Structural Inequalities: Education, Income, And The Justice System

Three structural inequalities that are in affect are education, income and the justice system. All three of these inequalities play a functioning role together and ultimately can ruin or cause hardship in a person’s life. The group that is mostly affected with these inequalities are African Americans and Latinos/Latinas. The first of these inequalities is education. Education is a serious structural inequality because now days it affects the majority of how you are seen in society and how you do financially. One of the problems with education is quality of the schools in poor neighborhoods. The schools in poor neighborhoods are unfit for learning. These “Schools in poor districts have inadequate facilities, materials, and personnel” (Wood).

If the buildings that the students are taught in is inadequate then students don’t come and they will not continuously get the needed education. This is a big problem because who wants to be in a building that always has something broken or that doesn’t work. Along with this not having teachers who have the correct credentials to do a job is important. These schools don’t always have teachers who have degrees in the classes they teach because the school district won’t give the funding for such teachers. Again this cause students to be watched or baby sited because you cannot rely on the information that is being taught or they are being taught information that is false or out of date. Furthermore if the teachers are not adapting to the needs of the students individual learning styles then students start to struggle and become disconnected to learning. These things in return produce students who think the teachers don’t actually care about their education and they start to slack off in school and develop behavioral issues. This then makes them susceptible to fall into the stigma of a dropout. Additionally, another inequality of education is the high cost of a college education and the racism. The high cost of education causes a burden for those of the middle class and also those who are poor. This has intern sparked at trend where “middle-income students that enrolled in four-year colleges has dropped, while their enrollment in 2-year colleges has risen, over the last decade” (Censky2). Although there is nothing wrong with 2 year schools the problem lies with the association of the school and the weight that the degree holds in society. Unfortunately an associate’s degree from a 2 year institution does not hold the same weight as a Bachelors from a four year institution.