Social Inequality

Race, class, and gender are examples of inequality within the American society today. Inequality is a group people within a society that are doing better economically and have a greater amount of power than people who have a lower social status; people with a lower social status have very few or no amount of power and are doing worse economically (Ritzer, 2013). Social stratification links in with inequality as well, social stratification are when the people in the upper position receive a greater amount of social rewards than the people in the lower position (McIntyre, 2014). By receiving more social rewards people are more eligible to succeed because they are accepted within their social group. People believe that money is a way to make

People living in poverty do not have the same privileges as the people that are in the upper or middle class. By not having the same privileges there life chances diminish as well (McIntyre, 2014). Living in poverty creates lots of challenges; for example, in Ehrenreich’s article, she conducts an experiment where she tries to live in an average person’s budget who is in poverty and it basically is impossible, with just all the necessary expenses (2014). Having all these needs and very little money, there is also the lack of jobs in the U.S. Fast food industries are growing; however, there are very little jobs available and more competition for the positions (Newman, Lennon, 2014). The competition for jobs makes it harder to survive. Most Americans do not use their sociological imagination and assume that people living in poverty simply are not trying to move up from their social class and try to create a better life for themselves when in reality they are trying really hard just to survive (Newman, Lennon, 2014). Inequality and social stratification are the hardest reality’s that people face today. These ideas are hard to accept because of the person 's beliefs that you were taught within your social class/group. In addition, in high school the teachers and textbooks tend to “hide” the reality of the inequality and social stratification (Loewen, 2014). Being a naive observer myself, seeing the world by using social imagination has changed my view on inequality and social