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-----Original Message----- From: femecon-l at bucknell.edu [mailto:femecon-l at bucknell.edu] On Behalf Of Robert Cherry Sent: Monday, November 02, 1998 8:58 PM To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re: Race in America
Just a short comment on part of Mary's assessment. It is interesting how much grief Moynihan gets without realizing that he was repeating essentially the same culture-of-poverty arguments found in Myrdal's work. Both associate the dysfunctionality of the black family with structural factors -- as William Wilson does in his Declining Significance of Race. I am not claiming Moynihan should be defended but it is not helpful to single him out. I had the same problem with the term "Reaganomics" since it suggested that what happened under his administration (with a Democratic Congress) was much different than what happened in the last years of the Carter Administration. BTW, it may be of interest that Myrdal's culture-of-poverty had its origins in the work of Louis Wirth -- his major white American informal consultant - - who developed this thesis in his study of the cultural differences between urbanized German Jewish and rural (shtetl) eastern European Jewish immigrants.
Wirth subsequently applied his thesis concerning the alleged dysfunctional adaption of rural immigrants to urban areas to his "explain" why there was so much black juvenile deliquency and family break up when blacks migrated to the North after WWII. In this sense, William J. Wilson's work was substantially in the tradition of the Sociology Dept at Chicago. For those interested in the details, see my Journal of Economic Issues Dec 1995 article.
Best, Robert Cherry ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - NOTICE FOR JOURNALISTS AND RESEARCHERS: Please ask for written permission from all direct participants before quoting any material posted on FEMECON-L.