Racial Inequality - A Prevalent Problem All Over The World

Student`s Name Course Instructor Date Racial Inequality Racial inequality continues to be a prevalent problem all over the world. Following the provisions of the American Dream, the United States has always been perceived as a nation where everyone is allowed to pursue their dreams, irrespective of their skin color. The fact that it is a culturally diverse country leads to the assumption that each of these groups is treated equally with fairness. However, this is far from the truth as the discrimination and segregation of and against these racial groups is quite evident. The minority groups suffer most from this discrimination, particularly the African Americans, Asians, Hispanics and Latinos. As the U.S continues to segregate these groups, this has in turn negatively affected the American society since the gap between the whites and these groups continue growing. The racial gaps in criminal justice, employment opportunities, and access to healthcare are the main reasons why inequality arises. Nevertheless, it is a bit challenging to identify these acts of discrimination and subsequent inequality in today`s society, which makes it hard for the issues to be addressed once and for all. In the New Jim Crow book on “Mass incarceration in the age of “color blindness”, the problem of how the blacks are targeted in the war on drugs is addressed. It goes without saying that both the white and black population uses illegal drugs at equal rates. However, it is surprising that the blacks are those who are punished most for these drug crimes through the laws and policies that have been specifically enacted to ensure this. According to Alexander (2010), the prison population has gone up in the past 30 years with the number reaching two million from the initial 300 thousand. Of all the crimes these people are convicted of, those related to drugs are the most. Evidently,the black population makes up the highest percentage of all the U.S prisoners at 40% of the total prison population. When combined with the Latino population the percentage comes to 75%. This war on drugs, as Alexander notes, brings to light how blacks are racially discriminated against in a society that has almost an equal number of whites committing the same crime. Since the most targeted are the young black men, it is not surprising that nearly a third of them would have been in prison at least once for drug crimes. The discrimination is so high to an extent that the police mainly targets and focuses on the black neighborhoods when doing their drug searches while leaving out the white neighborhoods that are mostly made up of the rich. The law does not do much to prevent this racial discrimination since searches and the stops are allowed, irrespective of whether they are biased or not as long as there is reason to believe one has committed a crime. Therefore, blacks continue to suffer in the face of all these discriminatory laws and policies, a fact that has made the population to remain enslaved and appear overpowered in a country that so proudly advocates for equality to all. Employment is another area where racial inequality is seen. In the U.S for instance, the minority groups still face an unemployment problem, although recent years have seen these groups being given slightly more chances than before (Pager & Shepherd 2010). According to this study, there is an increased likelihood for the African Americans to lack jobs as compared to the white population and the same is reflected in their wages where whites earn way much more than blacks. In addition, it is evident that the job market in the US has a high preference for whites and less for the African Americans who are believed not to be as skilled or talented as the whites. Pager and Shepherd (2010) further noted that white applicants are usually favored in jobs where the qualifications are quite high since in such cases higher skills are required, and this in turn makes most blacks to be left out.The result is an unequal representation of the races in such kinds of jobs. Unarguably, there is occupational segregation that tends to work against the minority groups. It has also been shown that after graduating from colleges, the white...