An epidemic that still impacts the United States is the immense wealth gap between different societies and wealth inequality. The country is divided into the same groups as most counties; the first group that is extremely well off and stable, the second with a considerable to even an admirable middle-class living, and the last one is the bottom of the barrel, mostly working class, people who work on minimum wage and have difficulty in making ends meet.
A high ratio of the first class of these people come from generational wealth and are white in ethnicity.
Thus, to argue that a certain prejudice is at play here won’t be a complete shot in the dark. Many researchers have attributed the poverty in society to many reasons:
- Lack of education
- Lack of connections
- Bad social standing
It is extremely unfair to expect a person to send their children to college, considering the student loan debts and very few college success stories. Many people thus opt for early employment, whether that is a job that pays minimum wage. However, such jobs have a significantly less chance of ever-evolving, and thus the person working on them cannot evolve financially either.
The Gap in Wealth between White & Colored People
Race, ethnicity, social standing, and color are important factors while determining whether a person will make a good living or a bad one.
Studies have found that Caucasian people find it easier to get good education opportunities and job offers. It is the reason why there is still so much unemployment in America. Whether no one is willing to admit it, but a black family makes seven times less money than that of a Hispanic/Asian family and ten times less money than that of a white family.
People argue that white families established themselves as industrialists, manufacturers, and people in business long before other races had the chance to. This argument in itself defeats its message because restraint put on different ethnicities came from the white groups.
This is why even after America’s long struggle for diversity, its only benefit is to humanize capitalism through a performative mode where the actual intention for diversity has never existed.
However, Black and Hispanic families have changed their position since the late 2010s. Instead of closing the distance between different classes, the distance kept increasing, leaving the top 1% of the population with more than 50% of the country’s wealth. Just imagine that ….. insane!!
Over the last few years, an increase in education sparked In the lower groups, and a genuine effort to close the gap is underway. Though there are still generations between white people’s income and people of color making that income, instead of falling into the negative income range, there is an outstanding effort to enrich their societies with education and increase their wealth for a prosperous community.
We can only hope for such equality one day because equality in sources will bring about the law and order we have always desired in this country.
Reference
Kent, A.H., Ricketts, L., (2020). Has Wealth Inequality in America Changed over Time? Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Retrieved from https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2020/december/has-wealth-inequality-changed-over-time-key-statistics