White Middle Class Culture

Implicit in the concept of cultural deprivation, however, is the notion that the dominant White middle-class culture established that normative standard discussed earlier in these writings. Thus, any behaviors, values, and lifestyles that differed from the Euro-American norm were seen as deficient. By and large, the model of the Black family that has received the most attention has been the deficit-deficiency model. This model begins with the historical assumption that there was no carry over from Africa to America of any sophis- ticated African based form of family life in communal living. The assumption further indicates that either viable patterns of family life did not exist because Africans were incapable of creating them or they were destroyed beginning with slavery in the separation of biological parents and children, forced breed- ing, the slave master’s sexual exploitation of Black women, and the cumulative effects of three hundred years of economic social discrimination. The deficit- deficiency model assumes that as a result of this background of servitude, depri- vation, second-class citizenship, and chronic unemployment, Black adults have not been able to develop marketable skills, self-sufficiency, future orientation, planning and decision-making competencies, and instrumental behaviors thought to be necessary for sustaining a successful two-parent nuclear family while guiding children through the socialization process.

A variation of the deficit-deficiency model was the Black matriarchy model. In a society that placed a premium on decisive male leadership in the family, the Black male was portrayed as lacking the masculine sex role behav- iors characterized by logical thinking, willingness to take responsibility for oth- ers, assertiveness, managerial skills, achievement orientation, and occupational mastery.