Report"

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ended up blowing up
in Moynihan's face

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is the document was never
meant for public perusal.

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It is written in a
very bombastic way.

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It was written to get the
attention of politicians.

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(dramatic music)