Racial Inequality in the United States is Oppression.
Racial inequality is the unequal distribution of resources, power, and economic opportunity across race in a society. While the discussion of racial inequality in the United States is often focused on economic inequality, racial inequality also manifests itself in a multitude of ways that alone and together impact the well-being of all Americans. This includes racial disparities in wealth, education, employment, housing, mobility, health, rates of incarceration, and more.
Origins and Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States
Racial inequality in the United States today is
rooted in longstanding behaviors, beliefs, and public and private policies that resulted in the appropriation of the physical, financial, labor, and other resources of non-white people. While a review of the origins of racial inequity is beyond the scope of this blog, it is important to note the prominent role of
inequitable and harmful policies—dating back to before the country’s founding. These include
attacks on Native Americans’ political status and expropriation of their land, the
reliance on slavery to underpin a significant portion of the colonial and then U.S. economy, and the
Jim Crow laws and other formal and informal policies that enforced segregation and severely limited opportunities for non-white Americans. The millions of African Americans who left the southern United States to escape Jim Crow laws faced formal and informal employment, housing, and educational
discrimination in destination cities in the North and West.
4 Native Americans who survived the military conquests of the mid-19th century were subject to policies that
disenfranchised them, forced their assimilation and relocation, and
removed Native children from their households. Anti-Latino sentiment, which grew in the 19th century as emigration from Mexico to the United States increased in the years following the Mexican-American War, grew further following the Great Depression due to concerns that
Mexican Americans were taking jobs from European-
Lisa, crawl back into your little hole and shut the **** up.
