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Inequality causes and consequences
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As we prosper through time, inequality is slowly less evident. A lot of people don't realize that although things are improving with time, inequality is still prominent in our society. The people that are failing to realize that there still is inequality, are the fortunate ones. They rise well above the poverty line, and usually live relatively economically sound lives. They are the people who are supplied with our society's benefits.
The people that are in pursuit of social change, and constantly bring attention to issues of equal rights and privileges, are often the people that do not have them. They are the ones who suffer daily from different levels of inequality.
The majority of post-secondary students are considered to be privileged people. This tends to cause an ignorance, or lack of education, towards inequality because most of the students do not experience great levels of inequality. When our class was given our first quiz, everybody was able to feel a sense of inequality. As the class was divided into the different time groups, every student felt the unequal opportunity. Even the students that were allotted the most time for the quiz were able to at least see the inequality. As different times were announced the less fortunate students began to complain, and the more fortunate ones realized that their once equal peers, were now placed in an unequal situation. Since most of the students do not experience great amounts of inequality, the unequal time distribution shocked them.
Fortunately for myself, I have grown up in an upper-middle class family. Although my parents have always tried to educate me on inequality, I never experienced much of it. During a class exercise I was placed in a group, and was given six minutes to complete my quiz. Although this was almost enough time for me to complete my quiz, I was definitely jealous of the students that were allotted more time. Even though the groups were arranged randomly, I still felt like I was treated unequally to my peers. I felt unequal to both my peers that had more, and less time, than me. The situation made me angry, and I wanted an explanation from the instructor for the unequal situation that was forced upon me. I felt the injustice because I had a different time to write my quiz than a neighboring peer; who pays the same tuition...
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...hey may not have the opportunity.
Most people look down upon lower classes, failing to realize that inequality deprives those people of the equal rights to prosperity. This occurs not only in a few societies, but all around the world.
According to the social conflict paradigm, society is a complex system characterized by inequality and conflict, which generate social change. Power and privilege are distributed unequally by social class, race, gender and age. These inequalities are often reinforced in societal institutions (Macionis 19).
My participation in the class exercise allowed me to have an experience of life through the eyes a lower class individual. Even though the real world is much more extreme than the class exercise, I was still able to understand society and its levels of inequality. After experiencing society from a different perspective, I realize that although society has changed from the days of extreme inequality, it still needs much attention to equalizing the privileges between the different levels of stratification.
Works Cited
Macionis, John and Gerber, Linda. Sociology. 3rd ed. Prentice-Hall Canada Inc.: Ontario, 1999.
The class system has been in place within humanity since the very birth of economic trade. It is a fact of life that others will seek self-betterment and gain power to provide for those that they love and their own personal interest. Throughout the years the implementation of a social class system has helped to differentiate the types of economic situations as nation and serve as a system to work toward the betterment of the society as a whole. However, as the world became more productive and the gaps between the higher classes and lower classes increased the efficiency of the social class system and the decisions made from the individuals within it has been called into question. Kalen Ockerman opened the channel to question if the class system is the helpful institution that benefits of all its citizens or if the lower classes are not getting the support and attention they deem necessary.
One way to look at class is with the model developed by Janny Scott and David Leonhardt in their article, “Shadowy Lines That Still Divide,” in The New York Times. They state that “[o]ne way to think of a person’s position in society is to imagine a hand of cards. Everyone is dealt four cards, one from each suit: education, incom...
When a student does reach college, they are set back again. But not only that, the wealthy students are better prepared to excel in college in other ways. Once a student reaches a college, one might think that the playing field is more equal. What if all students who present to college have about the same knowledge base? One would expect two students, with equal knowledge base, but different social economic status, to do the same in their classes. However, this is not the case. In a recent New York Times article “Are College Lectures Unfair?” Annie Murphy Paul discusses this. What has been shown is that the classic passive lecture style, the one typically taught in undergraduate education, favors the “privileged population” (Annie Paul). This is because they have been experiencing this at a younger age and for longer periods than any other demographic. As such, she brings up one of the many advantages that higher socioeconomic status brings. This is because colleges are “biased against undergraduates who are not white, male, and affluent”(Annie Paul). There has been evidence stating that lectures are not “generic or neutral” (Annie Paul) but specifically favors some students while discriminating against “women, minorities, low-income students, and first generation college students. This is not a matter of instruction biased, but the lecture
Gregory Mantsios advocates more on the struggle to proceed from one class to another in his essay-“Class in America”. Mantsios states that, “Class standing has a significant impact on our chances for survival....
