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effect of income inequality in us
effect of income inequality in us
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Key arguments The overall main idea in The Hidden Cost of Being African American by Thomas M. Shapiro is that White Americans have a advantage in terms of economic status compare to African Americans because White America not only have “Wealth” but also “Income”. Whereas African Americans only have “Income”. Shapiro uses three key arguments to support this overarching idea. The first one that he examines is how family inheritances adds on to racial discrimination by separating Whites and Blacks in terms of home, school, and job districts. By having this separation, it leads to a huge wage gap for African Americans. The Second argument reveal that wealth creates different starting lines in life. Different starting lines means that different rules for success and different rewards, which all leads up to the idea of inequality. Lastly, Shapiro argues that the way white “ families use head start assets” make it possible for them to not only accumulate even more wealth in the future but also have a better homes, community, and school quality for their …show more content…
Families use asset to create opportunities that others do not have, such as moving to neighborhoods with better schools, providing cultural and social experiences for their children, making career changes, or taking advantage of business opportunities”(12). Wealth creates so much freedom to constantly improve one 's status that it has a long term effect of helping future generations achieve the same freedom by allowing,“Parents [to] tie school reputation to the school’s race and class profile. More often than not, choosing a school district or a specific school within a district is driven by strong need to avoid other schools- particularly urban public schools with minority or poor
The fourth chapter in Putnam’s Our Kids is titled “Schooling”, and it focuses on how education plays into class inequality. The argument is that while schools do not cause the opportunity gap between poor kids and rich kids, but the schools allow it to grow. Putnam claims, “schools as sites probably widen the class gap,” (182). How the schools act as these sites, is based strongly on the physical segregation of rich people from poor people. Putnam refers to this segregation as “residential sorting”, and states that, “residential sorting by income [...] has shunted high-income and low-income students into separate schools,” (163). Rich parents want their kids in the best schools, with the best teachers and the best peers, and are able to afford
In his book, The Miseducation of the Negro, Carter G. Woodson addresses many issues that have been and are still prevalent in the African American community. Woodson believed that in the midst of receiving education, blacks lost sight of their original reasons for becoming educated. He believed that many blacks became educated only to assimilate to white culture and attempt to become successful under white standards, instead of investing in their communities and applying their knowledge to help other blacks.
“To gaze into another person’s face is to do two things: to recognize their humanity and to assert your own” –Aminata Diallo. The Book of Negros was written by Canadian author Lawrence Hill. The Book of Negros is about a young girl named Aminata who is brought to London, England, in 1802, by abolitionists who are petitioning to end the slave trade. As she awaits an audience with King George to speak on her personal experience of being a captured slave, she recounts on paper her life story. Aminata was abducted as an 11-year-old child from her village, Bayo in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a coffle—a string of slaves. Aminata Diallo is sent to live as a slave in South Carolina. Despite suffering humiliation and languishing in starvation, fortunately years later, she forges her way to freedom; by following the Slave Triangle: living in Africa to working on a plantation in the southern states and serving the British in the Revolutionary War and registering her name in the historic “Book of Negroes”, which eventually leads her to manor houses of London. “This book, an actual document, provides a short but immensely revealing record of freed Loyalist slaves who requested permission to leave the United States for resettlement in Nova Scotia, only to find that the haven they sought was steeped in an oppression all of its own” (Haper Collins Canada, 2007). The Slave Triangle had a huge impact on everyone all over the world, and it was significant for Aminata Diallo to follow the slave triangle in The Book of Negros because it teaches the reader about the cruelty of slavery, the process or different stages of the slave triangle and the exploitation of people and goods.
Black Economics In Black Economics William Raspberry offers a personal insight into the economics of the black American, but as he states Raspberry is “neither a businessman, an economist, nor a social scientist.” He presents his views without analysis and his solutions without a business outlook; instead Raspberry looks to the people for the cause and the answer. William Raspberry makes a bold effort by calling on his race, the African Americans, for both the cause and solution to their economic problems. Raspberry chooses to open up with two myths about race, helping to set the tone of the paper. The first myth he deals with is that “race is of overriding importance, that it is a determinant not just of opportunity but also of potential, a reliable basis for explaining political and economic realities . . . ” He explains that it is easy to see how race has assumed such importance in the mythology since slavery is the very reason blacks are present in America. Raspberry continues to elaborate on the topic of slavery to produce the central theme of the myth: the myth of white superiority. There are two things that flow from the “racism-is-all” myth that are used to account for the difficulties of blacks. The first, Raspberry states, is that it puts the solution to their difficulties outside their control, and second it causes blacks to think of their problems in terms of a failure of racial justice. With the second result Raspberry elaborates by calling on civil rights. Income gaps, education gaps, test-score gaps, infant-mortality gaps, employment gaps, business-participation gaps, as stated by Raspberry are all now talked about as “civil rights” issues. He points out that the gaps are real, but that describing them as “civil rights” issues steers us away from possible solutions, and that while doing this the problems grow worse. He offers a comparison to a group of poor whites that are in a similar economic standing as blacks and are granted their full civil rights. So how can the lack of civil rights be responsible for their economic conditions when other groups are just as bad off without the racism factor? So if the racism myth is not the cause of the blacks difficulties, then what does Raspberry offer as the reason? To him the operating myth of blacks accounts for their condition, leading them to focus on the misdistribution of opportunities.
