MY SAY-WHEN BLACK LIVES MATTERED IN 1965
In 1964 then Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan , launched a major study :The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, Begun in 1964 under President Kennedy it was completed the subsequent year under President Johnson and presented by the Office of Policy Planning and Research United States Department of Labor as a recommendation to implement The Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Chapters were:
- The Negro American Revolution
- The Negro American Family
- The Roots of the Problem
- The Tangle of Pathology
- The Case for National Action
On the “Revolution” Moynihan wrote:
The Negro American revolution is rightly regarded as the most important domestic event of the postwar period in the United States. Nothing like it has occurred since the upheavals of the 1930’s which led to the organization of the great industrial trade unions, and which in turn profoundly altered both the economy and the political scene.
The Negro American revolution holds forth the prospect that the American Republic, which at birth was flawed by the institution of Negro slavery, and which throughout its history has been marred by the unequal treatment of Negro citizens, will at last redeem the full promise of the Declaration of Independence.
“…. the Negro leadership has conducted itself with the strictest propriety, acting always and only as American citizens asserting their rights within the framework of the American political system.”
Moynihan underestimated the breakout of violent and seditious groups like Black Muslims, The Student non Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)- founded as a pacifist organization, it became radical and Maoist and the Black Panthers a socialist political organization founded by Marxist college students Bobby Seale and Huey Newton who publicly proclaimed themselves as Maoists and anti-capitalism, anti-racism and anti-Zionism.
The principal challenge of the next phase of the Negro revolution is to make certain that equality of results will now follow.
To guarantee equality of results was both Utopian and detrimental.
The rest of the report focuses on the need to shore up the crumbling Negro family.
The emphasis on the family led to false accusations that Moynihan “blamed the victim” with the result that the problems the report addressed never received the serious attention they deserved.
Nonetheless the report along with The Civil Rights Act led to major reparation policies, the best known being affirmative action.
In many respects, the outcome was impressive. There are now many more black college graduates, many more blacks in high level jobs in the media, in the academies, in the professions, in business and in the corridors of power. It would be patronizing to list the number of highly qualified and well-placed Black Americans.
In the greatest act of moral reparation of all, Americans elected a Black president for two terms- something no Jew, or Hispanic-or Asian American has achieved.
Which brings us to Black Lives Matter and the present so called “revolution.”
The George Floyd killing should have elicited fair, and honest, and data-based debate on police tactics. Instead Black Lives Matter has become an occasionally violent movement, taken over by screeching “progressives” (many of them white) who tear down statues, burn our flag, bash and libel our democracy, yell anti-Semitic tropes and achieve nothing-nada- zilch. Instead of leaders of the caliber of Martin Luther King and Bayard Rustin and James Farmer we have scammers like Al Sharpton.
Can one honestly name one unjustly treated or drug and crime affected family whose lives have been ameliorated by Black Lives Matter?
The honest answer is no and the fault lies with the void in genuine leadership and the groveling (literally) acquiescence of both politicians and the general public.
The worst example of pandering is the Democrat’s $350 billion reparations measure to address a mythical “systemic racism” at a time when Americans of all races are severely impacted by a pandemic.
Comments are closed.
