QUESTION: So the high illegitimacy ratio that you saw in the black community in the early 1960s climbs enormously within the black community. But later it also climbs in the white community – to a point where it is higher than the so-called crisis that you originally pointed out. A few years go by, and it's not just out-of-wedlock births; it’s an increase in crime; it’s an increase in welfare. There's a lot of things going on. There's drug usage. And you write an essay called, “Defining Deviancy Down.”
SEN. MOYNIHAN: Yes.
QUESTION: It seems to me that there’s a linkage there as well. Could you describe to me what’s happening in the world, what’s happening in your mind as you see this evolution?
SEN. MOYNIHAN: [Let me] give you a little background. This is sort of academic, but it’s the real world too. In the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as it was going through a long process, a little clause was put in saying there should be a survey of equality of educational opportunity. We had to demonstrate how separate schools were inherently unequal. And that was before things progressed such that the law outlawed dual school systems. But the little provision was still in there.
And a friend of mine, James S. Coleman – a great sociologist – was asked to do this survey. And when he undertakes it, they said, “why are you doing this? Everybody knows these schools are unequal in their facilities and that’s why they're unequal in their outcomes.” He said, “Well, everybody knows it, but now we'll know it for once and all.”
And I'll tell you, early one evening, there's a reception at the Harvard Faculty Club, and Seymour Martin Lipset – the incomparable Marty Lipset – walks in, sees me, comes over and says, “You know what Coleman's finding, don't you?” And I said, “No.” He said, “It's all family.”
And, indeed what [Coleman] found [was that] the predictor of educational achievement was to be found in family setting, structure, and so forth.
QUESTION: Not in schools? Not principally?
SEN. MOYNIHAN: Not principally in schools. Now, and he was the sort of first major person in that difficult decade who found out things that he shouldn't have found out. Actually, there was an effort – not very serious, but an effort – to expel him from the American Sociological Association.
QUESTION: For telling the truth?
SEN. MOYNIHAN: Well, for finding out information that was unwelcome.
http://www.pbs.org/fmc/interviews/moynihan.htm