essay on discrimination and inequality

Essays About Discrimination: Top 5 Examples and 8 Prompts

You must know how to connect with your readers to write essays about discrimination effectively; read on for our top essay examples, including prompts that will help you write.

Discrimination comes in many forms and still happens to many individuals or groups today. It occurs when there’s a distinction or bias against someone because of their age, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or disability.

Discrimination can happen to anyone wherever and whenever they are. Unfortunately, it’s a problem that society is yet to solve entirely. Here are five in-depth examples of this theme’s subcategories to guide you in creating your essays about discrimination.

1. Essay On Discrimination For Students In Easy Words by Prateek

2. personal discrimination experience by naomi nakatani, 3. prejudice and discrimination by william anderson, 4. socioeconomic class discrimination in luca by krystal ibarra, 5. the new way of discrimination by writer bill, 1. my discrimination experience, 2. what can i do to stop discrimination, 3. discrimination in my community, 4. the cost of discrimination, 5. examples of discrimination, 6. discrimination in sports: segregating men and women, 7. how to stop my discrimination against others, 8. what should groups do to fight discrimination.

“In the current education system, the condition of education and its promotion of equality is very important. The education system should be a good place for each and every student. It must be on the basis of equal opportunities for each student in every country. It must be free of discrimination.”

Prateek starts his essay by telling the story of a student having difficulty getting admitted to a college because of high fees. He then poses the question of how the student will be able to get an education when he can’t have the opportunity to do so in the first place. He goes on to discuss UNESCO’s objectives against discrimination. 

Further in the essay, the author defines discrimination and cites instances when it happens. Prateek also compares past and present discrimination, ending the piece by saying it should stop and everyone deserves to be treated fairly.

“I thought that there is no discrimination before I actually had discrimination… I think we must treat everyone equally even though people speak different languages or have different colors of skin.”

In her short essay, Nakatani shares the experiences that made her feel discriminated against when she visited the US. She includes a fellow guest saying she and her mother can’t use the shared pool in a hotel they stay in because they are Japanese and getting cheated of her money when she bought from a small shop because she can’t speak English very well.

“Whether intentional or not, prejudice and discrimination ensure the continuance of inequality in the United States. Even subconsciously, we are furthering inequality through our actions and reactions to others… Because these forces are universally present in our daily lives, the way we use them or reject them will determine how they affect us.”

Anderson explains the direct relationship between prejudice and discrimination. He also gives examples of these occurrences in the past (blacks and whites segregation) and modern times (sexism, racism, etc.)

He delves into society’s fault for playing the “blame game” and choosing to ignore each other’s perspectives, leading to stereotypes. He also talks about affirmative action committees that serve to protect minorities.

“Something important to point out is that there is prejudice when it comes to people of lower class or economic standing, there are stereotypes that label them as untrustworthy, lazy, and even dangerous. This thought is fed by the just-world phenomenon, that of low economic status are uneducated, lazy, and are more likely to be substance abusers, and thus get what they deserve.”

Ibarra recounts how she discovered Pixar’s Luca and shares what she thought of the animation, focusing on how the film encapsulates socioeconomic discrimination in its settings. She then discusses the characters and their relationships with the protagonist. Finally, Ibarra notes how the movie alluded to flawed characters, such as having a smaller boat, mismatched or recycled kitchen furniture, and no shoes. 

The other cast even taunts Luca, saying he smells and gets his clothes from a dead person. These are typical things marginalized communities experience in real life. At the end of her essay, Ibarra points out how society is dogmatic against the lower class, thinking they are abusers. In Luca, the wealthy antagonist is shown to be violent and lazy.

“Even though the problem of discrimination has calmed down, it still happens… From these past experiences, we can realize that solutions to tough problems come in tough ways.”

The author introduces people who called out discrimination, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Barbara Henry – the only teacher who decided to teach Ruby Bridges, despite her skin color. 

He then moves on to mention the variations of present-day discrimination. He uses Donald Trump and the border he wants to build to keep the Hispanics out as an example. Finally, Bill ends the essay by telling the readers those who discriminate against others are bullies who want to get a reaction out of their victims. 

Do you get intimidated when you need to write an essay? Don’t be! If writing an essay makes you nervous, do it step by step. To start, write a simple 5 paragraph essay .

Prompts on Essays About Discrimination

Below are writing prompts that can inspire you on what to focus on when writing your discrimination essay:

Have you had to go through an aggressor who disliked you because you’re you? Write an essay about this incident, how it happened, what you felt during the episode, and what you did afterward. You can also include how it affected the way you interact with people. For example, did you try to tone down a part of yourself or change how you speak to avoid conflict?

List ways on how you can participate in lessening incidents of discrimination. Your list can include calling out biases, reporting to proper authorities, or spreading awareness of what discrimination is.

Is there an ongoing prejudice you observe in your school, subdivision, etc.? If other people in your community go through this unjust treatment, you can interview them and incorporate their thoughts on the matter.

Tackle what victims of discrimination have to go through daily. You can also talk about how it affected their life in the long run, such as having low self-esteem that limited their potential and opportunities and being frightened of getting involved with other individuals who may be bigots.

For this prompt, you can choose a subtopic to zero in on, like Workplace Discrimination, Disability Discrimination, and others. Then, add sample situations to demonstrate the unfairness better.

What are your thoughts on the different game rules for men and women? Do you believe these rules are just? Cite news incidents to make your essay more credible. For example, you can mention the incident where the Norwegian women’s beach handball team got fined for wearing tops and shorts instead of bikinis.

Since we learn to discriminate because of the society we grew up in, it’s only normal to be biased unintentionally. When you catch yourself having these partialities, what do you do? How do you train yourself not to discriminate against others?

Focus on an area of discrimination and suggest methods to lessen its instances. To give you an idea, you can concentrate on Workplace Discrimination, starting from its hiring process. You can propose that applicants are chosen based on their skills, so the company can implement a hiring procedure where applicants should go through written tests first before personal interviews.

If you instead want to focus on topics that include people from all walks of life, talk about diversity. Here’s an excellent guide on how to write an essay about diversity .

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Still Separate, Still Unequal: Teaching about School Segregation and Educational Inequality

By Keith Meatto

• May 2, 2019

Racial segregation in public education has been illegal for 65 years in the United States. Yet American public schools remain largely separate and unequal — with profound consequences for students, especially students of color.

Today’s teachers and students should know that the Supreme Court declared racial segregation in schools to be unconstitutional in the landmark 1954 ruling Brown v. Board of Education . Perhaps less well known is the extent to which American schools are still segregated. According to a recent Times article , “More than half of the nation’s schoolchildren are in racially concentrated districts, where over 75 percent of students are either white or nonwhite.” In addition, school districts are often segregated by income. The nexus of racial and economic segregation has intensified educational gaps between rich and poor students, and between white students and students of color.

