Blaming the Victim

1971, 1972 Vintage Books edition
William Ryan
Blaming the Victim
Original price $1.95, purchase price unknown
Worn paperback with split spine
B+

Ryan actually popularized the title phrase, although it has since been broadened to include an array of "victims."  Here he's talking about the way that the poor, particularly Negroes (still the term he prefers, although "blacks" and "Afro-Americans" were being used by some at that point), were blamed for their problems.  His common sense is refreshing, as he repeatedly but necessarily says that the main problem of the poor is, not their family structure or table manners or other personal flaws, but their lack of money.  Although Ryan and others debunked the concept of "culture of poverty," it still pops up, so in a way this book sadly is not that dated.  Indeed, first reading it in the late '80s, I was struck by how Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat and a "liberal" but hardly a progressive, was still spouting the same nonsense that Ryan quotes here.

The most dated aspect of the book is the conclusion, with its various suggested solutions.  For instance, charter schools don't exactly help the problem of substandard schools.  But overall, Ryan's bitter wit, combined with his hope for positive change, and his down-to-earth logic provide a breath of fresh air.  Ryan was a white professor and activist, who-- with his wife and children-- lived for a time in "bad neighborhoods," and seems to have had a great deal of empathy with poor people of all races.  The best chapter is on slumlords, including the description of a coloring book that teaches children and parents the dangers of lead paint.  Meanwhile, the landlords who used the deadly paint weren't being punished legally or otherwise.  In fact, the next chapter has Mrs. Ryan confronting the redevelopment administrator of New Haven, who admits, "There are law violations and there are law violations."

Despite the split spine, I think this book can stand up to another reading or two, and I'm not ready to give it up anyway.  For the first time, I have to divide a year on the bookcase and put this book one shelf down, because I have so many more books from the 1960s than earlier decades.  Yes, we're technically now into the 1970s, but this book shows that the various political movements of the 1960s were far from over.  It is funny though that my 1963 to '71 bookshelf goes from a book on Mrs. Grundy to a closeted gay media critic complaining about how sexual movies and to a lesser degree television had become.