This is Planet Money from NPR.

When Andre Perry went to college, he was already becoming something of a policy nerd.

He wanted to study history and political science and spend time in the basement of the library

reading official government reports from the 1960s.

One of the first reports I read was the Moynihan report.

And for those who don't know is a significant report in the 60s that provided a state of

black America, so to speak.

And this was something Andre knew a little bit about Zing as he grew up in black America.

In fact, he grew up in the small predominantly black town of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, surrounded

on three sides by Pittsburgh.

And the report was essentially about life in a town like that.

It was written in 1965 by Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

At the time he was the assistant secretary of labor, but he would go on to become this

famous liberal senator from New York.

The report was called the Negro family, the case for national action.

So the original goal of this report was to understand the roots of racial inequality

and economic and sociological analysis.

But when Andre read it, he thought this conclusion seems very off.

It said a horrible example of blaming poverty on black women's marital behaviors and living

arrangements.

Moynihan argued that decades of segregation and oppression forced black families into

a metriarchal family structure, families headed by women.

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