I sometimes consider it to be unfair working extra hard to compete with others when I’m already disadvantaged because of race and social class into which they are born into. Thinking back now, I realized I’ve suffered micro-aggressions1 within the campus community. Just to mention few of my micro insult and micro assault experiences. I can remember being asked by a male staff of the enrolment service how I was able to gain admission into the program I applied for without going through some sort of upgrading process. I asked him if it was something I needed to do but he told me I obviously don’t need it since I’ve been admitted already and all I had to do was to register for courses for the semester. He went ahead to say that it wasn’t common for him to see ‘people’ like me get into the university through a direct path therefore I must be a smart girl. I didn’t think much of the statement then and took it as a compliment but I have better understanding of what he was getting at now. And ever since, I realized I’ve had to prove myself and my academic ability especially in my smaller classes to both my instructors and fellow students (especially in group works) over the last three years. Except when the class is crowded and the seat availability is limited, it’s rare for me to have
There is a high degree of social inequality within the United States. Of most modern industrial countries, the United Stated has some of the richest and some of the poorest people to be found. That fact is very disturbing, however, explains why much of the inequality exists in the US. In the following essay I will explain to you about the inequality in our country and why it occurs, based on the theoretical perspectives of a functionalist, conflict theorist, and social interationist.
No one wants to be poor. We do not want to live in a humble house and worry about our daily necessities. However, we were determined to be rich or poor since we were born. Many people work hard to overcome poverty, but it is not easy. That’s why intergenerational poverty is a common issue around the world. Upward mobility means raising from a lower social class to a higher social class. The reasons of small upward mobility —rising from lower class to middle class— are the government’s tax preference and spending are favoring the wealth, managers earning much more than workers and the mainstream culture rarely covers the life of working class.
There is a lot to learn about inequality. If you ask a sociologist about inequality they will tell you that the nature of society
... encourage the lower class citizens to work harder to move up within companies and are motivated to succeed in order to better their life (Teppermen, 2011). Inequality allows individuals to demonstrate their talents and identify those that are willing to work for what they want and deserve.
This lesson plan was designed with the intention to make students aware of the hierarchal nature of society, and get them to reflect on their position in said structure. Without the former, the latter cannot be realized, for to acknowledge one’s position on a scale of sorts, they must first acknowledge that a scale exists. The issue with getting students to recognize society’s order of classification is the notion that those with privileged positions on the gamut of social statuses refuse to acknowledge or concede their privileges (McIntosh, 1990). Because by confessing an advantaged state, the state itself becomes problematized. In other words, admitting an advantage over someone else is to confess the perpetuation of a hierarchal order. For without people taking advantage of others there would be no advantaged or disadvantaged. In addition, by being cognizant of their position in society, the positions themselves become less desirable. The reason being, that one of the principal privileges that one can enjoy is the ability to not have to think about one’s advantages over others, by being the dominant, or ‘normal’ in a given society. And although McIntosh (1990)
Class inequity is based upon the position of power that an individual has within society (Carey 2013, p. 80). It is built around the idea of an economic hierarchy, and each person having a ranking (Carey 2013, p. 80). In regards to health, it is seen that a person with a high socio-economic status has better access to medical resources, and in contrast, those with a low socio-economic status receive little-to-no medical help (Carey 2013, p. 80). Gender, race and ethnicity also contribute to a person’s ‘class’, which therefore adds to the idea of class inequity (Cerasa 2011).
The reason that I do not consider myself as a privileged person overall is because of my socioeconomic status. My father is a salesman while my mother is a banker and neither of them have a college education. I am a first generation student who lives in Cleveland, Ohio and who attended Cleveland Public Schools. The only reason that I was able to attend private high school was because of scholarships that I earned. My family has had Affordable Care Act insurance, has been on food stamps, and has struggled financially for years. During my senior year of high school, I worked about 30 hours a week and during the summer I worked two different jobs totaling to over 40 hours a week. I do not think that I am a privileged person because things have
With the current unrest occurring in our nation, it would both naïve and in many cause ignorant to believe that is not social inequality still happening each and every day. Social inequality itself can be described as the presence of unequal distribution of benefits and opportunities due to “the significance of a group’s hierarchies and statuses” in a society that drastically hinder one’s life by “setting limits and circumscribing one’s possibilities” (Henslin, 2012). Unfortunately, there are still a large number of instances of social inequality that are still occurring in today’s society with little change being conducted to change them.
Inequality is the unequal distribution of opportunities, rewards, and power among and between individuals, households, and groups is a defining feature of all unknown societies. Social inequality is characterized by the existence of unequal opportunities and rewards for different social positions or statuses within a group or society. It contains structured and recurrent patterns of unequal distributions of goods, wealth, opportunities, rewards, and punishments Things that happen within the education system can bring about inequa...
Social inequality can be easily defined as, “an unequal distribution of resources” (Symbaluk & Bereska, 2013, p. 93). Although it is easy to define, being aware of it in everyday life is a more difficult task. Social inequality can take many forms based on race, ethnicity, and gender and can be seen everywhere in society from school, the workplace, to government. It can be difficult to notice social inequality because stereotypes are ingrained into society and often affect the subconscious. Class stratification also enables people to scapegoat minorities by saying they have no merit to society rather than society has put up barriers to stop them from achieving merit. One easily observable effect of social inequality is the income gap between