While slavery and segregation were abolished decades ago, American society is still suffering from its legacy. At the same time, racial prejudices affect African Americans and representatives of other races – Latin Americans, Native Americans, citizens of Asian origin, and other minorities. Inequality manifests itself in the opportunities that citizens have, attitudes, their access to public goods, and even civil rights.
Racism manifests itself in many spheres of American life and negatively affects society. Edmond (2020) introduced five main areas demonstrating the problems of inequality. In particular, the country has a broad educational gap, increased difficulties for social mobility and greater unemployment among minorities, a disproportionately high number of African-American prisoners, and limited access to medicine. Serchen et al. (2021) also emphasize that racial groups do not get good medical services and also do not have conditions in which social determinants of health are satisfied. Solomon et al. (2019) identify another problem – structural racism excluding Americans of color from American democracy, mainly through suppressing voting rights. These examples demonstrate the relevance of the issues of inequality in modern American society.
Inequality still determines the quality of life for various representatives of American society. In addition to the actual evidence of statistics, the residents themselves testify to the influence of race. According to a study by Horowitz et al. (2019), 59% of American adults are confident that white skin helps get more opportunities. Thus, racial inequality in America exists and poses many problems and obstacles. They greatly impair the quality of life of the suppressed population and limit their opportunities. Much more work needs to be done to overcome existing inequalities.
References
Edmond, C. (2020). 5 charts reveal key racial inequality gaps in the US. World Economic Forum. Web.
Horowitz, J. M., Brown, A., & Cox, K. (2019). Race in America 2019. Pew Research Center. Web.
Serchen, J., Doherty, R., Atiq, O., Hilden, D., & Health and Public Policy Committee of the American College of Physicians. (2021). A comprehensive policy framework to understand and address disparities and discrimination in health and health care: A policy paper from the American College of Physicians. Annals of internal medicine, 174(4), 529-532. Web.
Solomon, D., Maxwell, C., & Castro, A. (2019). Systematic inequality and American democracy. Center for American Progress. Web.