The issue of racial income inequality is seen in James Surowiecki’s “The Widening Racial Wealth Divide”, Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, and in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. First off, Surowiecki explains that the wealth divide between Caucasians and African Americans is growing at a rapid pace. Specifically, he elucidates, “White households own, on average, seven times as much wealth as African-American households” (Surowiecki). The writer suggests that this is due to the tremendously high unemployment rates and the low salaries that African Americans experience compared to those of white Americans. However, if an individual successfully completes tasks at his or her job, race should not be a factor in how much money he or
Alexander Crummell, an Episcopalian priest, professor, and lecturer, set out to analyze and discuss “The Race Problem in America.” This piece was written in 1888, following the Reconstruction period after he had traveled to Europe and Africa, lecturing on American Slavery and African-American and African issues. Crummell, when not working outside of the country, resided in the North at various places in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, where many of the countries African-American intellectuals lived at the time. As a professor, lecturer, and priest, the intended audience were members of the society who were literate, Christian, and for the time period, more radically thinking. Due to his relationship with Christianity and the relationship
William Julius Wilson creates a thrilling new systematic framework to three politically tense social problems: “the plight of low-skilled black males, the persistence of the inner-city ghetto, and the fragmentation of the African American family” (Wilson, 36). Though the conversation of racial inequality is classically divided. Wilson challenges the relationship between institutional and cultural factors as reasons of the racial forces, which are inseparably linked, but public policy can only change the racial status quo by reforming the institutions that support it.
In recent discussions of racism within American society, a controversial issue has been whether racism is a permanent facet in today’s society. On one hand Derrick Bell, a prominent African American scholar , feels that the legacy of slavery has left a significant portion on the race “with life-long poverty and soul-devastating despair “. Bell also believes that slavery will continue to have an impact on countless African Americans day in and day out. Consider the 5.7 unemployment rate gap between blacks and whites, which was reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2014. The disparity of the unemployment rate has been a problem since the 1960s and 70s, when the unemployment rate for blacks was 2.5 times the rates for whites. During
Individuals may be gifted with certain privileges because of the position one holds in society. Most importantly, one can obtain certain privileges from being born with them. One might be “born” with certain privileges because of one’s race, ethnicity, religion and or social class. The most significant factor that may influence one’s obtainment of privileges is social class. Although, race also plays a crucial role. The privileges I obtain surface from my position in society. I don’t feel as if I acquire privileges because of my race and ethnicity. I feel as though that the privileges I acquire are earned, not given. My perspective of this arises from the social stratum in my proximity. The concept that hard work will get one to their desired
America has been described as a "melting pot"-- a land full of diversity. With that diversity comes a full range of income levels and statuses of its inhabitants, from the very, very rich to the destitute. Ronald Taylor's article entitled "African-American Youth: Their Social and Economic Status in the United States" focuses on the issue of polarization. Polarization occurs when an increase of the percentage of people in poverty coincides with an increase of the percentage of people with higher incomes. Fewer people are considered 'middle class', but are either rich or poor.
The black middle class is far behind the white middle class in terms of properties and assets that can create more opportunities for their given groups and for generations to come. Oliver and Shapiro put emphasis on statistics that portray gaps between the black middle class and white middle class. They argue that wealth in America is unevenly distributed, unfair, and in favor of whites.
There is an inextricable relationship between race, capitalism, and property and how it perpetuates the notion of whiteness through the exploitation of Africans and Native Americans. Property is a relationship of a person and an object; slaves were considered as objects. Race is constructed and produced from white workers’ ideology of whiteness and labor wage. Racism has been long constructed through the production of race and its relations to property, and we can see it through the notion of capitalism and the idea of whiteness.
In this part, Coontz claims that the root cause of pay discrepancy is what race you are which is affecting a wide variety of Americans. The statistics are very surprising, “it takes three black men, making the median income for blacks, to clear the median U.S family income, which is $26,433. If our hypothetical Black family is to enter the the middle-class mainstream, which means home ownership, it will need
In the beginning, before there was “Freakonomics” by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, I viewed economics as representative of how the stock-market was performing. Now after having this class I have been able to pull together the different aspects of our reading material from my economics class and I have realized economics is a complex system which has a number of perspectives that can be molded or construed into quite frankly any angle. One angle I have been enlightened about is why so many African-Americans live in a lower socioeconomic environment.
The United States is a country formed of different races. Each of these races became part of the country in different times. The European settlers were the ones to first come to the US. Those lands were the start of the wealth and history of the United States. For centuries, that wealth was handled by the White people. Many conflicts and wars had to take place so that all the races were considered equal, but could that really be true? History-based “viewed through the lens of wealth, reveals a consistent pattern of race-based obstacles” between nonwhites and whites (Lui 2004). These racial groups are finding their way in the country, but they are still divided by the racial wealth gap.
McCllenhand is a seasoned author and journalist who confidently describes the urgency surrounding this highly-debated topic of the unfortunate reality surrounding the wealth gap in the US. McCllenhands description includes the personal experience that author has endured growing up in a simpler time in the US economy a good example was the author describing a time when his English teacher gave the example of a degenerate student who dropped out of school and ended up making more money than his teacher. I
Throughout American history, wealth inequality has taken many different forms, and has affected many people and groups in different ways. In the following analysis, two measures of 'wealth inequalities' will be used. First is a more traditional view, regarding the distribution of income and wealth among the upper to lower classes. The size of the gap has varied over time, widening and compressing throughout American history. While America has been thought of as a middle class nation, this is a fairly recent phenomena that began after World War II. In this context of today, this idea appears to be fading as wealth is becoming more concentrated towards the upper classes. Additionally, these effects of both the concentration and equalization of income distribution can differently affect groups of people.
The National Urban League, published statistics on African Americans and the overall group equity index in 2012. African Americans and Hispanics to whites was 71.5% and economic at 56.3%. In 2012, the median income for African Americans was $33,578 and for whites was $54,168. They also published the overall unemployment rate for African Americans to whites. For African Americans the rate was 15.8% to whites 7.9% (Cooper Ownes, Deirdre Benia, “Racial Justice: Overview.” Issues Understanding Controversy and Society. ABC-CLIO, 2014. Web. 11 Feb. 2014). In America, African Americans are being discriminated against for and paid less at their jobs for their skin color. More people could go into poverty more being African American than white because they are getting paid unfair wages. Not improving the problem that stands could just make the society worse than it already is. Bottom line is everyone deserves equality no matter the skin color.
Today, African Americans are still unequal economically, exhibiting how the pursuit of democracy remains incomplete. The origin of this inequality can be traced back to the “Jim Crow” Era. From 1939 to 1959, the average African American made from 44% to 59% of what the average white worker made. Meaning that the average African American salary was about half of the average white salary. An imbalance that resulted in large economic inequality. With more money the white population was able to pay for more luxurious houses and items, as well as better schooling. This led to two main results. First, class based housing became based on race, where white citizens lived in rich suburbs and African Americans lived in poor ghettos. Not only did this
Cordelia Reimers who graduated from Hunter College in New York studied data from the 1976 Survey of Income and Education and analyzed the family income differentials among the five major Hispanic-American groups (Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Central and South Americans, and "other Spanish"), black non-Hispanics, and white non-Hispanics. “Total family income is classified by its four major sources: earnings of a male head, earnings of a wife or female head, earnings of other family members, and property or transfer income.” For each factor, the ratio of each minority group's average value to that of white non-Hispanics is computed to determine where income gaps arise and I will use this research to help me answer my questions about the racial