Poverty And Wealth Inequality In The United States

The persistence of poverty and wealth inequality in the United States submitted to the recent theoretical lenses of Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer which focus on institutional racism in the labor market, education and housing in the twentieth century, help us grasp the mechanisms by which disadvantages breed disadvantages over several generations. We intend to show from the New deal to the civil right movement some persistent interactions in which institutions like the government, real-state and financial sectors, school and family have played an important role in nurturing a culture of segregation and discrimination.

Beginning in the late 19th century prosperity in America is not on a level playing field. Several ethnic groups in America
While manufacturing jobs disappeared in great number, the service industry offered many high paid employments to the white folks and very few low ones like janitor to the minorities. To further complicate the lives of the minorities President R. Reagan pulled back almost all social benefits favoring social uplifting of minorities brought about by the new Deal. In fact, Reaganomics claimed the economy works better when it is trickled down by cutting taxes to the wealthiest that could support government social programs, thus allowing them to build more wealth which will automatically, as by a magic hand, benefit the less fortunate. As a result, the poor became poorer while the wealthiest became wealthier with all social implications such poorer school, lack of healthcare, increase in crime rate and so
It began with the conversion of the Indian into Anglo-American with all the atrocities and ensuring consequences The Indian children in order to assimilate into Anglo-American ways of living were stripped of all their indianness; languages, attires, life styles, musics, and cultures were all banished. The Indian children would see and attenuation of their misery only in 1933 with the nomination of a new commissioner of Indian affairs who seek to change the educational system and integrating Indian culture in the curriculum. American Indian people would only have a say in their education with the civil right movement. With regards to the blacks, born slave education became immediately out of their reach, but with the emancipation the white folks considered educating a black child as spoiling a hand that would be used to grow their fields. Two perspectives have been proposed and supported in the education of black children in the names of Booker T Washington and Du Bois. The first one, offered compromise as a mean to educate the blacks by accepting the majority point of view that black did not have equal needs and right as whites. In that sense Booker T Washington developed his industrial education system at Tuskegee which taught trade to those who could read. Du Bois on the other hand thought whites and blacks were entitled to the same level of