Although many students learn about the historical struggles to desegregate schools in the civil rights era, segregation as a current reality is largely absent from the curriculum.

“No one is really talking about school segregation anymore,” Elise C. Boddie and Dennis D. Parker wrote in this 2018 Op-Ed essay. “That’s a shame because an abundance of research shows that integration is still one of the most effective tools that we have for achieving racial equity.”

The teaching activities below, written directly to students, use recent Times articles as a way to grapple with segregation and educational inequality in the present. This resource considers three essential questions:

• How and why are schools still segregated in 2019? • What repercussions do segregated schools have for students and society? • What are potential remedies to address school segregation?

School segregation and educational inequity may be a sensitive and uncomfortable topic for students and teachers, regardless of their race, ethnicity or economic status. Nevertheless, the topics below offer entry points to an essential conversation, one that affects every American student and raises questions about core American ideals of equality and fairness.

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The tragic deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky have shown the world how deeply embedded racial injustice and racism are in the social fabric of the United States.

These recent acts of violence have raised a set of complex and challenging questions about inequality in our society: Why are Black Americans repeatedly targeted by the police? What can be done to stop further atrocities against minority communities from occurring? As some protests against these deaths turn violent, are political protests and demonstrations an effective way to instigate change? How can we build a more just society?

These important questions are among the subjects of Stanford scholars’ work. Some researchers have worked with police agencies to develop recommendations for how officers can build safer and stronger relationships with the communities they serve. Others have examined what makes some political protests effective and why others turn violent. Researchers have also looked at how racial injustice cuts across other parts of society – such as schools and workplaces – and what can be done to reduce disparities. Here is some of that research and more.

Identifying bias in the police

Stanford social psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt  has worked with police departments across the country to help them recognize implicit bias and understand racial disparities in policing. Her work with the Oakland Police Department, for example, resulted in 50 recommendations about how police agencies can build better relationships with the communities they serve.

Eberhardt’s work with the Oakland Police Department underscores how important data and transparency is for police agencies to identify specific problem areas and create evidence-based solutions.

“Our recommendations are broad but are anchored in our primary mission of pushing agencies to collect more data and to do more with the data they collect,” wrote Eberhardt in the report. “For many agencies, this will require a change in mindset: it requires seeing themselves not only as crime-fighting institutions but also as institutions of learning.”

Helping communities leverage better data between the police and the public are Sharad Goel, a professor of management science and engineering, and Cheryl Phillips, a computational journalist and lecturer at Stanford. Together, they founded the Stanford Open Policing Project , to help researchers, journalists, and policymakers investigate and improve interactions between police and the public.

Cops speak less respectfully to black community members

Professors Jennifer Eberhardt and Dan Jurafsky, along with other Stanford researchers, detected racial disparities in police officers’ speech after analyzing more than 100 hours of body camera footage from Oakland Police.

Stanford big data study finds racial disparities in Oakland, Calif., police behavior, offers solutions

Analyzing thousands of data points, the researchers found racial disparities in how Oakland officers treated African Americans on routine traffic and pedestrian stops. They suggest 50 measures to improve police-community relations.

Numbers about inequality don’t speak for themselves

In a new research paper, Stanford scholars Rebecca Hetey and Jennifer Eberhardt propose new ways to talk about racial disparities that exist across society, from education to health care and criminal justice systems.

Helping journalists use data for investigative reporting

Stanford University scholars are launching a data-driven initiative to help journalists find stories at a lower cost, to support local newsrooms explore public interest issues and fight against misinformation.

A ‘veil of darkness’ reduces racial bias in traffic stops

After analyzing 95 million traffic stop records, filed by officers with 21 state patrol agencies and 35 municipal police forces from 2011 to 2018, researchers concluded that “police stops and search decisions suffer from persistent racial bias.”

Race and mass criminalization in the U.S.

Stanford sociologist discusses how race and class inequalities are embedded in the American criminal legal system.

Raising awareness and creating change

As protest erupts across the country, what makes some demonstrations more effective than others? Stanford sociologist Robb Willer is studying what causes certain social protests to be successful and others to backfire. For example, he studied violent confrontations between white nationalist protesters and anti-racist counter-protesters in both Charlottesville, Virginia, and Berkeley, California, and found that violence by anti-racist protesters can lead people to view them as unreasonable, which may, in turn, lead to people identifying less with the group.

Willer, a professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and the Graduate School of Business (GSB), also found that when anti-racists turn their protest into violence it can backfire even further: In some cases, it can even result in support for the other side.

Some of Willer’s colleagues in GSB have also studied what makes social movements successful. For example, Sarah A. Soule , the Morgridge Professor of Organizational Behavior, has studied how social movements are more effective when they are part of coordinated efforts with legislators. 

“With the rise of the internet,” Soule said, “modern movements can mobilize constituents through their websites and social media. If your end goal is to get 500,000 people to turn up on the Mall in Washington, D.C., Twitter is great at that. Facebook is great at that. But if your goal is to actually make lasting change in the system, you have to work within the system – to essentially get a seat at the table.”

How violent protest can backfire

When a protest group with strong public support turns violent, people may perceive them as less reasonable. In turn, this leads people to identify with them less, and ultimately become less supportive, according to a new study by Stanford sociologist Robb Willer.

It takes more than mass protests to drive change

Those large-scale protests on everything from climate change to wealth inequality make for engaging news segments. But do they result in real change? It turns out social advocacy organizations have greater impact on federal legislation when their experts get to testify.

Robb Willer: The powerlessness paradox

Researchers find that feeling powerless can lead people to support systems that disadvantage them.

Seven factors contributing to American racism

Of the seven factors the researchers identified, perhaps the most insidious is passivism or passive racism, which includes an apathy toward systems of racial advantage or denial that those systems even exist.

Where do advocates come from?

A strong sense of conviction can both encourage and discourage people from speaking out.

How protests can swing elections

A new study shows that both liberal and conservative protests have had a real impact on U.S. House elections.

A better way to diffuse racial discrimination

Research shows why understanding the source of discrimination matters.

Building a more just future

Overcoming racial injustice requires a critical examination of how it cuts across different sectors of society, such as in the workplace and in schools. 

Sean Reardon , a professor in the Graduate School of Education, has looked closely at how poverty intersects with the educational achievement gap. While racial segregation is a major indicator of educational inequality, Reardon’s research has also shown the impact of attending impoverished schools on Black and Hispanic students.

