How To Determinate The Status Of African Americans

Though social problems affect a wide variety of people from all races, classes, and cultures; minorities, specifically African Americans, encounter social problems on a multi-dimensional basis. Poverty, employment rates, discrimination, and other social problems strike African Americans in such a way that it is nearly impossible to separate them; each individual has different background, socially and physically, that would determine in which order his or her social problems need to be solved. Impoverished blacks in the inner city may have difficulty finding or keeping jobs, while others may have jobs, but face troubles with work discrimination that prevent them from moving upward .Underemployment, workplace inequalities, and unbalanced

In 2008 black male workers only made 74 cents to every dollar made by a white worker with equal education. This is a significant issue because it creates a self reinforcing system that puts a large portion of the population at a disadvantage. Although the poor economic situation for African Americans in the U.S. may not be as prevalent as it was in the 1930’s, there still exists a significant gap between wages earned by white and black workers.

Despite beliefs to the contrary, the increasing disparity in real wealth between white and black Americans during the past half century shows that the economic system is unjust. Considering factors such as less intergenerational inheritance, higher unemployment and lower incomes serve as key components in economic disparity. Disparity can be viewed as a systematic design to keep a specific group of people continually oppressed through a mixture of inequality, injustice and power. When there is an inequality that is also an injustice (Wright, 2009).

This first lecture gave us a close look into the unequal share of wealth and the factors that determine the wealth of individuals in the American society. One of the first factors that affect immensely the inequality in America is the obsessiveness of wanting to classify people and make them mark a box for their gender, race and class. Where men and whites have more privileges than any other person and are not only paid higher, but would most likely spend less time in prison for committing the same crime as an African American. The United states is so unequal that the top 1% of the population has 38.1% of the wealth and the bottom 40% which is a little less than half of the people living in America only have 0.2% of the wealth. And as if that statistic alone was not scary enough, we learn in this

because blacks are the second lowest paid race in the U.S. According to Deborah Ashton from the Harvard Business Review, black males average at $646 per week and black females average at $621, while the average for white males is $896 and $728 for white women (“Does Race or Gender Matter More to Your Paycheck?”). Even though whites have more people starting to work at ages 16-24, the ages in which people earn less money, they still earn a lot more than black people in general. Furthermore, black people are more likely to lose their jobs when the economy is bad. Drew DeSilver states in his article “Black Unemployment Rate is Consistently Twice that of Whites” that “blacks are… disproportionately likely to lose their jobs as the business cycle weakens”, while white people tend to keep their jobs ( Pew Research Center). Since the economy goes through ups and downs pretty often, a white person would have a steadier income and would be unemployed less often than a black person. Thus, being a white person in the U.S. would mean a lot more job opportunities and much more income than being a black

It seems that those who are not well educated tend to commit crimes which has no help because it cost the the public a large toll taking away from people who need money. “Real wages of young black men, as well, are less than those of Hispanics and Whites within each group, except among college graduate” (224). According to the chart 27.5 on page 245, black young men earns $0.86 more every hour than white young men do. However, if a black young man doesn’t have a college degree or more, they earn less than white and Hispanic people. The wages a person can earn are based of their education and their experience of working. So, black men without an education will earn a lower wage. Hispanics with an education will earn close to the same amount as whites, but whites tend to still earn more it's just the way the job place seems to work. This gap continues to grow, and over time mostly whites will control the job field, and that will be a

For the past 30 years the “gap” in income received by the rich and the lower class has continuously continued to increase, showing no signs of decrease anytime soon. This gap has mostly affected the middle class, which is made up of mostly African Americans and Hispanics, making America less determined to correct such an issue. Given the circumstances African American’s are the focus of this issue due to the fact they make up majority of the middle class. It is known that modern racism exist within today’s society in various ways, one of which happen to be within the economy. For decades the economy has had its downfalls, however, it’s been facing an issue that it has been hiding from the rest of the nation. The gap that everyone speaks has

In this research article written by Paul Croll, he has researched about the racial inequality between African American and whites. For the past several decades, national surveys have documented explanations for African American disadvantage but have not collected data on explanations for white advantage. Croll’s research uses national survey data to examine explanations for both sides of racial inequality and identifies which factors are believed to be most important in explaining white advantage, finding that racial attitudes are complex and are dependent upon the specific situation and context.

