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Benign neglect was a policy proposed in 1969 by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was at the time on President Richard Nixon's staff as an urban affairs adviser. While serving in this capacity, he sent the President a memo suggesting, "The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of 'benign neglect.' The subject has been too much talked about. The forum has been too much taken over to hysterics, paranoids, and boodlers on all sides. We need a period in which Negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades."[1]
The policy was designed to ease tensions after the American Civil Rights Movement of the late 1960s. Moynihan was particularly troubled by the speeches of Vice-President Spiro Agnew. However, the policy was widely seen as an abandonment of urban neighborhoods, particularly ones with a majority black population, as Moynihan's statements and writings appeared to encourage, for instance, fire departments engaging in triage to avoid a supposedly futile war against arson.[2]
A Rand Institute report suggested that many of the fires in the South Bronx and Harlem were arson, but subsequent analysis of the data did not back this up. Of the fires in buildings, only very few were arson, and that portion was not higher than the rate of proven arson found in wealthier neighborhoods. However, influenced by the report, Moynihan went on to make recommendations for urban policy based on the assumption that there was "widespread arson" in poverty stricken neighborhoods like the South Bronx and Harlem. To Moynihan, arson was one of many social pathologies caused by large cities that would benefit from benign neglect.[2]
From Wiki....More from NY Times
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/benign-neglect/?_r=0
A year later, another Nixon aide, Patrick Buchanan, drafted a memo recommending that racial tensions be exploited to debilitate the Democratic Party. Mr. Buchanan hoped to saddle the Democrats with a voluble and divisive race conflict, maybe even a black vice presidential nominee, to “cut the Democratic Party and country in half.” The object, he wrote, was for Republicans to inherit the larger, whiter part.
Inherit they did. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush both used racial polarization to advance their campaigns and employed a durable “tax and spend” critique of Democrats that served as a rhetorical iceberg — with only the polite part showing. Beneath the surface lay the bulk of the warning: Democrats will tax whites and spend on blacks.
It wasn’t until June 1992 that a Democrat managed to break the ice. That’s when Bill Clinton pre-empted Republican attacks by denouncing the black rapper Sister Souljah, using her as a symbol of black culture run amok. Mr. Clinton won back some white Democrats who had voted Republican in previous years and went on as president to enact welfare reform, further neutralizing racial rhetoric.
The policy was designed to ease tensions after the American Civil Rights Movement of the late 1960s. Moynihan was particularly troubled by the speeches of Vice-President Spiro Agnew. However, the policy was widely seen as an abandonment of urban neighborhoods, particularly ones with a majority black population, as Moynihan's statements and writings appeared to encourage, for instance, fire departments engaging in triage to avoid a supposedly futile war against arson.[2]
A Rand Institute report suggested that many of the fires in the South Bronx and Harlem were arson, but subsequent analysis of the data did not back this up. Of the fires in buildings, only very few were arson, and that portion was not higher than the rate of proven arson found in wealthier neighborhoods. However, influenced by the report, Moynihan went on to make recommendations for urban policy based on the assumption that there was "widespread arson" in poverty stricken neighborhoods like the South Bronx and Harlem. To Moynihan, arson was one of many social pathologies caused by large cities that would benefit from benign neglect.[2]
From Wiki....More from NY Times
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/benign-neglect/?_r=0
A year later, another Nixon aide, Patrick Buchanan, drafted a memo recommending that racial tensions be exploited to debilitate the Democratic Party. Mr. Buchanan hoped to saddle the Democrats with a voluble and divisive race conflict, maybe even a black vice presidential nominee, to “cut the Democratic Party and country in half.” The object, he wrote, was for Republicans to inherit the larger, whiter part.
Inherit they did. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush both used racial polarization to advance their campaigns and employed a durable “tax and spend” critique of Democrats that served as a rhetorical iceberg — with only the polite part showing. Beneath the surface lay the bulk of the warning: Democrats will tax whites and spend on blacks.
It wasn’t until June 1992 that a Democrat managed to break the ice. That’s when Bill Clinton pre-empted Republican attacks by denouncing the black rapper Sister Souljah, using her as a symbol of black culture run amok. Mr. Clinton won back some white Democrats who had voted Republican in previous years and went on as president to enact welfare reform, further neutralizing racial rhetoric.
