ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

The Negro Family: The Case For National Action

Okay, kiddo, have you ever heard about families? Families are a group of people who are related to each other and live together. Sometimes, a family might have a mom, a dad, and kids, or it might just be one parent and their kids, or even grandparents and cousins. There are all different kinds of families!

Now, a long time ago, there was a man named Daniel Patrick Moynihan who was worried about a certain group of families. This group of families were Black families, also known as Negro families. He was worried because many of these families were having a hard time, and he wanted to figure out why.

He wrote a big report called "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action" to try to explain what was going on. This report talked about how many Black families were poor, which means they didn't have a lot of money, and how lots of Black kids were growing up without a dad around.

Moynihan thought that the reason for this was because of a few things. First, he thought that slavery and racism had hurt Black families a long time ago, and that this had made it hard for them to get good jobs and be successful. Second, he thought that there were some things happening in Black communities that were making it hard for families to stay together, like crime and drugs.

Moynihan wanted the government to help by doing things like creating jobs and providing better education for Black kids, so that they could grow up to have good jobs and support their families. He also wanted the government to help stop crime and drugs in Black communities, so that families could feel safe and be able to stay together.

Some people agreed with Moynihan, but other people didn't like his report. They thought that he was blaming Black families for their problems, and that he wasn't taking into account the racism and discrimination that Black people faced.

So, to sum it up, Moynihan was worried about Black families and wrote a big report to try to figure out why so many of them were struggling. He thought that it was because of a lot of things, like slavery, racism, and crime, and he wanted the government to help by creating jobs and stopping crime so that families could be successful and happy.