Essay On Racial Inequality

Some people believe that we have outdated racism and that it exists no longer; however, racial inequality can be found anywhere—even in its smallest measure. Within the United States, there is a noticeable discrepancy between Caucasian Americans (or white Americans) and minorities (African/black Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, etc.). Racial inequality has many parts that make it a possibility, such as with stereotypes and rising stigmas. It thrives off of the negative, and usually misguided, information that is believed. Some may argue that racial inequality is not a major problem within the United States because our country is starting to grow in the right direction and accept people—mainly minorities—for their

Racial inequality is caused by various things such as stereotypes, stigmas, economic and social issues, and judging cultural differences. It can be seen in McCarty’s article that inequality—whether it be racial, economic, etc.—can tie in with other ideologies. He finds inequality at the political and economic levels specifically and states there one factor “cannot fully explain the increasing disparities in [America].”1 Even in specific areas, there is a still a broad yet narrowed down spectrum of causes for inequality. Because there are so many factors as to why inequality is caused, and racial equality as well, narrowing a focus on stereotypes and social issues will help with simplifying for understanding. Saperstein and Penner define what a stereotype is as a “set of expectations by which people are continually judged in everyday interactions.”2 In addition, they claim that “[c]ertain races [are] judged to be inferior or superior on the basis of … stereotypes and such rankings were used to both explain and justify social, political, and economic inequality.” 3 Stereotypes themselves already set up and unequal stance. They are one of the core components of racial inequality, especially in America, because of their assumptions based on unproven information or information that has been misconstrued to be a generalization

It could be argued that racial inequality is a major problem because of how many minority groups—and subgroups—it affects socially and economically. McCarthy tells his audience about the individual ethnic groups that had to cope with educational institutions trying to strip away the specific characteristics that made them different from American society.7 In McCarthy’s article, none of these individual groups included white Americans; they were all minority groups (i.e., Native Americans, blacks, Hispanics/Latinos). McCarthy delves deeper and puts the spotlight on Native Americans and blacks for a moment to state that “… assimilation meant a special kind of cultural incorporation in which [blacks and Native Americans] were accorded to secondary status.”8 Not only were minorities subjected to assimilation, but they could only be placed as inferior to people who were different than them in some ways but not all. Even today, there is a demand for assimilation. For example, if two Hispanic people are speaking in Spanish to each other, they might get dirty looks from people who do not speak Spanish or even someone bothered enough to say: “You’re in America now; we speak English.” Besides assimilation, there is also the issue of economic disparity between races. Using Hispanics as an example again,