Opportunity and Inequality in the United States Term Paper

Opportunity and Inequality in the United States - Term Paper Example The very human being used these factors to be markers of superiority or inferiority. Based on these stereotypes, avenues were instituted to propagate and enable these stereotypes. As such, the best schools belonged to a given race or sex, the best jobs began to be occupied by a specific social class or race or sex, specific social places got reserved for specific people etc. In effect, inequality had been instituted by such practices. Those propagating the inequality and the victims of the inequality believed in the practice, with the former group feeling elated as the latter embraced great resentment against the former. The practice continued for centuries until the very human beings that had started it started to see the evil in the practice and as such started to fight it. They are fighting to abolish classification is society along economic, racial, gender and ethnic grounds (Gilbert, 2002). Policies have since been put in place to equalize people, movements have voiced their res entments against he practice and the results The practice has receded to "under the carpet". If you though inequality is dead, you have to think again. This paper seeks to highlight the practice of inequality in the United States by looking at the equal opportunities in the same land. The paper will start by looking at the equal opportunities in the US before it finally highlights the forms of inequalities witnessed in the US. Factors Fuelling Inequality in the US As mentioned in the introduction, a number of factors have been in use to propagate the practice of inequality in the US. These factors have often been both physical and the supposed genetic attributes. Both have hitherto been used to assign all the statuses in the society which would atheism been assigned on equal terms. Race is one such factor. Racial inequality has been and still is rampant in the US. The worst of it is the manifestation in which a white individual is 90% not likely to be a suspect in a crime scene as opposed to a black individual or anyone form the Middle East who will almost be 100% criminal suspects. Ethnicity, besides gender has been the strongest instigator of inequality. Aboriginal or not, foreigner or citizen etc just demonstrates the use of ethnic inequality which is seen in the allocations of resources, positions and status in the society. Gender is yet another factor in which hitherto women have been relegated until recently when they moved their asserti veness to an all time high level. Women fought so hard to assert their position in the society and as they did this they were labeled feminists. In as much as there could be feminists, the underlying factor is that there is inequality at whatever level conceivable in the society. Other factors include wholeness of body and mind in which the physically and/or mentally challenged individuals have unequal allocation of resources, position or even statuses. Generally, inequality is never a facade nor is it a mirage; it is a reality and the US citizens are consciously or otherwise basking in this very reality of inequality