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The Causes Of Racial Inequality In The United States

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Racial Inequality in the United States

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution proposed that humans and animals had a common ancestry (Desmond, 2017), and that species survived by the process of natural selection—a process that results in the adaptation of an organism by selectively reproducing changes in its genetic makeup (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, 2016). Social Darwinism, derived from Darwin’s evolutionary theory, proposed that natural selection also applied to people, groups, and races (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, 2017). This would lead people to believe that, since whites were the more advanced societal group, they were the obvious superiors. Though Social Darwinism would decline in the twentieth century, its ideas had been used before and would be used later. This idealism was an underlying cause in many different events throughout history, such as the American Civil War, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and influenced many other actions within larger events: For instance, in WWII, where, although they were a key part of the U.S. army, Navajo soldiers were never raised above the rank of corporal (Bruchac, 2006). Even in our “advanced” society, racism is still a problem.

In 2010, the number of Hispanic men incarcerated per 100,000 U.S. residents was 2.6 times greater than that of white men, and the number of black men incarcerated was 6.4 times greater (Light, 2015). Considering that only 13% of the United States

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