However, minorities especially, African Americans have been fighting for decades to claim the most basic rights, such as the right for equal education and the right to vote. Today African American people have equal rights as any other citizen in the US, every individual who is an american citizen has all the rights offered in america. The United States of America is claimed to be a society where different cultures rule the nation, no matter of fact the United States has no official language. It is the country for the people and acceptance for everyone, no discrimination for Gender, race or religion but these is not all true because there is overwhelming evidence to say otherwise. Almost 50 years after the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were passed, giving African Americans common rights, African Americans dominate the top at both the poverty and the incarceration charts. Although the united states has improve since the civil rights act of 1964, racial inequality in the united states still affect minorities all across the country.
The most important aspects in the United States is employment, jobs are the driving force in America. According to the U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS (is the principal fact-finding agency for the U.S. government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics), explains that during the 1960s the black unemployment rate was as much as twice as high as for whites. More shockingly, this rate has been consistent. To this very day, despite their triumph in the fight for equal rights, the unemployment rate remains unchanged. This statement suggest that african Americans were struggling with employment then and still struggling with it now. The United States is known as the ‘incarceration nation’ due to the fact that 790 per 100,000 citizens are incarcerated, this is almost 800 times more than comparable countries. According to Lauren slocum “a writer, editor, and sewing teacher at a local art studio,” She explains issues with the U.S incarceration system: “The U.S. has 2.3 million prisoners, nearly 1 million are African Americans, the high number of incarcerated African Americans is undoubtedly a result of the low income and high unemployment among this group. African Americans do not only represent a high number of incarcerated compared to whites, the percentage of African Americans incarcerated is in fact higher than in the 1960s”. This is a clear indicator of African american struggling with employment,actions are needed in order to improve African american life in the United states. All of the above information and statistic indicate that racial equality has not been archived for african americans and possibly other minorities.
There are people who don’t believe in racial inequality and they have some key argument. One of the Argument to racial inequality is minimization of racism (attempts to minimize the factor of race as a major influence in affecting the life chances of). the title pretty much sums this stage up, Some folks tend to say that racism in modern America does not affect one’s choices in life and definitely does not affect their opportunities in life “ saying otherwise is simply using the race card” this could be true there are people who use their race to a specific advantages. It writes off instances and situations that could be perceived as discrimination to be hypersensitivity to the topic of race.from ancessesotors or the money and wealth is generational and or transferred from the past, according to matt wisly a CNN article writer, he states that “over the lifetime, about 30% of households could expect to receive a wealth transfer, the mean value of these transfers would be about $200,000 (in 2007 dollar” and these would account for close to 40% of their net worth near time of death. If you take the average wealth transfer you get that white families net worth is about 700,000 rather than 919,000. Another argument against white privilege is that there are a lot of poor white people, in fact there are more homeless white people than those of black and homeless. According to Luke Pearson “ As the word ‘privilege’ is often associated with the upper classes, people who went to private schools, those who got a car for their sweet 16th, those who have hired ‘help’ or people whose parents paid their rent throughout university, their are actually over 14 million white individuals in the united states who live under poverty” and about 6 million black individuals. These information is useful to let people understand that there are poor white folks in america.
The racial inequality argument can go both ways, different people have different opinions on the matter. In Nic Stone’s novel, Dear Martin, she repeatedly touches on the subject of racial inequality. One of the first occurrence where we see racial inequality is when justyce writes to Martin Luther king JR justyce talks about how he knows that there aren’t colored fountains anymore and it’s illegal to discriminate but why was he arrested for no wrongdoing on top of it all the police used unnecessary force, justyce goes on to state that not all folks are equal “93”. Justyce goes through a lot of hardship, losing his friend was the hardest of all but justyce remains reasonable due to the courage of that Martin Luther king JR had in the times of civil rights movement. With the racial inequities going on in his life he remain strong and proves that anything is possible when you accept who you are and appreciate what you have rather than what you don’t.
References
- A Structural Definition Of Social Privilege | MSS Research. https://www.mssresearch.org/?q=Structural_Definition_of_Social_Privilege. Accessed 9 Jan. 2019.
- Race, Power And Privilege. Retrieved January 9, 2019, from https://www.usc.edu.au/connect/work-at-usc/staff/cultural-diversity/cultural-diversity-and-inclusive-practice-toolkit/race-power-and-privilege.
- Stone, Nic. Dear Martin. Crown. 2017.
- “THE REALITY OF ECONOMIC PRIVILEGE: The Connection Between Racism and Poverty.” Black Collegian, vol. 39, no. 1, Sept. 2008, p. 64. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ulh&AN=35347101&site=ehost-live.
- Zuckerman, Mortimer B. “Solving America’s Inequality Puzzle.” U.S. News Digital Weekly, vol. 6, no. 12, Mar. 2014, p. 25. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ulh&AN=95106124&site=ehost-live.
- https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate
