Inequality: Race And Racism. The Race Is A Social Construct

Since America’s beginning, race based barriers have mired the fulfillment of our shared principles and many of these barriers still persist today. The institutionalized inequalities are detrimental on an individual basis as well a societal basis. Racism does not only affect the individuals that are being oppressed but also how society functions as a whole. Racial inequalities have manifested in American society in ways that underlies a wide range of societal domains such as housing patterns, educational opportunities, healthcare inequality, and incarceration rates. Current events and experiences demonstrate moreover that racial inequality is still adamant in the American culture. Long after slavery, the Jim Crow Era, and the civil rights movement, racial inequality has taken distinctive forms which affect many people within a racially oppressed group. Racial segregation at large is embedded within a structural matrix that not only permeates in the American culture but in our private and public institutions. Disparities in the criminal justice system and housing patterns remain a key barrier to racial equality in America. In order to eradicate racial inequality, there needs to be policy solutions that place fundamental changes to a system with profound historical origins, one that structurally disadvantages minority groups.

At the time I was 20 years old. Being underage I had of course bought liquor through someone older, and back then, due to the hurdles it took to obtain decent alcohol even a pack of Corona was regarded as a great drink. It was the kind of days where every party was a remake of the film Project X and you never knew who or what you would end up with at the end of the night. Needless to say, we were all young back then and saw the world as our oyster; it was up to us to pry it open with our own hands. As Wiz Khalifa put it, we were young, wild, and free. Looking back, it never crossed our minds that at the end of the night we would be a lot older, controlled, and oppressed.

The barriers that separate men have existed for centuries. Race, class, status, these are all ideas that have created a divide among humans. This divide creates competition and tension. Throughout the history of the legal system, justice has been used to validate slavery and other forms of racial inequality. Our system now has changed, but the basic concept has remained the same. According to one study, the judicial system was invented by whites to protect whites and keep people of color at bay (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2017, p1). This idea of preserving a one superior racial system resulted in a bias still existent today.

What is racial inequality? Racial inequality is discrepancies in the opportunities and treatment of people based solely on their race. Racial inequality is a serious issue that is often discussed in the American criminal justice system. Although racial discrimination is present in the criminal justice system, some people use the words inequality, discrimination, racism, and profiling loosely and do not understand how truly complex it is to prove that there actually is racial inequality present in the criminal justice system. Daniel P Mears, Joshua C. Cochran, and Andrea M. Lindsey article Offending and Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Criminal Justice: A Conceptual Framework for Guiding Theory and Research and Informing Policy illustrates

Race is defined in our textbook as a group of people who share a set of characteristics- typically these characteristics are described as physical ones, common bloodlines. We often think as race in relation to racism, which is a belief that members of a separate race possess different and unequal traits coupled with the power to restrict freedoms based on those differences. Racism is connected with three different keys in belief, that humans are in different groups in relation to bloodlines and physical types, that these

The beginnings of racial difference can be traced back to the Age of Exploration, during which England was expanding its trading routes and was highly involved with trade in Africa.

Racial injustices and inequality have been in place in various areas of operation within the society. The existence of the notion that a given race is more superior to another has been the main source of the constant injustices across different communities. The inequality and racial injustices within the societies are deeply rooted which it makes difficult to develop policies and strategies that can have a significant impact if the past events and actions are anything to buy. Thus, the increasing inequality across the United States is based on wealth and social status where racial consideration is key in many societies. Even though there have been efforts to ensure that there is better engagement among different races within the country, there are no significant steps that have been made as the inequality among races keeps increasing.

Something that I also found really interesting is how white people get offended by fact that color of people accused them of the inequality that we have in this country, for example some of the things they bring up is that “they didn’t ask to be white”, yet they still contribute to the idea of color blindness by refusing to see the reality that they will always have more power over a person of color regardless their education level or income. Whites will never understand the harsh reality of race in the U.S., Lopez makes a great point about this “ But beliefs in innate racial inequality could not be perceived as morally evil until they were first seen as factually wrong. This was impossible to imagine for persons steeped in the belief that

I enjoyed your post, details and your view points about the second weeks’ topic. Race as a social construct is defined as an “illusion” or a subjective social construct () We have identified race does exists apart from our cooperative agreement, recognition within our cultural existence. The entire society that is constructed around us is subject to race and it’s stereotypes, and is an everlasting fixture in our complex culture. Ethnicity is used as a social ranking in society, constructed by society. If we intermingle race and ethnicity, which are social “illusions”, we are primarly creating a category that is not fundamentally real. Society overtime have shaped race and ethnicity within our culture and created groups of social minorities.

Black Americans have a history rooted in the struggle for equality and recognition as members of the American society. Over time, since the creation of the Constitution, blacks have continued to search for their role in America and have gained some formal standards for the black race. Although at the framing of the Constitution, blacks were not given the regard as citizens or even whole people, time progressed and gave way to opportunities to acquire legal aid in the crusade for racial equality. With the ability to utilize the court system, its formalities, and ultimately its power to enact national laws, blacks were able to win civil rights litigations, thus making advancements as a race.

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. Within a week of the civil rights leader’s death, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the second Civil Rights Act, ensuring fair housing for any ethnicity. The decade of the 1960s sought to curb racial prejudice, including both de facto and de jure segregation. However, despite much progress in this area, the ghosts of 1960’s inequality still linger throughout our nation. In the past 50 years, economic, educational, and law enforcement barriers have only worsened racial inequality.

This paper is divided into two parts. In the first part the concepts or race, ethnicity, prejudice and racism are defined and how they are connected is discussed. Part 2 of the paper looks at the ‘White Australia’ policy and why it was introduced. The impact of such a racist immigration history on contemporary Australia is also discussed in terms of attitudes and behaviours of the population. Following is a brief discussion on how successive government polic

Aristotle once said “The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.”

Racism, “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race” (Merriam-Webster). Racism, a broad topic that continues to be a problem in our society that affects all races regardless of class and color. Racial inequality, “a disparity in opportunity and treatment that occurs as a result of someone’s race” (Merriam-Webster). One’s identity of race should not determine an individual’s lifestyle. This problem existed in the past, and continues to be a problem in our current society. Although racial inequality continues to be a problem in our modern society, acknowledging racial inequality is important before change can take charge. In

One of the biggest struggles that our country has had to overcome is the fight for racial equality. The fight for legal, racial equality was only half the battle; achieving recognized, public equality was a very time consuming task. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The legalization of this act was the result of massive amounts of hard work. Many people had to come together in order to make a change. They fought for what they believed in, and racial equality would not have been legalized had it not been for their strength in numbers. If I could be a part of any historical event it would be the fight to legalize racial equality.