Last week, I noted that Harvard’s Robert Putnam had made a rather baffling and slanderous statement about American Christians. As an empirical matter, it was utterly indefensible and not the kind of untrue generalization you would expect a prominent social scientist to indulge in. So, that was pretty bad.
Well, on Monday, via BuzzFeed, Robert Putnam said this:
It would appear that the candidate in question is Rick Santorum, who recently cited Putnam’s new book, Our Kids. Here’s what Santorum said:
“And he compared it when he was growing up in the 1950s and when children were conceived out of wedlock, what happened in the 1950s,” added Santorum. “We all know what happened in the 1950s and here is the amazing thing, this is Putnam saying this, 80 plus percent of these marriages succeeded.
“And children were raised in stable homes. Now these fathers leave the home and not just father children with that particular women, they father a child with another women, and another and another. We have created predators, sexual predators particularly where, again, Putnam—low income America.”
I haven’t read Our Kids and it’s certainly possible Santorum is misrepresenting Putnam’s work. But how Putnam gets from what Santorum actually said to characterizing it as “all black men are sexual predators” is inaccurate and again slanderous. It paints Santorum out to be racist, rather than quite validly concerned about the breakdown of family formation. Santorum even says “we have created predators,” as in all bear collective responsibility for the problem—and he further says it’s a problem of “low income America,” which is basically something Putnam himself acknowledges in his response. Santorum’s not invoking race at all.
Putnam owes Santorum an apology.
UPDATE — Putnam issues an apology:
Last week I carelessly but seriously misquoted Senator Santorum. I apologize to him unreservedly. @RickSantorum @weeklystandard
— Robert D. Putnam (@RobertDPutnam) May 19, 2015
