Building the Blame

Chapter 4 explores the fate of the idea of a culture of poverty, tracing how it went from an idea articulated mostly by liberals for ostensibly liberal reasons to being a popular idea on the neoconservative right. It particularly explores how Daniel Patrick Moynihan contributed to this conservative version of the culture of poverty by his refusal to recognize the problems with the Moynihan Report and his engagement with neoconservative outlets and authors. Critiques of the culture of poverty articulated by leftists and civil rights activists are also explored, contrasting their emphases to that of Moynihan and other liberals and neoconservatives. The work of Edward Banfield is presented as the culmination of an idea which, while it originally tried to justify helping the black poor, ultimately ended up assisting a reactionary turn against them. The chapter argues, however, that this potential was built into the culture of poverty idea as articulated by liberalism, embedded as it was in racial capitalism. As it concludes, racial liberalism is liberal racism.

A Culture of Poverty

Chapter 3 traces the history of the idea of a culture of poverty while unpacking its racist content. Of particular importance is Daniel Patrick Moynihan and his report on the black family, known as the Moynihan Report. Chapter 3 explores how Moynihan distilled various tropes and memes in articulating a theory of black poverty that placed the primary blame on the supposed pathologies of the black family and community. Chapter 3 also explains the background of that idea and how the various versions of it differed, looking at the writing and work of Oscar Lewis, Michael Harrington, and Kenneth Clark among others. Also emphasized is how the culture of poverty idea allowed liberals to sidestep the issue of the role of capitalism and the market in black poverty, making it very effective for maintaining racial capitalism even during the height of the challenge from below the civil rights movement presented.

The Drinking Water

Chapter 1 analyses the postwar body of political thought known as pluralism. It explores the work of key contributors to this body of thought such as David Riesman, Seymour Martin Lipset, and Daniel Bell, organizing the chapter by the different themes or memes they participated in and articulated. Chapter 1 presents the argument that pluralism deeply shaped postwar liberalism and infused it with the conviction that American political institutions were the best in the world and truly open to all who wanted to participate. However, pluralists also feared the poor, who they associated with ignorance and authoritarianism.

Conclusion

The conclusion connects the historical significance of Great Society liberalism to contemporary politics. In particular, it highlights how the abandonment of the black poor and the rise of mass incarceration were assisted by the idea of a culture of poverty, which ended up justifying harsher and more punitive measures to deal with the social fallout of the intergenerational poverty racial capitalism produced. It concludes with an argument that in order for the left to work towards a truly transformative politics, it must abandon the idea that certain liberal tenets can be used to achieve radical ends.

Diagnosing Poverty

Chapter 2 tells the story of liberal programs designed to try and reduce poverty in the inner cities. This includes both federal programs and private programs, often supported by federal funding. The focus is on the sociological theory behind many of these programs, which justified themselves on having a fresh new approach to the problem of poverty. Key figures included Leonard Cottrell and Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin. Cloward and Ohlin in particular worked on one of the most celebrated antipoverty programs, Mobilization for Youth in New York City. However, the chapter also unpacks how these programs and theories reflected the assumption that poor people were dysfunctional and had to be taught how to participate in their own local democracies, laying the groundwork for the idea of a culture of poverty.

Introduction

The Introduction lays out the subject matter of the book, identifies key assumptions and methodological choices, presents the core arguments, and identifies the intended audience for the book. It opens with the story of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s famous speech on black poverty at Howard University to introduce the subject matter. It then articulates the argument that liberalism is historically entwined with racism, and that American liberalism is much more intertwined with conservativism than is generally recognized, and that the concept of racial capitalism is particularly useful for understanding this. The Introduction makes clear that the book is an intellectual history of postwar liberal thinking on black poverty, particularly the idea of a culture of poverty.