Economically, there is a deep seeded gap between African Americans and Caucasians in modern era. Michael Genovese argues that “in the United States, corruption and reform more often exact their costs in the form of reduced competition in both politics and the economy” (14). It is about reducing competition, or ,in other words, reducing the amount of economic opportunity to grow one’s wealth. Through slavery and segregation, the African American community had no ability to grow as they were not only physically but economically as well. This idea of corruption reducing competition can be seen in the economic gap that is shown between African Americans and Caucasians.Taking a look at this statistic that was found in “The Racial Wealth Gap” a Forbes article by Laura Shin, “the median white household had $111,146 in wealth holdings in 2011, compared to $7,113 for the median black household and $8,348 for the median Latino household”. Oppression of African Americans can not be the sole reason for this disparaging difference, but perceptions of African Americans can definitely be a factor to not allow the same opportunities as others, reducing the likelihood gaining individual wealth. Through these statistics, the oppression of the past is highly likely to be a key factor in the maltreatment and disproportionate distribution of wealth in regards to African Americans. The attitudes that have been pasted

Even though black people have descendants who suffered much more inequality issues than they have faced nowadays, they still have to deal with this historical problem in different ways. The wealth gap between whites and blacks is huge, “every extra dollar of income earned by whites generates $5.19 in new wealth over 25 years while another dollar of income for a black family adds a mere 69 cents to its bottom line (Starkman)”. These numbers show us that we still live in a segregated

According to AmericaBlog, “Black college graduates are twice as likely to be unemployed as college graduates overall. The jobless rate for black people has almost doubled that of white people for the last 60 years…” Not only is finding a job hard enough but the application process is still just as difficult. It has been shown that applicants with names that “sound black” need to send 50 percent more applications than others with names that “sound white” in 0order to receive calls back from potential employers. Once past the application process, the issues only continue to grow from there. Another quote from AmericaBlog states, “Studies show that for every $10,000 increase in yearly salary between jobs, the share of black people holding that job falls by 7 percent” meaning that when a job increases an average of $10,000 dollars, the black men that hold the same job as a white counterpart there was a 7 percent drop in black men not only holding that job but those who still did, also make less than their white counterparts. Those statistics were also without taking into account black women in the workplace. While black men make less than their white counterparts, black women make significantly less than both of them. In an article done by The Lilly they show that non-black women make 80% of the full percentage men are paid,

Poverty and inequality have virtually plagued every country on the planet, including our own wealthy, free, and developed nation. Poverty is when people lack certain resources to meet basic living requirements. Inequality can be equated as the different levels of wealth, opportunities, and resources given to different groups of people. While white people do suffer from poverty, minorities are impacted by poverty and inequality on a much larger scale. Although there are far more white Americans in our country, poverty among African Americans is almost three times the percentage of white Americans in poverty. Overall, poverty affects more than 40 million people in the United States alone. Both poverty and inequality hinder the ability of these 40 million people to provide for their family and pay for housing, food, and living necessities. From my understanding, poverty and inequality are interrelated.

light the mechanisms that constrain black upward mobility in the corporate sphere to show the

Although our culture is said to be completely removed from the idea of racial discrimination, this sense of inequality can be seen occurring behind the scenes within our society. Within the subtopic of race, several areas including our current culture, social psychology and the current format of our social institutions allow for the production and often the reproduction of racial discrimination in our day and age. Throughout this course, the various readings and class lectures have been very beneficial when examining the impact that racial discrimination and inequality has on our society. In this paper, I will delve into the subtopic of race and ethnicity and expound on how it is greatly influenced by our culture, social psychology, and social institutions around us today.

The American economy holds its place in contributing to the wage gap among blacks and whites. Blacks in America have struggled for generations to climb the economic ladder and have had a consistently harder time than whites finding jobs. Weak job creation has caused increased unemployment especially among black workers in comparison to whites. The shift from