Cultural Inequality in Modern World

Today, society likes to pride itself on its acceptance and respect for people of all races, class, gender, sexuality, ability and religion. The notion of equality is frequently represented in all media platforms as well as institutional structures. Whether it is heard on the news, presented in a movie or a written in a public statement from a corporation, diversity is illustrated to play a part in every scene of contemporary culture. However, when critically observing society’s ideology of equality one cannot help but notice the premise of this notion has been formulated by a dominant representation.

The ways in which parity is thought about, acted upon and showcased has been skillfully designed to institute the views of dominant culture. While the belief maybe everyone is treated equally, traits such as an established language, values, and social customs differentiate and place barriers between people and society as a whole. Consequently, these differences have led to insurmountable difficulties creating systemized oppression.

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Too often though, this institutional structure created by the dominant culture is overlooked due the creed everyone is considered equal. However, this act of turning a blind eye toward the societal differences has been engrained into the impressionable minds of children, thus proceeding to continue the existence of oppression and ultimately destroying all chances for society to relate equally.

Dominant culture plays a key role in the framework of society. Yet more often than not, it presence is disregarded. Today, it seems to be a common practice to pretend or ignore any form of inequality still exists within society, especially by those who belong to the governing group.

Conversations revolving around the topic frequently cause uneasiness, no one likes to be condemned or accused of white privilege, oppression or social superiority, but it is an issue that occurs heavily. Society rather is more fixated on promoting the ideology of equality among all people, as opposed to recognizing the fact that the entire construction of present day civilization is primarily formulated around dominant culture. White privilege, subjugation and power structures have molded a society, where distinctions between who is considered to be a part of “norm” or the majority and who is not are clearly divided. Author Audre Lorde of “Age Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” defines this “norm” as a “white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian and financially secure” (116) anyone outside of these descriptions are submitted to the identification of being an “other,” where subjection to oppression is inevitable.

Dominant culture’s classification of the “norm” has led to white supremacy’s seizure of control by assembling institutions to enforce their power within social hierarchies. The act of deciphering the “others” from the “norm” strengthens the empowerment of dominant culture through the oppression of ordering those who are displaced from the white middle class male characteristics as powerless objects. Consequently, these discrepancies have developed social differences, whether that means segregating people socially, politically, culturally or economically based on the characteristics falling outside of the “norm.” Thus, these clear divisions lead to the act of dehumanization of the oppressed at the benefactor of the dominant white supremacy. Social differences to be blunt have been established and are not going away. The outlook that society is treated and deemed entirely equal is a dogma imposed by the dominant culture to further prolong and replicate its existence in today’s contemporary culture.

While the fact, dominant culture has created social difference through clarifying distinctions between people containing power within society and those who do not, the greater issue at hand is the replication and continuation of oppression. Dominant culture has taken root in white supremacy designating an established language, value systems and social customs representing those of the norm, however, in the process exiling those of a different race, religion and gender. Sadly, though these mentalities concerning oppression originate early on within childhood. Dominant culture has shaped differences among society, yet has inflicted the mindset to ignore them, copy them and destroy all deemed to be subordinate (Lorde 115). As Lorde, points out “we have all been programmed to respond to human difference between us with fear and loathing” (115), but it this programming that has been curated by dominant sovereignty. The notion people are treated differently or unequal are illustrated to be bad because it goes against society’s fixation with the equal ideology, therefore should be ignored. However, it is this “refusal to recognize those differences and to examine the distortions” that has lead to this has led to the installment systematic oppression within society, consequently creating terrible barriers for those who are not part of the “norm” cannot surmount (Lorde 115). Society’s response to disregard inequality only continues to separate civilization as a whole and strengthens dominant culture as a power.

However, these ideas of dominance are taken and positioned into the mind of children. As author Levin Morales of “The Politics of Childhood” suggests, children enter this world free of being jaded, cynical, and full of hope; they unlike adults see “clearly what custom has made invisible to us, and are outraged by all injustices” (Morales 51). Children have a sense of the inequalities that plague society in which dominant culture has crafted, while adults seem to have become immune to. Sadly, though adults oppress these recognitions children comprehend. Children are deprived of their intolerance to dominant culture due to the mentality that “they are just children,” “they are innocent and cannot understand politics” (Morales 52). Instead children are deemed powerless and expected to be incapable of having opinions, choice or responsibility, a thought process crafted by the supremacy of adulthood. Due to this adults feel qualified to project their mindsets of social differences onto children. Morles more clearly puts it, children will “taken advantage of and manipulated by the political interest of those more sophisticate than they” (52). A form of adult supremacy is occurring today with in society progressing the cycle of the “norm” versus the “other.” Adults consider children to be too ingenuous to handle the politics of the world or understand inequalities, therefore they restrict the teachings of them; alternatively the as the mentality to ignore social differences, as Lorde states, is society’s ways of dealing with dominant culture are taught. There is a degrading factor adults play in assumption children are merely too incapable to handle society’s injustices. It goes hand in hand with dominant cultures practice to dehumanize the “other” in order to emphasize its power. In other words children’s thoughts are subjected to oppression by adult control to sustain the life to dominant culture.