The removal of legal obstacles to equality of opportunity did not directly lead—and has not yet led—to equal results for African Americans considered as a group. Partly as a result, the demand for greater equality of outcomes has risen—especially in matters economic, where the black-white income gap continues to widen. But already in 1965, in the heady days of the Civil Rights Movement and its legislative victories outlawing overt racial discrimination, a government report called attention to what it called “a new crisis in race relations,” based on the need to help the disintegrating black family in order to attain full group equality for African Americans. The report, written by Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927–2003), Harvard sociologist, author, diplomat, advisor to four presidents, and three-term senator from the state of New York, called for major federal government programs to aid the black family and to help blacks achieve equal success and status in the United States. The present excerpt comprises the report’s Preface and Chapter 1 (“The Negro American Revolution”). Although widely attacked for what some called “blaming the victim,” the report played a crucial role in expanding the role of the federal government in antipoverty and family welfare programs.
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