Prejudice and Discrimination in the Society

We found Prejudice and Discrimination anywhere

  (https://getrevising.co.uk/resources/prejudice-and-discrimination)

As many people believed that minority always to be victim of prejudice in American society. However, surprisingly, as reported by “The Week” (2017) magazine that majority, white people feel the society prejudiced against them, and even discriminated to them. This finding is based on survey to 3 thousand respondents across America, where 55% white people believed prejudice will be found in their daily live.

Then, in education, 11% white feel negatively to enroll for education at higher level. If we look at income, the lower to middle class of white believed that they faced discrimination in applying for job, promotion and salary. The white also believe it is difficult to get government help compared to African-American.

However, the survey finding other racial group believed their group not better than white people. 92 percent African-American believe their group face discrimination and prejudice against them in every day live in America.

At the same time, far-right movement, included white nationalist groups proposed “White Lives Matter” movement. Civil rights monitor as part of the Southern Poverty Law Center classified neo-Nazi movement, white nationalist (white supremacy) and some other far-right groups as hate groups. These groups prejudiced to minorities groups, include refugee. These hate group rallies against refugees in Tennessee. In fact, refugees are very small portion of population only in Tennessee.  

Moreover, prejudice is a kind of un-favor behaviors or opinion to other groups (races) without reasons, while discrimination is prejudice treatment to other groups based on their color, race, sex or religious. McIntyre (2011, p.245-248) described that prejudice is based on not true information (in-accurate knowledge) and false arguments from one groups to other group of communities.

Discrimination is prejudice in action. Prejudice is not always manifest into discrimination.  Author give an example the different between prejudice and discrimination. Mr. “A” and Mr. “B” both factory managers, and both dislike Jew without reasons. Although Mr. “A” dislike Jew, but Mr. “A” accept Jew as workers at his factory. Thus, Mr. “A” is prejudice only to Jew. Then, by contrast, Mr. “B” creates regulations in order to reject Jew to work at his factory. This is called as prejudice and discrimination.

Finally, from above summary that what long time ago believed that minority only faced prejudice and discrimination is “not always true” anymore. The majority believed that they get prejudice and discrimination in modern America society as well. 

References.

McIntyre, L. J. (2011). The Practical Skeptic: Core Concepts in Sociology 5th ed.,

New York: McGraw-Hill.  (ISBN 978-0-07-340440-0).

The Week. (2017). Majority of US whites believe they face racial prejudice. Retrieved from

http://www.theweek.co.uk/89258/majority-of-us-whites-believe-they-face-racial-prejudice

Income Inequality in the USA

Top 1% population has the most resources (https://www.cbpp.org)

Inequality term is appeared in many developing countries since long time ago, but as said by Gorbis (2010) that income inequality between workers and CEO is widening since 1950 in the USA.  

The wages for workers almost not increase for 35 years. On opposite side, economic profit is increasing so higher for companies. 20 wealthiest people in America is wealthy than a half of population. It is mean that 20 people only is richer than 152 million people (57 million households) combines in the USA. 

Many experts tried to solve income inequality problem by proposed bunch of ideas, some of them are universal basic income to all population, continuous training to upskill employees and low tax rate for low-income earners. 

Other experts argued that these ideas to cure symptom only not diseases. The diseases refer to “asset inequality.”  The asset is resources where people can produce wealth. These assets include shares, specific lands, properties (houses and apartments), social networks and higher education. More assets mean more income. More income means more money to invest, to access other assets, to buy health insurance for better physical and mental care, to buy good house with crime free and beautiful neighborhoods and so on.

Moreover, American people, include students believe that social stratification exist in other countries not in the USA. As said by McIntyre (2011, p.197-233) that most American or around eighty percent will admire that they are including in middle class in respect to income. Thus, they believe no different between one and another, and no class different exist. 

However, it is fact that there are 5 different group in term of income distribution in the USA. Top 20% income earners have 80% of wealth. Sadly, majority American population have less wealth, share small amount of wealth.

There is a way to measure  whether income inequality exist in one country, called as Gini coefficient (index). The maximum index is one, it is mean that the inequality is widest. If index is zero, it is mean that everybody has equal income. The fact shown that Gini index increase year by year since 1954 in the USA. It is mean that different between rich and poor is widening until recently. Finally, the income in-equality found everywhere, both in developing countries and industry nations like USA.

References

Gorbis, M. 2017. To fix income inequality, we need more than UBI—we need Universal Basic Assets. Retrieved from https://qz.com/1096659/to-fix-income-inequality-we-need-more-than-ubi-we-need-universal-basic-assets/

McIntyre, L. J. (2011). The Practical Skeptic: Core Concepts in Sociology 5th ed.,

New York: McGraw-Hill.  (ISBN 978-0-07-340440-0).