Racial Inequality

All societies go through a process by which people are classified by others, this is known as differentiation. Gender, age, ethnicity, social class and disability are some of the main types of differentiation. Societies also have stratas or layers of individuals with different social importance, wealth and status; this is known as stratification. The result of stratification and differentiation is that people have different life chances in the course of their lives; whether a person will have good or bad life chances depends on where a person is in the social hierarchy. In addition, inequalities are also as a result of stratification, social inequalities are established from power, status, wealth and income which are unequally distributed in society.

For a sociologist, inequality outlines socially developed differences in the well-being between the different groups within a society (Walsh, Moore and Stephens, 2000). Inequality still remains a perpetual feature of the British society. Substantial inequalities
With social class, the lower down the social class hierarchy a person is, the lower the pay, despite working long hours and in dangerous conditions (Browne, 2011). Class differences in employment are usually as a result of poor education. As functionalists believe, those who work hard and achieve good grades will get the best jobs and those who do not have good educational achievements will have low paid jobs or even become poor. It is known that an individual from the routine social class is more likely to have poor grades, this is due to them either missing school due to illnesses or not being motivated by their parents (Payne, 2006). Education inequalities can become a part of a vicious circle, those who do not achieve good grades will have poor life chances in terms of employment opportunities and furthermore, resulting in low income, poor housing and ill health (Thompson and Campling,