Wealth And The Race

The continuous disparity of wealth and income can cause constant economic problems within a society. Although it is not apparent all the time, there are few benefits of discrepancy itself such as individual wealth, capital, and labor. Both Smith and Carnegie have distinct beliefs about wealth that differentiate from one another, yet are similar in certain ways. Adam Smith confined all his ideas about the common man in his “Wealth of Nations”. Whereas, in the “Gospel of Wealth,” Andrew Carnegie had distinct beliefs about the effects of capitalism . All in all, economic conditions of the 21st century still date back to previous years and signify the importance of economic competition.

The article Whose Culture has Capital? Acritical Race Theory Discussion of Community Cultural Wealth, talks community cultural wealth as the critical race theory. Critical race theory changes the way we look as communities of color, instead of thinking of places full of cultural poverty disadvantages, it focusses on and learns from the range of cultural knowledge, skills, abilities and contacts possessed by socially disregarded groups that often go unrecognized and unacknowledged. There are various forms capital, including aspirational, navigational, social, linguistic, familial and resistant, these forms of capital focuses on what Students of Color bring with them from their homes and communities into the classroom.

Everywhere you look at the United States you can find economic stratification. From the kind of vehicle you drive, to the kind of house you live in, to the kind of restaurants you eat at the most you will find economic stratification. Some might ask, does any of that truly matter today? Yes, unfortunately, it does. An important goal for most people is what’s referred to as The American Dream. Whether it is to attend a good college, get a respectable job, purchase the perfect house, and have a small family or maybe just to start your own business; that dream starts with wealth. People with more money will have an easier time with achieving the dream than a lower income person would. With wealth comes power and prestige as well. People with more money have better life chances because they can afford better healthcare, education, healthier food, and safer neighborhoods just to name a few things.

In Thomas Shapiro’s “The Hidden Cost of Being African American”, Shapiro goes in depth on how wealth in America is disproportionately dispersed between different nationalities. Mainly between Caucasians and African Americans. Shapiro has helped paint the image of wealth inequality and has shown how this is even more staggering than the wage gap between African Americans and Caucasians. Some of the theories he indirectly uses in his book and that I will be exemplifying are generational wealth and support systems, education, and the idea of how poverty only begets more poverty.

African American’s have been on the bottom end of inequalities since their arrival United States, although advances have been made African American men still fare badly. For Hispanics high immigration numbers accounts for the inequality gap among them. The presence of women in the work place has add little to the issue and the decline of trade unions has negative implications for all workers. Advances in technology is part of the natural cycle of industry and while some jobs will initially fall victim to it new skills and training will provide for new careers. Thomas Piketty and Joseph Stiglitz shows that the overwhelming causes of the current cycle of economic inequalities to be income and capital inequality that exist because of politics and government policies that benefit the rich at a cost to the poor and

Racial discrimination is the main and ongoing problem in the social life of Americans. When we look at the gap of incomes between White and African Americans, we can see the inequality between these two groups. In general, whites have more annual earnings than their black counterparts in America. Lori Ann Campbell and Robert L. Kaufman emphasized that the wealth determinants, which are the indicators of socio-economic status, have effected more on Whites than Blacks. And even when society is organized, there is still some disparities on account of race and ethnicity. (Campbell and Kaufman, 2006). And income disparities between African and White Americans have definitely effected the peace of the social life. According to Campell and

Economic benefits are at the center of white privilege. Dating back to slavery, the majority of labor was provided by African Americans from which both the North and the South benefited and is one of the founding source of economy. Yet, African Americans and other minorities still struggle to get their slice of the American pie. Poor and working class whites strongly object to the idea of white privilege, stating or pointing out what they consider the obvious, that not every white person has wealth and power. Other benefits enjoyed by white people, including one which W. E. B. DuBois called the "psychological wages of whiteness." (Williams, 2004) This refers to that age old membership in the privileged group, even for whites on the bottom rung, confers a social status and recognition which is denied to all but the most powerful members of oppressed groups. The history of racial oppression in American is not disputed. However, what is disputed is whether and to what extent, four hundred years of oppression continues to harm African Americans and other minorities and their life chances unjustly. Looking at the way benefits and damages are allocated in the U.S., for example wealth, income, equality of our court system, treatment from the police, access to colleges and universities we see white privilege. As a group, white people have more income, wealth, political representation, status, power, and social reinforces of their human dignity and self respect than any group in

