According to State of Working America, African-Americans have the highest poverty rate at 27.4 percent. In the United States, descendants of slaves are currently barred from freedom because of racism and classism, and is enforced through the laws. This started with the Jim Crow laws in the twentieth century, and classist laws and prejudice have kept segregation alive long after the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. Racial inequality needs to be addressed because it mirrors slavery. It is essential for the public to understand because it impairs many lives. To start off, one cause of this is the funding gaps in public schools. Property taxes are the main funding source for schools, and collected from the people, so poor neighborhoods will
Johnson, H. B. (2014). The American dream and the power of wealth: Choosing schools and inheriting inequality in the land of opportunity. Routledge.
In class we have been focusing on the topic of racial and socioeconomic inequalities, and how they are demonstrated in todays society. Both are issues that have improved over the years but are stuck in a pretty bad place right now. We need to become aware of these issues and be willing to make changes to see progress and equality across the United States.
In support of race as a social construct, and to counter racism, race equality has been preserved in international and national laws and in governmental and institutional policies. Race and the related and newer concept of ethnicity are prominent in modern multi-ethnic societies. Race and racism are current subjects in the United Kingdom because of the 200th anniversary of the UK’s 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. It’s a good time to reexamine the role of the most important contributor to the scientific concept of race, Johann Blumenbach, whose insights and errors provide important lessons for us
As it talks about racial inequality in chapter 10, the definition of racism is the belief that one race is supreme and all others are innately inferior. White people are actually at the top while the others (the minority groups) are at the bottom. Considering that the laws of the USA revolved around white men in the beginning of this country, it’s not surprising to see how little people are not aware that racism still exists. They claim that it’s the 21st century, slavery happened in the past and it should stay in the past where it belongs. No. We’re going to recognize what white people did to African Americans. We are going to see how white supremacy is ugly and not needed.
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
Racial segregation in the United States continued even after the Civil War, in the form of laws requiring separation of people by race and in the form of ubiquitous discrimination and widespread social resistance to integration. But even during the height of racial segregation and discrimination, people in the performing arts pushed their audiences to reconsider their prejudices and assumptions regarding classification and disparate treatment of people based on race. Broadway’s and Hollywood’s most famous musical theater writing team, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein Jr., both reflected and powerfully commented upon these racial tensions in two of their most famous musicals: The King and I and South Pacific. These musicals reached immense
African Americans have been systematically discriminated against since the advent of slavery over 200 years ago and still continue to be oppressed. Slavery created the ideology that Whites were superior to African Americans, because slaves were seen as property and not as human beings (O’Connell 2012). Following this sentiment, African Americans were not allowed to receive an education, let alone learn how to read. These slaves were dependent on their slave owners for the total well being of themselves, as well as their families. This dependency has created a cycle of poverty that has spiraled into the 21st century, affecting heavily populated areas of minority communities. While there is poverty among all Americans, Black Americans suffer from poverty rates highly disproportionate to White Americans (O’Connell 2012).
There are various ways that race has been utilized to rationalize inequality. For instance, the fact that America ultimately created a race. Under those circumstances, American created this ideology which has constructed political and economic goals that favor the Whites. One of the founders of this inequality is Thomas Jefferson who believed that blacks were inferior to the Whites in the endowments of body and mind. There was a belief that Africans were different kinds of people. Additionally, scientific experiments were constructed that allowed scientists to compare human beings’ skulls with one another to prove a racial hierarchy. Furthermore, race has been utilized to shift attention and responsibility away from opposers and toward the
Racial matters are often times disregarded as a prevalent issue in today’s time. There have been a great amount of attempts to rectify the matter in question, but the result remains the same—obliviousness from the write race. Ta-Nehisi Coates thoroughly addressed this topic in his book titled Between the World and Me. Coates is an American writer and journalist who analyzes political and social issues as they pertain to African Americans; his book was of no difference. Being an African American male, the text really connected to my current way of thinking, but it also made me argumentative of some of the ideas Coates presented. Coates offered critical explanations of black experiences in the past and examined the ordeals arising in the present, but he does not propose any solutions on how to handle the situation of race moving forward into the future, which was unfortunate to me as a reader.
At around 12 o’clock pm during the summer of 2009 on July 16, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested. Gates is an African American professor at Harvard University, returned from a visit from the People’s Republic of China, and made it back to his house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He showed up in a limousine with the driver being an African American as well. The driver helped Gates out of the car and helped him carry his luggage to the front door of his house. As Gates struggled to open his door with the key because it was somehow jammed, he asked the limo driver to help him force the door open (Staples).
To make racial inequalities a public issue I will write a blog that explains the effect on people's lives that it can cause and who it mainly affects..In my blog it will also tell the history and where racial inequalities came from and why it affects minorities.I will also interview people that know a lot about racial inequalities and people that lives have been ruin by it
Studies show that police are more likely to pull over and frisk blacks or Latinos than whites. In New York City, 80% of the stops made were blacks and Latinos, and 85% of those people were frisked, compared to a mere 8% of white people stopped (11 Facts about Racial Discrimination). America is known as the land of opportunity. Immigrants and people come from far and wide seeking success and achieving their dream in this land. There is a reason for that and throughout history this reason hasn’t changed. America is a melting pot. The most diverse country in the world. We have Asians, African Americans, Chinese, Indians and much more all living together as one. You go into any big business, law firm or
In today’s world, the American still has barriers to overcome in the matter of racial equality. Whether it is being passed over for a promotion at the job or being underpaid, some people have to deal with unfair practice that would prevent someone of color or the opposite sex from having equal opportunity at the job. In 2004, Dukes vs. Wal-Mart Stores Incorporation was a civil rights class-action suite that ruled in favor of the women who worked and did not received promotions, pay and certain job assignments. This proves that some corporations ignore the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which protects workers from discrimination based on sex, race, religion or national origin.
Throughout America’s past, racial inequality has been a reoccurring theme in our society. Ever since the Europeans invaded America the white man has been superior compared to all ethnicities. No more than two hundred years ago, African Americans were slaves and only counted as three fifths of a person. Within the past hundred years African Americans have managed to obtain more equality in some situations, but in other cases racial inequality has become worse than it was when segregation took place. The gaps between the quality of education of white and black students receive appears to be growing instead of shrinking. The lack of quality education blacks receive has contributed to significant health differences between
In order for us to work towards a more racially equal society, we need to know what type of social policies contribute to racial inequalities. Then, we need to either change those social policies or get rid of them completely. Rothstein focuses mainly on housing policies, which segregated African Americans from whites. Those social policies did not only constraint African Americans from buying a house in neighborhoods predominantly white, but it limited their accessibility to other important resources and services such as employment and education. This is very similar to today’s racial inequalities.