“It’s not the racial composition of the schools that matters. What matters is when Black or Hispanic students are concentrated in high-poverty schools in a district,” said Reardon, who has set up the Educational Opportunity Project to help other researchers identify solutions in their areas to reduce educational disparities throughout the U.S.

Meanwhile, other researchers have shown how academic achievement can be hindered in other ways. For example, Claude Steele , a professor of psychology in the School of Humanities and Sciences, found that even if students are well-prepared, negative stereotypes can affect how they perform. 

School is not the only setting where stereotyping results in devastating consequences. Stanford research has also shown how it leads to hiring discrimination and underfunded companies, among other problems.

New evidence shows that school poverty shapes racial achievement gaps

Racial segregation leads to growing achievement gaps – but it does so entirely through differences in school poverty, according to new research from education Professor Sean Reardon, who is launching a new tool to help educators, parents and policymakers examine education trends by race and poverty level nationwide.

Access to program for black male students lowered dropout rates

New research led by Stanford education professor Thomas S. Dee provides the first evidence of effectiveness for a district-wide initiative targeted at black male high school students.

Science lessons through a different lens

In his new book, Science in the City, Stanford education professor Bryan A. Brown helps bridge the gap between students’ culture and the science classroom.

Toolkits help tackle real-world problems

A lab in the Psychology Department at Stanford has created a set of free toolkits to help people resolve complicated issues, including resources to help people deal with disagreements.

Stereotyping makes people more likely to act badly

Even slight cues, like reading a negative stereotype about your race or gender, can have an impact.

Race influences professional investors’ judgments

In their evaluations of high-performing venture capital funds, professional investors rate white-led teams more favorably than they do black-led teams with identical credentials, a new Stanford study led by Jennifer L. Eberhardt finds.

How emotions may result in hiring, workplace bias

Stanford study suggests that the emotions American employers are looking for in job candidates may not match up with emotions valued by jobseekers from some cultural backgrounds – potentially leading to hiring bias.

Racial disparities in school discipline are linked to the achievement gap between black and white students nationwide

Research using a Stanford database of test scores from all U.S. public schools is the first to document the relationship at a national level.

Teaching difficult histories

Michael Hines talks about why students need to hear their own stories reflected in history books and classes.

Reducing racial disparities in school discipline

Stanford psychologists find that brief exercises early in middle school can improve students’ relationships with their teachers, increase their sense of belonging and reduce teachers’ reports of discipline issues among black and Latino boys.

Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

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• Black Americans Have a Clear Vision for Reducing Racism but Little Hope It Will Happen

Many say key U.S. institutions should be rebuilt to ensure fair treatment

Table of contents.

• Black Americans see little improvement in their lives despite increased national attention to racial issues
• Few Black adults expect equality for Black people in the U.S.
• Black adults say racism and police brutality are extremely big problems for Black people in the U.S.
• Personal experiences with discrimination are widespread among Black Americans
• 2. Black Americans’ views on political strategies, leadership and allyship for achieving equality
• The legacy of slavery affects Black Americans today
• Most Black adults agree the descendants of enslaved people should be repaid
• The types of repayment Black adults think would be most helpful
• Responsibility for reparations and the likelihood repayment will occur
• Black adults say the criminal justice system needs to be completely rebuilt
• Black adults say political, economic and health care systems need major changes to ensure fair treatment
• Most Black adults say funding for police departments should stay the same or increase
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix: Supplemental tables
• The American Trends Panel survey methodology

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to understand the nuances among Black people on issues of racial inequality and social change in the United States. This in-depth survey explores differences among Black Americans in their views on the social status of the Black population in the U.S.; their assessments of racial inequality; their visions for institutional and social change; and their outlook on the chances that these improvements will be made. The analysis is the latest in the Center’s series of in-depth surveys of public opinion among Black Americans (read the first, “ Faith Among Black Americans ” and “ Race Is Central to Identity for Black Americans and Affects How They Connect With Each Other ”).

The online survey of 3,912 Black U.S. adults was conducted Oct. 4-17, 2021. Black U.S. adults include those who are single-race, non-Hispanic Black Americans; multiracial non-Hispanic Black Americans; and adults who indicate they are Black and Hispanic. The survey includes 1,025 Black adults on Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP) and 2,887 Black adults on Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel. Respondents on both panels are recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses.

Recruiting panelists by phone or mail ensures that nearly all U.S. Black adults have a chance of selection. This gives us confidence that any sample can represent the whole population (see our Methods 101 explainer on random sampling). Here are the questions used for the survey of Black adults, along with its responses and methodology .

The terms “Black Americans,” “Black people” and “Black adults” are used interchangeably throughout this report to refer to U.S. adults who self-identify as Black, either alone or in combination with other races or Hispanic identity.

Throughout this report, “Black, non-Hispanic” respondents are those who identify as single-race Black and say they have no Hispanic background. “Black Hispanic” respondents are those who identify as Black and say they have Hispanic background. We use the terms “Black Hispanic” and “Hispanic Black” interchangeably. “Multiracial” respondents are those who indicate two or more racial backgrounds (one of which is Black) and say they are not Hispanic.

Respondents were asked a question about how important being Black was to how they think about themselves. In this report, we use the term “being Black” when referencing responses to this question.

In this report, “immigrant” refers to people who were not U.S. citizens at birth – in other words, those born outside the U.S., Puerto Rico or other U.S. territories to parents who were not U.S. citizens. We use the terms “immigrant,” “born abroad” and “foreign-born” interchangeably.

Throughout this report, “Democrats and Democratic leaners” and just “Democrats” both refer to respondents who identify politically with the Democratic Party or who are independent or some other party but lean toward the Democratic Party. “Republicans and Republican leaners” and just “Republicans” both refer to respondents who identify politically with the Republican Party or are independent or some other party but lean toward the Republican Party.

Respondents were asked a question about their voter registration status. In this report, respondents are considered registered to vote if they self-report being absolutely certain they are registered at their current address. Respondents are considered not registered to vote if they report not being registered or express uncertainty about their registration.

To create the upper-, middle- and lower-income tiers, respondents’ 2020 family incomes were adjusted for differences in purchasing power by geographic region and household size. Respondents were then placed into income tiers: “Middle income” is defined as two-thirds to double the median annual income for the entire survey sample. “Lower income” falls below that range, and “upper income” lies above it. For more information about how the income tiers were created, read the methodology .

More than a year after the murder of George Floyd and the national protests, debate and political promises that ensued, 65% of Black Americans say the increased national attention on racial inequality has not led to changes that improved their lives. 1 And 44% say equality for Black people in the United States is not likely to be achieved, according to newly released findings from an October 2021 survey of Black Americans by Pew Research Center.