Money is something that ties in with white privilege because they have access to better schooling which means better jobs and more money. A poor African American or a minority person who lives in an urban setting has to take what they get because they do not have the money or the resources to pick and choose which school they would like to attend, so they are already one step behind the privileged kids. In addition, Peggy McIntosh article “White Privilege: The Invisible Knapsack,” she states “As a white person, I realized I had taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspect, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage” (537) McIntosh is saying that throughout her youth she realizes with resources or not, the privilege is given unto her whether she earn it or not because of her race. What she means is that society’s look on race and not their background and think that white people gain more privilege than black people which is
Lichter,Daniel T. and David J. Eggebeen. 1987. “Rich kids, Poor kids: Changing Family Structure and Income Inequality Among American Children.” Paper presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, 23-27 Aug., Cincinnati, OH. 12 May 2014
In today’s world what mostly limits children’s opportunities lies on their parents income. According to 2011 research study by Stanford sociologist Sean Reardon, the test score gap between the children of the poor and the children of the wealthy has expanded by as much of 40 percent and is now more than 50 percent larger than the black-white achievement gap. According
In her book, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, Annette Lareau argues out that the influences of social class, as well as, race result in unequal childhoods (Lareau 1). However, one could query the inequality of childhood. To understand this, it is necessary to infer from the book and assess the manner in which race and social class tend to shape the life of a family. As the scholar demonstrates, each race and social class usually has its own unique way of child upbringing based on circumstances. To affirm this, the different examples that the scholar presents in the book could be used. Foremost, citing the case of both the White and the African American families, the scholar advances that the broader economics of racial inequality has continued to hamper the educational advancement and blocks access to high-paying jobs with regard to the Blacks as opposed to the Whites. Other researchers have affirmed this where they indicate that the rate of unemployment among the African Americans is twice that of the White Americans. Research further advances that, in contrast to the Whites, for those African Americans who are employed, there is usually a greater chance that they have been underemployed, receive lower wages, as well as, inconsistent employment. This is how the case of unequal childhood based on race comes about; children from the Black families will continue residing in poverty as opposed to those from the white families.
McIntosh, Peggy. "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," in Race, Class, and Gender in the United States, ed. Paula S. Rothenberg. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.
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.
Louie, Vivian. 2001. “Parents’ Aspirations and Investment: The Role of Social Class in the Educational
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.
... The more research that took place during this research paper made it more evident that the realisticity of people with color being able to achieve the American Dream is very scarce. With the numbers and data that certain researchers have collected, it proved that the achievement of the American Dream among people of color was indeed less due to certain obstacles and complications that others do not overcome. From jobs to home locations, the people of African American descendants always got the “left-overs” of the Americans and statistics support this claim. Although education could be an escape from poverty, the people of color rarely have access to good schools or education systems. All of these factors are evidently confirmations that the realisticity of a colored person to achieve the American Dream in today’s society is not impossible, however very difficult.
In this detailed and shocking book, Jonathan Kozol describes the horrific and unjust conditions in which many children in today’s society are forced to get their education. Kozol discusses three major reasons for the discrepancies in America’s schools today: disparities of property taxes, racism, and the conflict between state and local control. The first of these reasons is that of the differences of available property tax revenues. Kozol discusses the inconsistencies in property tax revenues and the problem that the poorer districts aren’t getting the same opportunities for education as the more affluent neighborhoods. He says the reason for this is that the poorer districts don’t receive as much money as the affluent districts because their property isn’t worth as much, therefore they get less money in return. Therefore, if they demand more money for the school systems, they end up taxing themselves more money. Kozol uses shocking statistics to get the reader’s attention. For instance, a classroom in Chicago “received approximately $90,000 less each year than would have been spent on them if they were pupils of a school such as New Trier High” (54). Kozol also discusses a solution for this problem, the Foundation Program, which is meant to set a standard of basic or minimum education for the less fortunate neighborhoods. Although this program seems to work on the surface, it makes a bigger gap between the rich and poor districts.
Returning to his old high school after having had graduate ten years ago, Shamus Rahman Khan came in with one goal: to study the inequality of a school that claims to be more “diverse.” St. Paul’s School located in Concord, New Hampshire claims to have become more diverse over the years, accepting people of different racial backgrounds and social classes to their prestigious boarding school. However, as described in his book, Khan found that this claim made by the school is false. He also found out that the elite that used to attend his school is not the same as the elite attending it now. Nonetheless, it was the elite that were succeeding because they were the ones who could afford the school, had family linages that already attended the school, and mastered “ease” which made them privileged in society. Separating his book into five different chapters, each focusing on a different topic that helps support his claim, Khan describes this change in elite and the inequality that still accompanies St. Paul’s. In the introduction to Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School, Khan states the three most important points he will refer to during the rest of the book: hierarchies are natural and can be used to one’s advantage, experiences matter more than inherited qualities, and the elite signal their status through ease and openness. These are discussed thoroughly in throughout Privilege.