War on Poverty

March 30, 2024

How many of our personal problems are caused by external social and economic conditions, and how many of them are caused by ourselves through our internal choices?

This was the main question that occurred to me last night as I watched the American Masters program “Moynihan” on PBS.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a poor Irish kid who grew up in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of New York City during the Great Depression. His unemployed father abandoned the family, so after school Moynihan had various jobs such as being a shoe shine boy on the streets of his neighborhood.

A bright kid, Moynihan did well in public schools, then worked as a longshoreman, joined the Navy in 1944, then went to college. He eventually worked as Assistant Secretary for Labor under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, became an advisor to President Nixon, and later in his career was a Harvard professor, the American ambassador to the United Nations, and a U.S. Senator from New York.

Having come from a broken family living in impoverished conditions, Moynihan understood from personal experience the challenges facing low income people. He was especially alarmed by the breakdown of black families, and in 1965 while working for Lyndon Johnson he wrote a report entitled “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.” Commonly known as the Moynihan Report, it called for creating jobs and vocational training for black men, whose high unemployment rates caused them, like Moynihan’s father, to abandon their families to lives of poverty.

But the Moynihan Report became controversial because many black leaders resented his calling attention to the prevalence of single mothers having children without the financial and emotional support of the children’s fathers. Those civil rights leaders, then and now, prefer to blame the persistent dysfunction of black families and the resultant crime, addictions, and poverty on society at large, rather than on a lack of emphasis on strong nuclear families and the importance of education.

In 1965 I was 13 years old, and though I did not know about the Moynihan Report at that time, I was well aware of, and believed in, Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty and his efforts on behalf of black civil rights. I believed that the federal government could play a constructive role in overcoming the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow segregation. And now, almost 60 years later, I still believe that – up to a point.

Yes, black people in this country are still at a disadvantage, although much progress has been made since 1965. But black people are at a disadvantage in every country in which they find themselves, whether in Haiti, Brazil, the African countries, or elsewhere. The question I asked myself last night as I watched the PBS program “Moynihan” was, how can we humans – all of us – overcome our challenges? Whether our obstacles are racial barriers, health problems, family pathologies, addictions, homelessness, or financial difficulties, are these troubles the result of social inequalities, or are they a deeper reflection of a poverty of spirit, a human ignorance of our minds or souls and our oftentimes unconscious roles as creators of our experience?

Last night, after watching the Moynihan program but before going to sleep, I read an excerpt from a Buddhist book that reminded me of a fundamental Buddhist teaching from the Dhammapada:

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. Speak or act with an impure mind and trouble will follow you…Speak or act with a pure mind and happiness will follow you.

In other words, the mind is powerful. Intentions and focus are powerful. Our inner life determines our outer life.

Socially we can practice kindness and generosity to the less fortunate, but spiritually each person has to find his or her own way.

I don’t know how Daniel Patrick Moynihan managed to turn on his inner light. I respect his efforts to address the social problems of his day. And I also believe that, regardless of our external circumstances, each of us has the resilience and creativity to tap into our inner resources to choose a life of dignity and well being.

A true war on poverty succeeds through an awakening of the spirit.