This is somewhat of a reversal in views from September 2020, when half of Black adults said the increased national focus on issues of race would lead to major policy changes to address racial inequality in the country and 56% expected changes that would make their lives better.

At the same time, many Black Americans are concerned about racial discrimination and its impact. Roughly eight-in-ten say they have personally experienced discrimination because of their race or ethnicity (79%), and most also say discrimination is the main reason many Black people cannot get ahead (68%).  

Even so, Black Americans have a clear vision for how to achieve change when it comes to racial inequality. This includes support for significant reforms to or complete overhauls of several U.S. institutions to ensure fair treatment, particularly the criminal justice system; political engagement, primarily in the form of voting; support for Black businesses to advance Black communities; and reparations in the forms of educational, business and homeownership assistance. Yet alongside their assessments of inequality and ideas about progress exists pessimism about whether U.S. society and its institutions will change in ways that would reduce racism.

These findings emerge from an extensive Pew Research Center survey of 3,912 Black Americans conducted online Oct. 4-17, 2021. The survey explores how Black Americans assess their position in U.S. society and their ideas about social change. Overall, Black Americans are clear on what they think the problems are facing the country and how to remedy them. However, they are skeptical that meaningful changes will take place in their lifetime.

Black Americans see racism in our laws as a big problem and discrimination as a roadblock to progress

Black adults were asked in the survey to assess the current nature of racism in the United States and whether structural or individual sources of this racism are a bigger problem for Black people. About half of Black adults (52%) say racism in our laws is a bigger problem than racism by individual people, while four-in-ten (43%) say acts of racism committed by individual people is the bigger problem. Only 3% of Black adults say that Black people do not experience discrimination in the U.S. today.

In assessing the magnitude of problems that they face, the majority of Black Americans say racism (63%), police brutality (60%) and economic inequality (54%) are extremely or very big problems for Black people living in the U.S. Slightly smaller shares say the same about the affordability of health care (47%), limitations on voting (46%), and the quality of K-12 schools (40%).

Aside from their critiques of U.S. institutions, Black adults also feel the impact of racial inequality personally. Most Black adults say they occasionally or frequently experience unfair treatment because of their race or ethnicity (79%), and two-thirds (68%) cite racial discrimination as the main reason many Black people cannot get ahead today.

Black Americans’ views on reducing racial inequality

Black Americans are clear on the challenges they face because of racism. They are also clear on the solutions. These range from overhauls of policing practices and the criminal justice system to civic engagement and reparations to descendants of people enslaved in the United States.

Changing U.S. institutions such as policing, courts and prison systems

About nine-in-ten Black adults say multiple aspects of the criminal justice system need some kind of change (minor, major or a complete overhaul) to ensure fair treatment, with nearly all saying so about policing (95%), the courts and judicial process (95%), and the prison system (94%).

Roughly half of Black adults say policing (49%), the courts and judicial process (48%), and the prison system (54%) need to be completely rebuilt for Black people to be treated fairly. Smaller shares say the same about the political system (42%), the economic system (37%) and the health care system (34%), according to the October survey.

While Black Americans are in favor of significant changes to policing, most want spending on police departments in their communities to stay the same (39%) or increase (35%). A little more than one-in-five (23%) think spending on police departments in their area should be decreased.

Black adults who favor decreases in police spending are most likely to name medical, mental health and social services (40%) as the top priority for those reappropriated funds. Smaller shares say K-12 schools (25%), roads, water systems and other infrastructure (12%), and reducing taxes (13%) should be the top priority.

Voting and ‘buying Black’ viewed as important strategies for Black community advancement

Black Americans also have clear views on the types of political and civic engagement they believe will move Black communities forward. About six-in-ten Black adults say voting (63%) and supporting Black businesses or “buying Black” (58%) are extremely or very effective strategies for moving Black people toward equality in the U.S. Smaller though still significant shares say the same about volunteering with organizations dedicated to Black equality (48%), protesting (42%) and contacting elected officials (40%).

Black adults were also asked about the effectiveness of Black economic and political independence in moving them toward equality. About four-in-ten (39%) say Black ownership of all businesses in Black neighborhoods would be an extremely or very effective strategy for moving toward racial equality, while roughly three-in-ten (31%) say the same about establishing a national Black political party. And about a quarter of Black adults (27%) say having Black neighborhoods governed entirely by Black elected officials would be extremely or very effective in moving Black people toward equality.

Most Black Americans support repayment for slavery

Discussions about atonement for slavery predate the founding of the United States. As early as 1672 , Quaker abolitionists advocated for enslaved people to be paid for their labor once they were free. And in recent years, some U.S. cities and institutions have implemented reparations policies to do just that.

Most Black Americans say the legacy of slavery affects the position of Black people in the U.S. either a great deal (55%) or a fair amount (30%), according to the survey. And roughly three-quarters (77%) say descendants of people enslaved in the U.S. should be repaid in some way.

Black adults who say descendants of the enslaved should be repaid support doing so in different ways. About eight-in-ten say repayment in the forms of educational scholarships (80%), financial assistance for starting or improving a business (77%), and financial assistance for buying or remodeling a home (76%) would be extremely or very helpful. A slightly smaller share (69%) say cash payments would be extremely or very helpful forms of repayment for the descendants of enslaved people.

Where the responsibility for repayment lies is also clear for Black Americans. Among those who say the descendants of enslaved people should be repaid, 81% say the U.S. federal government should have all or most of the responsibility for repayment. About three-quarters (76%) say businesses and banks that profited from slavery should bear all or most of the responsibility for repayment. And roughly six-in-ten say the same about colleges and universities that benefited from slavery (63%) and descendants of families who engaged in the slave trade (60%).

Black Americans are skeptical change will happen

Even though Black Americans’ visions for social change are clear, very few expect them to be implemented. Overall, 44% of Black adults say equality for Black people in the U.S. is a little or not at all likely. A little over a third (38%) say it is somewhat likely and only 13% say it is extremely or very likely.

They also do not think specific institutions will change. Two-thirds of Black adults say changes to the prison system (67%) and the courts and judicial process (65%) that would ensure fair treatment for Black people are a little or not at all likely in their lifetime. About six-in-ten (58%) say the same about policing. Only about one-in-ten say changes to policing (13%), the courts and judicial process (12%), and the prison system (11%) are extremely or very likely.

This pessimism is not only about the criminal justice system. The majority of Black adults say the political (63%), economic (62%) and health care (51%) systems are also unlikely to change in their lifetime.

