Edward C. Banfield - Involvement With Government Aid Programs

Involvement With Government Aid Programs

He worked for several government agencies, traveled in the West, and observed the effects of government projects. Although he initially supported President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, he gradually became skeptical of government attempts to construct housing, support the arts, etc. Long before Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society programs, Banfield had decided that government aid to the poor would make the givers of aid feel virtuous, but wouldn’t improve the lives of the receivers of aid. He argued that "the real reason for the passage" of the legislation establishing the National Endowment for the Arts "was, and is, to benefit . . . the culture industry of New York City."

Banfield's views were controversial, and The Unheavenly City sparked much debate. According to MacInnes, Banfield:

made a simple and well-documented case that the problems played out in ghetto neighborhoods were a consequence of concentrated lower-class populations. Race was not the critical issue, he said. The black poor, Banfield suggested, were no different from other (white) lower-class Americans: they had no fondness for work, no strong family ties, an easy acceptance of criminal behavior, no brief for schooling, and no future perspective. Banfield argued that even well-pruned government programs could not undo the harm caused by class differences. For this sin, Banfield was effectively banished from one campus after another, his books vandalized, his lectures shouted down, and his sponsors threatened.

His Harvard colleagues described him as “an individual with a strong and distinctive character that impressed itself on all who met him,” and as a man who enjoyed “the delights of humor, long meals, and friendly company." Banfield had "a reputation as a brilliant maverick", and his "books and articles had a sharp contrarian edge. He was a critic of almost every mainstream liberal idea in domestic policy, especially the use of Federal aid to help relieve urban poverty."

Banfield taught many conservative scholars, including James Q. Wilson and Thomas Sowell. He also taught Christopher DeMuth and Bruce Kovner, leading figures at the conservative think-tank, American Enterprise Institute. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1961.