ABSTRACT
Daniel Patrick Moynihan became famous by calling attention to the racialized configuration of the American city. With an unflinching eye, Moynihan’s view of history led him to forecast key social trends and identify multiple challenges confronting urban America in the decade following Brown vs. Board of Education. Nothing in his view was more salient than the “tangle of pathology” in the black ghetto, by which he meant the strong clustering of numerous social problems. 1 The language was blunt and ignited a firestorm of protest that was not soon forgotten. 2 To this day the term “pathology” is avoided by social scientists.