Black Americans’ vision for social change includes reparations. However, much like their pessimism about institutional change, very few think they will see reparations in their lifetime. Among Black adults who say the descendants of people enslaved in the U.S. should be repaid, 82% say reparations for slavery are unlikely to occur in their lifetime. About one-in-ten (11%) say repayment is somewhat likely, while only 7% say repayment is extremely or very likely to happen in their lifetime.

Black Democrats, Republicans differ on assessments of inequality and visions for social change

Party affiliation is one key point of difference among Black Americans in their assessments of racial inequality and their visions for social change. Black Republicans and Republican leaners are more likely than Black Democrats and Democratic leaners to focus on the acts of individuals. For example, when summarizing the nature of racism against Black people in the U.S., the majority of Black Republicans (59%) say racist acts committed by individual people is a bigger problem for Black people than racism in our laws. Black Democrats (41%) are less likely to hold this view.

Black Republicans (45%) are also more likely than Black Democrats (21%) to say that Black people who cannot get ahead in the U.S. are mostly responsible for their own condition. And while similar shares of Black Republicans (79%) and Democrats (80%) say they experience racial discrimination on a regular basis, Republicans (64%) are more likely than Democrats (36%) to say that most Black people who want to get ahead can make it if they are willing to work hard.

On the other hand, Black Democrats are more likely than Black Republicans to focus on the impact that racial inequality has on Black Americans. Seven-in-ten Black Democrats (73%) say racial discrimination is the main reason many Black people cannot get ahead in the U.S, while about four-in-ten Black Republicans (44%) say the same. And Black Democrats are more likely than Black Republicans to say racism (67% vs. 46%) and police brutality (65% vs. 44%) are extremely big problems for Black people today.

Black Democrats are also more critical of U.S. institutions than Black Republicans are. For example, Black Democrats are more likely than Black Republicans to say the prison system (57% vs. 35%), policing (52% vs. 29%) and the courts and judicial process (50% vs. 35%) should be completely rebuilt for Black people to be treated fairly.

While the share of Black Democrats who want to see large-scale changes to the criminal justice system exceeds that of Black Republicans, they share similar views on police funding. Four-in-ten each of Black Democrats and Black Republicans say funding for police departments in their communities should remain the same, while around a third of each partisan coalition (36% and 37%, respectively) says funding should increase. Only about one-in-four Black Democrats (24%) and one-in-five Black Republicans (21%) say funding for police departments in their communities should decrease.

Among the survey’s other findings:

Black adults differ by age in their views on political strategies. Black adults ages 65 and older (77%) are most likely to say voting is an extremely or very effective strategy for moving Black people toward equality. They are significantly more likely than Black adults ages 18 to 29 (48%) and 30 to 49 (60%) to say this. Black adults 65 and older (48%) are also more likely than those ages 30 to 49 (38%) and 50 to 64 (42%) to say protesting is an extremely or very effective strategy. Roughly four-in-ten Black adults ages 18 to 29 say this (44%).

Gender plays a role in how Black adults view policing. Though majorities of Black women (65%) and men (56%) say police brutality is an extremely big problem for Black people living in the U.S. today, Black women are more likely than Black men to hold this view. When it comes to criminal justice, Black women (56%) and men (51%) are about equally likely to share the view that the prison system should be completely rebuilt to ensure fair treatment of Black people. However, Black women (52%) are slightly more likely than Black men (45%) to say this about policing. On the matter of police funding, Black women (39%) are slightly more likely than Black men (31%) to say police funding in their communities should be increased. On the other hand, Black men are more likely than Black women to prefer that funding stay the same (44% vs. 36%). Smaller shares of both Black men (23%) and women (22%) would like to see police funding decreased.

Income impacts Black adults’ views on reparations. Roughly eight-in-ten Black adults with lower (78%), middle (77%) and upper incomes (79%) say the descendants of people enslaved in the U.S. should receive reparations. Among those who support reparations, Black adults with upper and middle incomes (both 84%) are more likely than those with lower incomes (75%) to say educational scholarships would be an extremely or very helpful form of repayment. However, of those who support reparations, Black adults with lower (72%) and middle incomes (68%) are more likely than those with higher incomes (57%) to say cash payments would be an extremely or very helpful form of repayment for slavery.

• Black adults in the September 2020 survey only include those who say their race is Black alone and are non-Hispanic. The same is true only for the questions of improvements to Black people’s lives and equality in the United States in the October 2021 survey. Throughout the rest of this report, Black adults include those who say their race is Black alone and non-Hispanic; those who say their race is Black and at least one other race and non-Hispanic; or Black and Hispanic, unless otherwise noted. ↩

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Discrimination: What it is and how to cope

For many people, discrimination is an everyday reality. Discrimination is the unfair or prejudicial treatment of people and groups based on characteristics such as race, gender, age, or sexual orientation.

• Racism, Bias, and Discrimination

What is discrimination?

Discrimination is the unfair or prejudicial treatment of people and groups based on characteristics such as race, gender, age, or sexual orientation. That’s the simple answer. But explaining why it happens is more complicated.

The human brain naturally puts things in categories to make sense of the world. Very young children quickly learn the difference between boys and girls, for instance. But the values we place on different categories are learned—from our parents, our peers, and the observations we make about how the world works. Often, discrimination stems from fear and misunderstanding.

Stress and health

Discrimination is a public health issue. Research has found that the experience of discrimination—when perceived as such—can lead to a cascade of stress-related emotional, physical, and behavioral changes . Stress evokes negative emotional responses, such as distress, sadness, and anger, and can often lead to an increase in behaviors that harm health, such as alcohol, tobacco, and other substance use, and a decrease in healthy activities, such as sleep and physical activity.

Discrimination can be damaging even if you haven’t been the target of overt acts of bias. Regardless of your personal experiences, it can be stressful just being a member of a group that is often discriminated against, such as racial minorities or individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.

The anticipation of discrimination creates its own chronic stress. People might even avoid situations where they expect they could be treated poorly, possibly missing out on educational and job opportunities.

Discrimination, big and small

Laws are in place to protect people from discrimination in housing and employment.

• The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of dwellings on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, and disability.
• The Civil Rights Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibit discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, sex, ethnic origin, age, and disabilities.

Unfortunately, discrimination still occurs.

Yet experts say that smaller, less obvious examples of day-to-day discrimination—receiving poorer service at stores or restaurants, being treated with less courtesy and respect, or being treated as less intelligent or less trustworthy—may be more common than major discrimination. Such day-to-day discrimination frequently comes in the form of “microaggressions” such as snubs, slights, and misguided comments that suggest a person doesn’t belong or invalidates his or her experiences.