Economically speaking, not all men and women are created equal within America. After reading Doubly Divided, it is clear that white people have always maintained a wealthier status above non-white groups throughout this country’s history. Even in today’s society, many Native Americans, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans have high poverty rates and low valued assets when compared to whites, clearly exhibiting a racial wealth gap. However, the Federal Government has greatly contributed to this wealth gap over the last 200 years through a process I call the “take and prevent method”. For example, large amounts of land were taken from Native Americans and given to white farmers under the Homestead Act of 1862. With a major asset gone, the government prevented any further wealth accumulation by forcing Native Americans onto reservations, using corrupted trust fund accounts, and assimilating them into white culture (through the 1887 Dawes Act). As an additional example, the discontinuation of the Freedman’s Bureau and an overturned civil rights act meant that African Americans had their land and rights to ownership taken away as well. And as a measure of prevention, governmental programs such as unemployment, Social Security, and

History in a sum is supposed to be correlation to past events. However, seen trending to this day even some of our most popular African American figures believe that our race creates a preconception alone. Obama and Bill Cosby both pivotal African Americans believe that “African Americans, would struggle less if they exercised better judgement and assumed greater personal responsibility”(Strippling). This meaning through preconceptions about the African American race and the involvement in issues the dividing factor within minorities and majorities is pertaining to race along with wealth. This thought process by both highly credible African Americans are based upon a certain race and the individual relationship with wealth, arguing that wealth

In this casebook the authors contribute their ideas on what might have lead to our separations of classes and inequality among our world. Henry Louis Gates Jr. states in his article that the research that he has obtained has concluded in the fact that former slaves in the 1920’s, when African Americans were allowed to own property, had obtained land from the Southern Homestead Act and led to having a successful descendents. On the other hand he states that if the poor African Americans were given land now that they were not given long ago the community would improve and they would work harder to achieve a better life. I agree that some of the people given land and ownership would try to improve their life with education and harder work but

In the united states the racial wealth gap and looking at the overall median financial wealth of white, African American, and Latino households. The typical African American family has six cents in wealth, for every dollar in wealth that the typical white house hold has, overall the possessive investment as Liptiz describes as a measure to matian a possession of social power aka there invested interested in maintaining power over minorities and have taken action to protect that investment. Most of the time society thinks in terms of white vs black people, but in reality its often white people versus all minorities. Before Africans were imported for slavery, the colonists tried using Native Americans and force them into their slavery system. When using Native Americans didn’t work out due to the logistics, the colony’s turned to Africa and the slave trade. While at the same time keeping both Native Americans and African separated from one another, not only in terms of threats and payoffs, but also in terms of early system of white supremacy in the American colonies. After slavery was abolished America turned to Asian immigrants for their cheap labor and low wage cost in the growing industlized America. Even though Asian’s

One of the social issues concerning power, status, and class in American society today is income inequality. The income gap between the social classes has increased drastically throughout the last few decades, creating a significant gap between the wealthy and the poor. This gap has become so large that the middle class has nearly diminished, creating a social class comprised of the rich and the poor. The significant gap between the two social classes is unhealthy for the economy because it provides too much power in the hands of those with high social status.

Every person can be identified as rich or poor regardless of their other status be it in terms of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation or age. The author explained even in the most predominant White race, there were class divisions and the least fortunate were the so

However, this travesty caused a nationwide focus on racial injustice in the south. Oddly however, this was also time when American values were being projected globally as superior to communism. Another conflicting social reality was the concept of America’s classless society which proved to be unfounded. Widening prosperity was real however, the distribution of income remained unbalanced. Not bad by today’s standards but, in 1960 the top 1 percent held 33 percent of the national wealth while the bottom 20 percent only held 5 percent of the wealth.

Income inequality is universally known as the divide in acquisition of wealth between the elites of the world and the poorest of the world. As far as developed nations go across the world, the United States holds most of the differences between the rich and the poor. Ray Williams outlines in his paper that “the richest 20 percent of American society [control] about 84 percent of the country’s wealth” which is a huge abundance of wealth to be held by such a small percent of citizens in one country