A Dark Secret Too Scandalous to Confront: Did the Moynihan Report Imply That Poor Black Caregivers' Parenting Styles and Childhood Cruelties Were Strongly Correlated With Self-Perpetuating Pathologies?

Abstract

In this article, I attempt to mine what were the deeper implications of Moynihan's effort through his Report to identify the problems that were confronting the poor, black urban family, and using interpersonal neurobiology, attachment theory, and early childhood trauma theory, I interrogate the meaning of disorganized of the black family and the contributing factors of pathologies. by examining these critical concepts through the aforementioned theories, I hope to learn if Moynihan was directing our attention by implication at the parenting styles of poor, black urban families, and at the source, along with the legacies of racism, that contributed to why black children and adolescents were woefully lagging behind their peers and committing social dislocation issues like crime. By taking seriously the teachings of these theories, I believe that they would reveal a dark secret within poor, black urban families that few people, including Moynihan, wanted to confront directly. After controlling for the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, which had only legally died in 1964, and thus modern discrimination, that dark secret would be disruptions caused by childhood trauma early in the infant child's relationship with her black family caregivers. These disruptions and their negative, downstream effects would be correlated with the findings that Moynihan so clearly illustrated in his Report. By necessity, then, such disruptions would affected the black infants' right brain development, which would contribute to their inability to self-regulate and to adapt and thrive adequately not only at home but also at school and in their community. In short, white racism and its legacy don't account for the weak, disorganized structure of the poor black family and self-perpetuating pathologies more than the impact of the earliest disruption in the black infants and caregivers' relationship caused by early childhood cruelties and maltreatment.