Though microaggressions are often subtle, they can be just as harmful to health and well-being as more overt episodes of major bias. People on the receiving end of day-to-day discrimination often feel they’re in a state of constant vigilance, on the lookout for being a target of discrimination. That heightened watchfulness is a recipe for chronic stress.

Dealing with discrimination

Finding healthy ways to deal with discrimination is important, for your physical health and your mental well-being.

Focus on your strengths. Focusing on your core values, beliefs, and perceived strengths can motivate people to succeed, and may even buffer the negative effects of bias. Overcoming hardship can also make people more resilient and better able to face future challenges.

Seek support systems. One problem with discrimination is that people can internalize others’ negative beliefs, even when they’re false. You may start to believe you’re not good enough. But family and friends can remind you of your worth and help you reframe those faulty beliefs.

Family and friends can also help counteract the toll that microaggressions and other examples of daily discrimination can take. In a world that regularly invalidates your experiences and feelings, members of your support network can reassure you that you’re not imagining those experiences of discrimination. Still, it’s sometimes painful to talk about discrimination. It can be helpful to ask friends and family how they handle such events.

Your family and friends can also be helpful if you feel you’ve been the victim of discrimination in areas such as housing, employment, or education. Often, people don’t report such experiences to agencies or supervisors. One reason for that lack of reporting is that people often doubt themselves: Was I actually discriminated against, or am I being oversensitive? Will I be judged negatively if I push the issue? Your support network can provide a reality check and a sounding board to help you decide if your claims are valid and worth pursuing.

Get involved. Support doesn’t have to come from people in your family or circle of friends. You can get involved with like-minded groups and organizations, whether locally or online. It can help to know there are other people who have had similar experiences to yours. And connecting with those people might help you figure out how to address situations and respond to experiences of discrimination in ways you haven’t thought of.

Help yourself think clearly. Being the target of discrimination can stir up a lot of strong emotions including anger, sadness, and embarrassment. Such experiences often trigger a physiological response, too; they can increase your blood pressure, heart rate, and body temperature.

Try to check in with your body before reacting. Slow your breathing or use other relaxation exercises to calm your body’s stress response. Then you’ll be able to think more clearly about how you want to respond.

Don’t dwell. When you’ve experienced discrimination, it can be really hard to just shake it off. People often get stuck on episodes of discrimination, in part because they’re not sure how to handle those experiences. You might want to speak out or complain, but you’re not sure how to go about it, or are afraid of the backlash. So instead, you end up ruminating, or thinking over and over about what you should have done.

In a calmer moment, it might be helpful to talk over the ways you can cope with similar experiences in the future. Try to come up with a plan for how you might respond or what you could do differently next time. Once you’ve determined how to respond, try to leave the incident behind you as you go on with your day.

Seek professional help. Discrimination is difficult to deal with, and is often associated with symptoms of depression. Psychologists are experts in helping people manage symptoms of stress and depression, and can help you find healthy ways to cope. You can find a psychologist in your area by using APA’s Psychologist Locator Service.

Discrimination resources

If you have questions about policies or concerns about discrimination in your workplace, the human resource department is often a good place to start. To learn more about discrimination in housing and employment, or to file a complaint, visit:

• Equal Opportunity Employment Commission
• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

Recommended Reading

Related Reading

• Psychology topics: Racism, bias, and discrimination
• Stress in America
• Talking to your kids about discrimination

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Racial inequality in the united states.

By: Counselor for Racial Equity Janis Bowdler and Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy Benjamin Harris  

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. 1

In her January 2022 remarks at the 2022 ‘Virtual Davos Agenda’ hosted by the World Economic Forum, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen stated, “A country’s long-term growth potential depends on the size of its labor force, the productivity of its workers, the renewability of its resources, and the stability of its political systems.” This concept underpins the Biden Administration’s economic growth strategy, which Secretary Yellen has coined “modern supply side economics.” According to Secretary Yellen, modern supply side economics “prioritizes labor supply, human capital, R&D, and investments in a sustainable environment. These focus areas are all aimed at increasing economic growth and addressing longer-term structural problems, particularly inequality.” 2  This reflects a recognition that despite an aim to advance economic growth, many policies in areas such as access to the labor market, housing, and infrastructure have not benefited all Americans. This has impacted the ability of communities of color, rural communities, and other historically marginalized people to fully participate in and benefit from the nation’s prosperity. Our economy as a whole cannot be as productive as possible unless all individuals are given the opportunity to be as productive as possible. As a result, the legacies of structural racism continue to hamper economic growth for everyone. Furthermore, some economic policies that would directly benefit Americans of all races and ethnicities have been undermined by zero-sum arguments that play to fears that one group will benefit at the expense of another. 

There are, of course, moral, legal, microeconomic, and other reasons to promote a more just and equitable society. In a series of blog posts over the coming months, we will focus on the economic argument for reducing racial inequality. The economic cost of racial inequality is borne not just by the individuals directly faced with limited opportunities, but also has spillovers to the entire U.S. economy. Especially as the country becomes more racially diverse (see Figure 1), inequality poses an ongoing threat to our individual and collective economic welfare.  

Figure 1: Changing Racial and Ethnic Composition of the U.S. Population

Notes: Hispanic refers to anyone of Hispanic ethnicity, regardless of race. The remaining groups exclude anyone of Hispanic ethnicity. Prior to the 1980 decennial census, individuals were not directly asked about whether they were of Hispanic origins. For data before the 1980 decennial census, Hispanic is imputed by IPUMS.  Source: Treasury calculations using U.S. Census Bureau data from IPUMS. Steven Ruggles, Sarah Flood, Sophia Foster, Ronald Goeken, Jose Pacas, Megan Schouweiler and Matthew Sobek. IPUMS USA: Version 11.0 [dataset]. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS, 2021. https://doi.org/10.18128/D010.V11.0  

Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo emphasized this argument in his September 2021 blog post: “The exclusion of communities of color from the ladder of economic opportunity holds back economic growth for the entire country. Pursuing racial equity is a vital opportunity to drive innovation and boost growth across the U.S. economy.” 3  When people gain access to the resources they need to build their economic future and withstand financial shocks, it is not just good for individuals and their families, but it also benefits the communities where they live, work, and invest, with beneficial spillovers to the economy as a whole. Likewise, when investments are made that allow millions of people who have been held back economically to reach their full economic potential, it gives the United States an important advantage in an increasingly competitive global economy. We cannot afford to leave talent and opportunity on the table.

Below we briefly discuss the origins and persistence of inequality in the United States, highlight some of the key economic indicators of its impact, and give an overview of the issues we will explore in more depth in future posts.

