Racial Inequality in the United States of America (original) (raw)
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4th November 2008 has been considered as one of the most important historical event in the whole African American history: the election of Barack Obama would have represented the accomplishment of the long path of African Americans to equality. According to some observers, as the first “black” President, as he described himself while filling the 2010 Federal Census1, Obama tore down “the last racial barrier inside American politics”2. 80% of African Americans considered Obama's election as a dream come true, 96% of them was sure that his mandate would improve racial relations3, 95% of them voted for Obama in 20084: an optimistic aura surrounded the President, during both the presidential campaign and the first part of the mandate, but does this optimism have roots? Could Obama's election could actually be considered such a symbolic final point of African Americans' struggle? The aim of this paper is not to describe the dual attitude used by the President toward the racial question, but rather to examine the concrete condition of African Americans in the United States nowadays, its reproducing causes and the implemented political efforts with a view to equality. In order to reach this goal, in first part, I would describe the concrete condition of African Americans in the contemporary United States, stressing both achievements and limits on the way to integration. My purpose will be to highlight the main elements that let us understand why racial equality is still an utopia for black people. In the second part, I will focus my attention on the relationship between segregation and inequality, enriching my dissertation with official statistics and papers. The main reference is the political philosopher Elisabeth Anderson's “nonideal theory”5 of social justice which aims to describe segregation as one of the main causes of the persistence of inequality among the African Americans and to promote “integration as an imperative of justice and an ideal of intergroup relations in democratic society”6. In the third part, I will discuss the concept of discrimination aiming to stress its importance as a key factor reproducing and enforcing inequality. Finally, I will examine how colour-blindness and integration could be possible solutions to gain racial justice: the aim of this chapter is to show advantages and drawbacks of what has been done in order to draw the attention on past mistakes, on the basis of which it will be possible to open the way for new socio-political strategies. Hence, my paper is founded on both Elisabeth Anderson's “The Imperative of Integration” and Glenn Loury's “The Anatomy of Racial Inequality”. By jointly reading the two texts, I aim to paint a colourful scene of the condition of the African American, taking into account both lights and shades, failures and hopes.
The anatomy of racial inequality : The author’s account
Review of Black Political Economy, 2004
In my book, The Anatomy of Racial Inequality, I have tried to do three things: outline a theory of "race" applicable to the social and historical circumstances of the United States; sketch an account of why racial inequality in our society is so stubbornly persistent; and, offer a conceptual framework for the practice of social criticism on race-related issues that
Persistent Disparity: Race and Economic Inequality in the United States since 1945
Southern Economic Journal, 1999
Occasionally enlightening, often frustrating, this book examines the continuing gap in economic status between white Americans and African-Americans. The authors stake out a pessimistic position, arguing that the perceived relative economic progress of blacks during the 1960s and 1970s was largely illusory. Furthermore, they con
BLACKS AND OTHER RACIAL MINORITIES: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF COLOR IN INEQUALITY
Urban Geography, 1989
The major thesis of this paper is that the lower socioeconomic status of Blacks compared to Asians, Hispanics, and Native Americans is due primarily to greater racial' discrimination against Blacks in housing. A critical result of this housing discrimination is reduced employment opportunities. Discrimination by Whites against the four racial/ethnic minority groups occurs along a continuum. Asians experience the least housing discrimination and as a consequence have greater employment opportunities. The level of discrimination increases from Asian to Hispanic[1] to Native American to Black.
Race at the Forefront in Social and Economic Inequities
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Racial wealth inequity between Whites and people of color, particularly Black and Latino Americans, is one of the most pressing social and economic issues in the United States, historically and at present. The magnitude of the racial wealth gap is immense and deeply entrenched, and the scale of racial inequities in wealth has changed very little in recent times. Without radical changes, at the current rate of growth, the wealth gap between Whites, compared to Black and Latino families will be over one million dollars by 2044. Considering the shifting demographics of the U.S., including projections that indicate that the majority of the U.S. population will be composed of people of color by 2040, it is even more critical to investigate different approaches to address racial wealth inequities. This paper aims to provide a historical transdisciplinary understanding of racial wealth inequality. In addition, we highlight key takeaways provided by panelists in the Race at the Forefront in...
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http://dx.doi.org/10.9771/ccrh.v32i85.27828 This paper, “The Racial State of the Union,” interrogates the role of race and racism in the United States of America. The paper grapples with race conceptually as it explores why racial categories and racial inequality exist in the first place. We also examine the current state of race in North America by laying bare it social, economic and political manifestations. After exploring the magnitude of racial inequality in the United States, we labor to unravel the mechanisms both structurally and culturally that perpetuate and sustain racial disparities. Because racist actions and beliefs have always been resisted by social movements, action, and resistance at the personal level, we assess the nature and outcomes of struggles to overthrow North American racism. We conclude by assessing the current prospects for racial transformation and the possibilities for the emergence of racial equality. Thus, in “The Racial State of the Union” we provid...
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 2010
Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System, is a big, ambitious, toughminded, and carefully argued book. In a fashion, Princeton sociologist Douglas Massey sets out to answer the daunting questions of what are the fundamental mechanisms that lend recurrent patterning-social organization and structure, in a phrase-to social inequality in the United States. He unfolds a three-part answer. First, he sets out a basic theoretical framework for understanding the process of social stratification: the factors and mechanisms to which we must attend in order to understand how people come to be systematically allocated to positions of differential reward and status. This section of the book is heavily indebted to Charles Tillỹ 1998!. Part of what Massey does here is quite conventional within sociology, so much so that he rightly refers to it as invoking "stratification's Holy trinity": namely, he points to the dividing lines of race, class, and gender. Yet, part of what he does 30 DU BOIS REVIEW: SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH ON RACE 7:1, 2010