Many individuals in the country are struggling to make ends meet on a good day, so what happens when disaster strikes? They are unprepared, have a harder time recovering, and their risk and devastation are increased in the disaster. Class inequality impacts individuals on the lower end of the scale. They have less access to resources to prepare themselves before the disaster strikes, and after disaster strikes they have even less resources to recover with. Lower class individuals are also at a higher risk of devastation during a disaster because they cannot always escape before the disaster hits or have the potential to live in areas that are less likely to be affected. Individuals with less resources are often times unprepared for disasters because all of their time, money, and energy is spent on what is currently happening. For many, they cannot afford to pay all of their bills on time and cannot put money back for emergencies that may or may not happen. A lot of individuals with lower incomes or no incomes are already living in places that are unsafe, and many do not own their own homes and do not have renter 's insurance because in their opinion that is an extra unnecessary bill. Some individuals are not healthy enough to prepare for disasters because they cannot afford health care and can barely work enough to stay in poverty and out of homelessness. In the case of homeless individuals, they have no resources whatsoever. If they live in shelters or on the streets
Race and class identity of various groups of people render a great deal of influence on the experience one faces after a natural disaster. Unfortunately, oppression comes along with the quality of life for poor and middle classes. Thus, the experiences of higher and lower social classes are vastly different in terms of physical and psychological effects on the people. Higher social classes have the ability to restore any damages caused from a natural disaster in a timely manner, such as Hurricane Matthew. On the contrary, those people of the lower economic and social classes affected by the hurricane in Haiti, Bahamas, and Jamaica this past weekend will take a number of months or even years to rebuild their prior lifestyles. On pg. 4 in the
55). This is because things like a small flood would effect croplands differently than an urban center. A crop my actually benefit from silt deposits but the New York Stock Exchange would not. However, when disasters increase in scale they almost always have a significant impact on the economy (World Bank & United Nations, 2010, p. 55). Unfortunately, even though these impacts may be short-term there are third order effects on the economy. After Hurricane Katrina many areas were completely abandoned but many more were bought by developers pushing out the lower income populations, completely changing the local economy. This also highlights the different effect that disasters have on different demographics. As an example, the economies of developing countries are effected more by disasters then those of developed nations (World Bank & United Nations, 2010, p. 56). Although this may be because of population density or lack of infrastructure, it shows that demographics as well as the disaster itself have influence over the impact on local economy and
Another reason the majority are not in readiness of an emergency situation is because, as Dennis Mileti stated, “ Individuals underperceive risk” (Ripley 43). As a person who has been studying ways to warn people of disasters for over 30 years, Mileti believes that we tend to discount low probability, high consequence events. When we think of a disaster, the routine thought is to assume that the probability is so low that it could never possibly happen to us. “Not this plane ride, not this drive, not this time” is what we tell ourselves, making us doubt the high risk situation. In Chapter 2 of Ripley’s book, she recounts an interview that she did with the daughter of a man who underestimated the power of Hurricane Katrina. The 85 year old man, Patrick Turner, had survived the past two hurricanes that hit Louisiana before Katrina did (Ripley 24). When he heard of the arrival of Hurricane Katrina, he did not take it as serious as he should have because the warnings the government gave about this tsunami were the same as the last two and the last two hurricanes ended up not being that bad. Before the last hurricane, Turner spent over 10 hours on the road evacuating only to find out that it was not severe. Because of the wrong preparation
Living in a society that does not help its people to live comfortably and provide facilities for them to achieve their demands, is harmful. One of these harmful affections is “social inequality” in each diverse society. Social inequality occurs when resources in each society are distributed unevenly, typically through norms of allocation, that engender specific patterns along lines of socially defined categories of persons. The United States contains one of the most common social inequalities for its population and that is “social stratification and mobility” and the government should strictly investigate this social inequality for people who are living in the United States.
The calamitous natural phenomenon known as Hurricane Katrina brought terrible side-effects to lower-class African Americans. A catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina changed the lives of the lower-class African Americans forever because of the devastation from several effects. People today are more prepared for a natural disaster because “Hurricane Katrina was one of the strongest storms to hit the United States coast within the last 100 years” in New Orleans (Brianna Frank). Most of these ramifications of Hurricane Katrina came from the phycological, economic and medical effects due to this natural disaster,
Social inequality exists in the United States through the Elite’s power to maintain their dominance in the United States capitalist system. The Elite Ruling class is made of the upper class and this class of individuals share similar ideology and are the members of the United State’s Superstructure. The Elite Ruling Class members of society are the decision and policy makers in the United States. Research and history has proven that many policies and decisions made by the Elite Ruling Class serve their own interest and promote their ideas. These decisions are the source of the inequality in the United States and it contributes to their ability to maintain their dominant status. The inequality is trickled down to the other classes through social policy and social institutions that affect our lives everyday citizens. A major example of this social inequality can be seen in the United States housing market or home ownership. A significant amount of studies, statics and data supports the evidence of social inequality within the US housing market or home ownership. The following passages will discuss social inequality in the United States as it is connected to Karl Marx’s theory of capitalism’s power and influence of the Elite Dominant i.e. the Ruling Class view as it relates to homeownership within the United States. Karl Marx’s theory however focuses mostly on economic s and the difference between upper and lower class not race. It is also important to point out that the Elite
Economic insecurity is a problem that many Americans face. Families and individuals dealing with economic insecurity are often one disaster away from falling prey to poverty. Such disasters can range from natural disasters to health issues, issues with employment, or marital problems. If one or more of these disasters occurs to individuals living on the verge of poverty it might cause them to fall into poverty. Different individuals and families living on the economic margins are not affected in the same way because the different disasters that they experience influence their lives and perceptions in a unique manner.