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-Americans. 5  Similarly, anti-Asian sentiment grew following the arrival of Chinese immigrants during the California Gold Rush, which was manifested in the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibiting the immigration of Chinese laborers beginning in 1882, and was ignited again after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, with the establishment of Japanese internment camps by executive order, which resulted in the forced relocation and internment of about 120,000 Japanese Americans. 6

While the most targeted racist laws and policies have been repealed or otherwise abandoned, subsequent policies, uneven enforcement of equal protections, and a failure to invest in individuals harmed by de jure and de facto discrimination has resulted in vastly limited opportunities and stark inequities between white and non-white Americans that have continued to this day. For example, maps drawn by the Home Owners Loan Corporation, a now defunct federal agency, to portray the relative riskiness of lending across neighborhoods in the 1930s were used by banks to deny access to credit to residents of the lowest-rated neighborhoods, who were often racial and ethnic minorities, though these policies also hurt poor white individuals. 7  Moreover, this conduct depressed home ownership rates, house values, and rents and increased racial segregation in low-rated neighborhoods in subsequent decades, highlighting the lasting, negative economic consequences of racism on the community and on future residents of these neighborhoods, regardless of race. 8   These and other policies and actions not only led to continued racial disparities in access to resources and opportunities, they also led to differences in the extent to which people of different races benefit from the resources and opportunities they already possess. 9

These disparities are evident in the persistent over-representation of Black and Hispanic Americans among the population in poverty in the United States and in the widening of the racial wealth gap in recent decades. 10   While the poverty rates for all racial and ethnic groups had been declining prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (see Figure 2), the gaps between the rates for Black and Hispanic Americans and non-Hispanic white Americans has remained relatively constant since the early 2000s. At the same time, the gap in average net wealth between Black and Hispanic households and non-Hispanic white households has widened significantly (see Figure 3).

Figure 2. Poverty Rate by Race and Hispanic Origin: 1959 to 2019

Figure 3. Household Net Worth by Race and Hispanic Origin: 1989 to 2019

Source: Federal Reserve Board, https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/wealth-inequality-and-the-racial-wealth-gap-20211022.htm  

Racial disparities in outcomes predictive of future success appear early in life. In 2010, math skills at kindergarten entry were over half a standard deviation higher for white students than for Black or Hispanic students, with similar disparities in reading skills. 11  These disparities in educational outcomes continue into higher education. In 2019, 40 percent of white adults had earned a bachelor’s degree compared to just 26, 19, and 17 percent of Black, Hispanic, and American Indian or Alaska Native adults, respectively. 12

Large educational disparities, coupled with racial discrimination in the labor market and other factors, lead to pronounced differences in economic security across racial groups. In 2019, the unemployment rate was 6.1 percent for both Black and American Indian or Alaska Native adults, compared to just 3.3 and 2.7 percent for white and Asian adults, respectively. Similarly, the rate for Hispanic adults was 4.3 percent and only 3.5 percent for non-Hispanics. 13

In addition, Black and Hispanic adults continue to have considerably lower earnings than White or Asian adults. Median household income in 2020 was roughly $46,000 and $55,500 for Black and Hispanic workers, respectively, compared to $75,000 and $95,000 for white and Asian households, as shown in Figure 4. These earnings differences have changed little since 1970 and are one of the primary contributors to the persistence of the racial wealth gap. In 2019, the median white family had $184,000 in family wealth compared to just $23,000 and $38,000 for the median Black and Hispanic families, respectively. 14

Racial disparities in educational and economic outcomes not only impact the economic well-being of racial and ethnic minorities, they have also been shown to inhibit economic growth for the U.S. economy as a whole, which affects the economic security of every American, regardless of race. For example, recent research by economists Chang-Tai Hsieh, Erik Hurst, Charles I. Jones, and Peter J. Klenow shows that up to 40 percent of growth in U.S. GDP per capita between 1960 and 2010 can be attributed to increases in the shares of women and Black men working in highly skilled occupations, likely due to changes in social norms that previously hindered talented women and Black men from pursuing their comparative advantage. 15  This research suggests that sexist and racist social norms prevented the U.S. economy from reaching its full potential and that working to ensure that every American has an equal opportunity to pursue the career he or she chooses should improve economic outcomes for all.

Figure 4. Real Median Household Income by Race and Hispanic Origin: 1967 to 2020

Racial gaps in well-being extend beyond educational attainment and economic security. Health disparities, for example, also begin early in life and persist over the lifespan. Black and Hispanic Americans face higher rates of child abuse, 16  lead exposure, 17  obesity in childhood, 18  and chronic illness in adulthood than white Americans. 19  These groups often experience restricted access to quality health care, an issue further illuminated by the recent global pandemic. Compared to white non-Hispanic Americans, Hispanic, Black non-Hispanic, and American Indian or Alaska Native non-Hispanic Americans are 1.8, 1.7, and 2.1 times more likely to die from COVID-19. 20   Moreover, as the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, the inequitable distribution of healthcare in the United States can negatively impact the health of all Americans, including those with access to high-quality services.

In addition, people of color in the United States are over-represented in neighborhoods with high poverty rates. In 2019, nearly a quarter of American Indians or Alaska Natives, 21 percent of non-Hispanic Black people, and 17 percent of Hispanic people lived in high-poverty neighborhoods, defined as Census tracts with a poverty rate of 30 percent or higher. In contrast, only 4 percent and 6 percent of white and Asian or Pacific Islander people lived in high-poverty neighborhoods. 21  High-poverty neighborhoods often lack vital resources and amenities like good schools, large and affordable grocery stores, reliable public transportation, and safe and clean community spaces that enable residents to succeed in the classroom and on the job.

It is important to note that while we have reliable measures and data sources to define the differences in many outcomes between racial and ethnic groups over the past forty years, our ability to trace racial inequality back further and examine the country’s progress since the end of slavery is limited by the quality and quantity of data available. For example, greater disparities exist within the Asian American and Pacific Islander group than are often evident in aggregate data, and data on Native communities in the United States is usually inadequate for any in depth analyses. Moreover, for some outcomes such as wealth, our ability to measure contemporary differences is also limited by data availability.

Roadmap for this Blog Series

Upcoming posts will discuss in greater depth the extent of racial inequality in economic security and explain how differences in in educational opportunity and attainment, neighborhoods and environmental factors, health and access to healthcare, and employment and job quality, contribute to and are caused by the persistence of racial disparities in economic well-being. Each post will highlight important facts, discuss how key outcomes have evolved over time, and emphasize the connections with other components of economic inequality, with the goal of calling attention to areas where more work is needed to advance racial equity. In addition, we will discuss issues related to data quality and coverage that affect our ability to truly understand the trajectory of racial inequality in the United States.

