Racial Inequality Research Paper

In this paper, I will explore the aspects regarding racial inequality pertaining to education in the United States of America. It has come to my attention, based on my observations, that race is a definitive factor that plays a role in establishing socioeconomic status. In relation to socioeconomic status, variables correlating with race that I will be focusing on, is the educational and wealth aspects. An individual’s level of education is pivotal to establishing stable, consistent wealth and vice-versa; the access for quality education is inconsistent primarily among minority races/ethnicities. According to historical records ranging from the year 1980 to 2000, between Whites, Hispanics, African-Americans, and Native Americans, the educational attainment gap is widening (Kelly 2005). Education is seen to be a source of respect and key to gaining a higher income, which transfers over to greater wealth. Acknowledging the slow expansion of the educational attainment disparities, I argue that the society’s perceptions and actions addressing race perpetuates and produces social inequalities by limiting opportunities despite “equal” resources, privileges, and rights through social policies that have contributed towards the quality of America’s education system.

In each year from 1998 through 2000 there was a 1%-point decline in the graduation rate for black men. But for the past 4 years the graduation rate for black men increase by a 1% point and now stand at a 35%. This year the college graduation rate for black women rose by one percentage point to 46%. With many years of hard work African American thrive for a better education ignoring the statistic that states that 9.6% of African American would drop out of high school. African American prove that they can achieve and will achieve.

In the 1997 article, “Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle over Educational Goals” by David Labaree, Labaree describes three goals that have been at the core of educational conflicts over the years. The first goal mentioned is democratic equality, which is meant to create good citizens and enable educational access to all. The second goal is social efficiency, which creates workers and is viewed by taxpayers and employers as a goal to prepare students for market roles. Lastly is the third goal of social mobility, where individual success for attractive market roles is the main purpose. This primary goal of education has been ever fluctuating. The argument of this essay is that social mobility has now triumphed over democratic equality and social efficiency as the primary goal of education due to parents. This view of social mobility by parents is negative to due its numerous consequences, significantly the growing disparity between the wealthy and the underprivileged, and additionally, the health of children, their behavior, and the degree to which they learn educational material are all affected.

According to Bynner and Joshi (1999) class differences have persisted since the late 1950’s. It can be seen that all studies carried out by various theorist came to the same conclusion that middle class pupils tend to do a lot better than working class in terms of educational achievement. Pupils from middle class backgrounds tend to pass more exams, stay on at school for longer and are five times more likely to go to university. This gap in achievement widens with age as right from nursery school to university, processes like labelling or the self fulfilling prophecy take

With more prisons and jails being built, there is more chances for people to go to prison. In the film Broken on All Sides, a previous guard explains his views on the matter of overcrowding in prisons, “We just keep building jails and more people come to jail” (Pillischer). By investing money into education and rehabilitation, rather than building new jails and prisons, this would aid in the incarceration rates, and recidivism rates. For example, education research provides that 6.2 million young adults were high school dropouts in 2007, and the majority of people incarcerated, 2.3 million, are people who have not completed education (Thompson). The rates of incarcerated people are astonishing, but so is the number of people who are incarcerated without a complete education. Providing poor communities with better school systems and help the juveniles complete their education would reduce the amount of African Americans being

Blacks are the largest racial minority in the population. Racial profiling and discrimination blacks has been to restrict the number of people who were able to get jobs that would support a middle-class lifestyle. Prisoners also tend to be less educated. The average state prisoner, according to Tsai & Scommegna (2012) “has a 10th grade education, and about 70 percent have not completed high school.” Incarceration rates are significantly higher for blacks and Latinos than for whites. In 2010, according to Tsai & Scommegna (2012)“black men were incarcerated at a rate of 3,074 per 100,000 residents.” These results, in my opinion, shows that is still more work to be done to make and create jobs and education a priority in America.

In recent years, the term intersectionality has taken the foregrounds in understanding how differences such as age, gender, race, sexuality, disability, and religion, etc., interweave and intersect upon individual lives in modern society (Beck 1992). Intersectionality has become a demonstration as to understand, employ, and analyze with difference in which difference itself becomes a feature of otherness. Intersectionality is important to understand and realize because it is a dynamic that changes through different spaces and for different people; which works on a micro and macro level. In this paper, the goal is to explore the different views of inequality for individual’s education in the United States and show how intersectionality plays a vital role in understanding those differences that perpetuate education inequality, stratification, and social reproduction.

Mirowsky and Ross (2010:34) works states that humans who attain an education have a socioeconomically advantages compared to people who do not receive an

In both rich and rich and poor countries, high inequality has led to diminished social mobility. In these countries the children of the rich will largely replace their parents in the economic hierarchy, as will the children of those living in poverty. In countries with higher levels of inequality it is easier for parents to pass on their advantages to their children; advantages that less wealthy parents cannot afford (Stiglitz 2012). An example of this is expenditure on education. Wealthier parents often pay for their children to attend expensive private schools that then facilitate their entry into elite universities, which in turn help them secure higher paid jobs. This is reinforced by other advantages, such as the resources and social networks that richer parents share with their children, which further enable employment and education opportunities. In this way, the richest have access to opportunities, which are not accessible for those who do not have the means to pay Corak

Will the world ever achieve racial equality? The gap in the racial history has closed

In last Tuesday’s class, the class in groups attempted to form the longest paper chain to obtain “extra credit points”. Every group had scissors, but some groups had tape, others had glue, and some had a stapler. Groups who used glue had shorter paper chains than people who used tape or stapler. This shows that having or not having certain resources affects the degree you obtain a goal, which contributes to inequality among different groups in society. For education, the amount of resources based on an individual’s economic status impacts his or her academic success. If a person has a large array of resources like private tutors and parents who are college graduates, he or she will be more likely to be more successful academically, such as

Inequality focuses upon the way that resources are distributed across the whole society. In this distribution there are significant differences for children who come from varying social backgrounds. The study of such differences or inequalities has become one of the main concerns of sociological research in education. Sociologists have also paid attention to the consequences of inequality, and the ways in which inequalities are reproduced and transmitted from generation to generation.

In an ideal world, socioeconomic status would not affect the quality of education one would receive. Everyone would have the same opportunities to do well in life and rise up the social ladder. Durkheim (1893) asserted that with universally great public education, economic opportunities would be relatively equal. Even with equal education levels, there would still exist some inequality in the form of “legitimate” inequality (Durkheim 1893), but the excellent public education would level the playing field, so to speak. However, our world is not an ideal world. We live in a society where money talks and how rich a person is determines the caliber of their educational background. Research has shown that a child from a high income family will have a better life chance and that a child from a low-income family has less of a chance to move up the ranks. In my paper, I will argue that there is a correlation between socioeconomic status and quality of education in that the higher socioeconomic status a person has, the better education opportunities they will be able to obtain.

Inequalities exist an all aspects of life. The nature and result of such inequalities shapes our social as well as economic lives. As people progress through their educational life certain inequalities will result in different outcomes of schooling for different sets of people. “In post war Britain pupils from a working class background are constantly found to gain fewer academic qualifications, to be under represented in institutions of higher education and to end up in jobs offering little opportunity for social advancement'; (Brown 1987 p11). It is inequalities such as these that are present both in and out of school that will determine life chances of individuals. It is commonly accepted that education is the main

Over time, income inequality promotes growth in many areas and anyone pursuing an education receives an income reward for their efforts.