People can not put on the news without seeing at least one story about social inequality or injustice, if everyone knows about these inequities why are they not being solved? Inequities are not limited to America, social inequity is a global problem making it extremely important to raise awareness of the topic. Inequities such as racism and sexism impact teenagers in America, but to counteract this persecution authors can use various genres of literature to promote tolerance and reduce the effects of inequities. Racism and sexism violates people’s rights in schools, the workplace, and almost every place in the world. Through the words of authors, society can learn the harmful effects of these inequities, and learn how
USA is a very big country with a lot of people and the social classes are very important. We can see that social class plays big part of people’s life. Everyday people are working, studying, trying to be better. Even though right now it’s time when everyone has many opportunities in his life, anyway there is a gap between classes and groups of people with same features. And your background probably will build your future. And we need to find what kind of class we have right now and look into these classes. The main idea is that Social Classes still exist and it’s most general part of U.S.A society. There are three reasons why gap between groups still exist.
As the Marxist approach puts it, “underlying states of human marginalisation are conceived as the principle cause of disaster.” (Pelling, 2001, p. 179). This resource exclusion to particular categories of people within society creates their vulnerability to risk, and in turn disaster. McLaughlin and Dietz (2007) suggest there are three dimensions that make up vulnerability including exposure, sensitivity and resilience. An example displaying the vulnerability of lower classed social categories is in North Bihar, India, where floods have been managed through engineering works to create embankments. While the Government appears to be reducing the hazard, this has increased the vulnerability of the local people. Soil fertility has decreased reducing agricultural success, dangerous flash floods are occurring due to embankment walls collapsing and communities have settled on apparently safe embankments and are now highly exposed (Pelling, 2001). The natural flood hazard was dangerous, but these works by society have created a natural disaster (Pelling, 2001). Power inequalities have created this disastrous situation where lower classes are at high exposure to floods due to profit hungry management bodies. This technological approach is clearly failing but the Government and other managing groups make large profits off flood engineering works and have the power to decide how to control the issue (Pelling, 2001). This has resulted in creating
Second, in emergency situations, people of higher economic standing fare better. Hurricane Katrina is an example of this. The data set shows that the higher economic classes had a much better chance
In the wake of natural disasters, the minorities of America are down the pecking order in the government’s list of priorities. Specifically seen in the African-American people, the government fails to provide speedy response time, supplies and other aid, as well as providing substantial compensation for the families devastated by disasters, which could have been preventable or deterred from causing more havoc. In many cases, the African-American people were exposed to poor living conditions, living in undesirable areas, and a lack of wealth, education, and preventative warnings of oncoming disasters. This can be seen in the cases of the 1900 great hurricane of Galveston, Texas and the 1995 Chicago Heat Wave, but the greatest example of
The article written by Robin Spence starts out explaining how the risk of natural hazards has highly increased over the last century. Richer countries have developed ways to decrease the loss of life from earthquake situations and also made “modest” progress in reducing casualties in storm and flood related events. Poor countries have seem to make progress as well in combating the loss of life due to earthquakes however they have not been as fortunate combating the loss of life in storms and other hazardous situations. The article asks “Why, when scientific understanding of the causes of these events is increasing rapidly and engineering skill to design against them is so highly developed, do these large death tolls continue and the financial losses continue to mount? And what should nations, cities, employees, families, for example, be doing about it? (Spence, 2011)”
There will be plenty of dangers to you and yours during a crisis, and one of the bigger threats will come from those, who up until the crisis, felt they were entitled to a life. A life, which is provided by the hard work of others. Will their attitudes change just because there is a catastrophe, probably not?
At the same time, the class hierarchy and the inequality also have a lot of contact. The people who have different social background will have completely different life. Accounting to “The social class structure of Canada” in “Our society” Angelini introduced the characteristics of the upper-class people are going to the expensive private school or university and they can take over the family business when they group up. The characteristics of the middle-class people are having cars and house or condo; in addition, they have a stable job and some insurances. The characteristics of the working-class people are working with an unsafe job, less education, less opportunities to get the jobs, also low income. The characteristics of the sub working class are around 20% people are homeless people, they just live depend on the welfare, just little or no income. They just live in an independent city with special thought and culture (Angelini, 2012, p86-88). The wealthy people get the more, the poor people get the less. On the basis of these, the media also using different way to show us the inequality because of class hierarchy; furthermore, we will see that in the face of different classes, people have different stereotypes on them. Firstly, the social media showed the food what they eat. The newsfeed which the pictures showed Jack Ma ate fast noodle and pickles, people’s comment is “the richest man is so toilsome”, and surprise on it; besides, also had other pictures showed other