Moynihan and the Cultural Deficiency Thesis

 Critically discuss the ways in which ideas of Black inferiority and the place of Black people in the U.S. and the Diaspora are represented through negative ideas about Black culture; i.e. families, parental responsibility, poverty, sexuality, childbearing, and criminality/incarceration. Use as a basis of your discussion specific representations (i.e. narratives, arguments, presentations of data, etc.) of African American culture found in the work of D.P. Moynihan and/or the Moyers video. Please also discuss possible alternative structural explanations (economic, racial, gender) of the continued problems that Blacks have in U.S. society. Please give examples of how these explanations might account for some of the evidence presented in the Moyers video or Moynihan’s report. Finally, watch the excerpt from Larry Elder’s 2017 speech “the importance of fathers” and read the transcript of President Barack Obama’s 2008 Father’s Day speech and make a critical analysis of their presentations based on what you have learned about the cultural and structural bases of the problems they are addressing.

Culture and Power Essay Videos

Moyers Video: The Vanishing Family Crisis in Black America

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxWpiMSo2a8

Larry Elder: The Importance of Fathers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_gn06xrR6A

Text of Obama’s 2008 Fatherhood Speech

https://www.politico.com/story/2008/06/text-of-obamas-fatherhood-speech-011094