“Philip N. Cohen: It's complicated, because Moynihan started his whole report saying we had hundreds of years of racial oppression that had brought us to the point he was writing at in 1965. But he went on to say that as of [that point], the main problem facing the black population was the problem of absent fathers, single mothers, and problems associated with nonstandard family structure.
To understand the reaction against it, you have to look back at what was happening in 1965: the Civil Rights Act, the transition to the black power era of the civil rights movement. ... There was a strong sense against victim-blaming attitudes already, and it crystallized among those criticizing Moynihan. It became a catalyst for people to latch onto.
So the idea that the liberal backlash squelched the report comes from the same sort of "politically correct" criticism of literature or of leftists that we have in academia today. The myth is the idea that the defenders of the black community were so vociferous and their criticism was so toxic that everyone steered away from asking hard questions like, "What if black fathers were more responsible?" and "What if black couples stayed together?"
[Sociologist] Williams Julius Wilson introduced [his 1987 book] The Truly Disadvantaged by saying no one has wanted to talk about this since [the backlash against the Moynihan report in] the 1960s and "liberal scholars shied away from researching behavior construed as unflattering or stigmatizing." That was a little bit of drama and hyperbole. It wasn't that people were afraid; it's that they didn't agree.
There was actually an explosion of research focused on black family resilience, extended families, and non-kin family networks that allowed people to survive in really harsh conditions, rather than beating up on people for not being married…
The myth-making aspect of that is that of course we have always known family structure was important and that single-parent families have fewer resources, and there are obvious challenges associated with that — but as an explanation for why people are poor or why the black population is poorer than the white population, it's just not a good explanation.”
I think there is a big difference between political correctness and uncertainty/cowardice based on laziness/lack of access to useful education on a range of topics. There is a big difference between political correctness and the use of veiled euphemisms. Political correctness, from my perspective, should be a system of politeness around identity issues – living the recognition that we can’t know others’ experiences and must respect their self-identification above our perceptions of them. And it’s a system that can fall away as you get to know someone better and establish mutual trust.
It’s like, the first time you go to a friend’s house, you ask them what to do with your shoes and where to set your bag. Once you have learned the rules, you continue to act on them – and then, over time, as you both become more comfortable with each other, you are allowed to drop your bag wherever and get yourself a glass of water
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