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Larry Elder, Fatherless Homes, and Executive Decisions
In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Assistant Secretary of Labor under President Lyndon Johnson, published The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, which became one of the most controversial documents of the 20th century.
The Moynihan Report claimed that the welfare state’s gradual expansion harmed black family structures and that the high proportion of families headed by single mothers made it difficult for them to achieve economic parity with the white majority. According to Moynihan, the rise of black single-mother families is the result of a damaging “ghetto culture” rooted in slavery rather than structural poverty.
The civil rights community condemned The Moynihan Report for paternalism, racism, and blaming the victims rather than the system. After reading the report, conservatives believed that reversing cultural pathologies was more important than resolving systemic issues.
Libertarians, on the other hand, have used The Moynihan Report as evidence to eliminate the welfare state. According to libertarians, the welfare state fosters a culture of dependency rather than a community of self-reliance.
For the next four decades, black libertarian and economist Walter E. Williams argued that the welfare state had caused an epidemic of fatherlessness in black…