[1] Shapiro, Thomas M. The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

[2] https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0565

[3] https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/American-Rescue-Plan-Centering-Equity-in-Policymaking.pdf

[4] Derenoncourt, Ellora. 2022. “Can You Move to Opportunity? Evidence from the Great Migration.” American Economic Review 11 (2): 369-408.

[5] https://www.history.com/news/the-brutal-history-of-anti-latino-discrimination-in-america

[6] https://www.britannica.com/event/Japanese-American-internment. For additional details on the economic impacts of inequitable government policy, see:

• Aaronson, Daniel, Daniel Hartley, and Bhashkar Mazumder. 2021. “The Effects of the 1930s HOLC ‘Redlining’ Maps.” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 13 (4): 355-92.
• Carruthers, Celeste K., and Marianne H. Wanamaker. 2017. “Separate and Unequal in the Labor Market: Human Capital and the Jim Crow Wage Gap.” Journal of Labor Economics 35 (3): 655-696.
• Jones, Maggie E.C. 2021. “The Intergenerational Legacy of Indian Residential Schools.” Unpublished working paper. Available at: https://maggieecjones.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/intergenerationalrs.pdf
• Rothstein, Richard. The color of law: A forgotten history of how our government segregated America . Liveright Publishing, 2017.

[7] https://www.britannica.com/topic/redlining

[8] Aaronson, Daniel, Daniel Hartley, and Bhashkar Mazumder. 2021. “The Effects of the 1930s HOLC ‘Redlining’ Maps.” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 13 (4): 355-92.

[9] Pfeffer, Fabian T., and Alexandra Killewald. 2018. “Generations of Advantage: Multigenerational Correlations in Family Wealth.” Social Forces 96 (4): 1411-42.

[10] Wealth is the total financial value of what an individual or household owns (assets) minus all debts (liabilities), representing the sum of financial resources available to an individual or household at a point in time. Assets include the value of a home, retirement savings, stocks, bonds, money in the bank, and other items of value, while liabilities include home mortgages, auto loans, credit card debt, and student debt. The racial wealth gap is the difference in wealth held by different racial and ethnic groups.

[11] Reardon, Sean F., and Ximena A. Portilla. 2016. “Recent Trends in Income, Racial, and Ethnic School Readiness Gaps at Kindergarten Entry.” AERA Open 2(3): 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858416657343.

[12] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_104.10.asp

[13] https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/race-and-ethnicity/2019/home.htm

[14] https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2020/december/has-wealth-inequality-changed-over-time-key-statistics

[15] Hsieh, Chang-Tai, Erik Hurst, Charles I. Jones, and Peter J. Klenow. 2019. “The Allocation of Talent and U.S. Growth.” Econometrica , 87 (5): 1439-1474.

[16] Dakil, Suzanne R., Matthew Cox, Hua Lin, and Glenn Flores. “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in    Physical Abuse Reporting and Child Protective Services Interventions in the United States.” Journal of the National Medical Association 103(9-10): 926-931.

[17] Teye, Simisola O., Jeff D. Yanosky, Yendelea Cuffee, Xingran Weng, Raffy Luquis, Elana Farace, and Li Wang. 2021. “Exploring Persistent Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Lead Exposure among American Children Aged 1-5 Years: Results from NHANES 1999-2016.” International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health 94: 723-730.

[18] Anderson, Sarah E., and Robert C. Whitaker. 2009. “Prevalence of Obesity Among US Preschool Children in Different Racial and Ethnic Groups.” Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 163(4):344–348. doi:10.1001/archpediatrics.2009.18

[19] Quiñones, Ana R., Anda Botoseneanu, Sheila Markwardt, Corey L. Nagel, Jason T. Newsom, David A. Dorr, Heather G. Allore. 2019. “Racial/Ethnic Differences in Multimorbidity Development and Chronic Disease Accumulation for Middle-Aged Adults.” PLoS ONE 14(6): e0218462. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0218462

[20] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-race-ethnicity.html

[21] https://nationalequityatlas.org/indicators/Neighborhood_poverty#/?geo=01000000000000000

Social Class Discrimination Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Need to write a social class inequality essay? Discrimination and injustice might take place everywhere: in the spheres of education, healthcare, and so on. Find here critical reviews of three articles on the topic. Get inspired to write your own story of social class and inequality!

Introduction

• The War Against the Poor
• Middle of the Class
• When Shelter Feels Like a Prison

Works Cited

There are several attitudes that the middle class and the rich have towards the poor. These attitudes stem from the belief that the world is a just place and people get what they deserve. If one works hard enough and perseveres he or she will be rich. However, the poor person is in that state because of poor decisions such as immorality, crime and alcoholism, lack of ambition and perseverance.

These negative attitudes have caused the middle class and the rich to distance themselves from the poor. The stereotyping of the poor is the genesis of class discrimination. The poor have been excluded as the rest of the nation goes on with their lives.

In this paper, I analyze three articles on social class and inequality to find out whether the authors’ views agree with mine on the negative attitudes towards the poor by the middle class and the rich and the way they have distanced themselves from the poor.

Social Inequality in The War Against the Poor

Herbert Hans, in his article the war against the poor instead of programs to end poverty is arguing that government officials are not addressing poverty but instead making life difficult for the poor. Welfare expenses have always been small however the budget is becoming more and more restrictive.

The poor are being accused of enjoying welfare instead of looking for a job and making sure they remain childless throughout their adolescence. The middle class and the rich feel they are working so hard and the poor are not. These poor people are lumped together with the criminals and accused of making the streets unsafe. The poor have become an excuse or scapegoat for the problems in society. Instead of admitting the decline in morality, the poor are accused of being the only ones with unmarried lovers. Once they get their life in order then they can receive welfare. They are being forced to live up to moral expectations that the working class and the rich speak but do not practice (Hans, 2007, pg 506).

Clearly class bigotry needs to be addressed. The poor have moral failings that are highly noticeable than the middle class but it does not mean it is at a higher proportion. The rich and middle class have access to counseling facilities to tell them their moral failings is as a result of prior abuse or disease.

The poor do not want to marry the fathers of their babies as they are jobless. There is actually scarcity of work; it is not true that the poor do not want to work. The government should address poverty through actively engaging in job creation initiatives and ensuring the actual crime of the poor does not fall below a certain percentage.

The War Against the Poor: Critical Review

The author’s views on class discrimination agree with my views. He concurs that judging the poor harshly for their moral failings and the ability to secure a job is wrong. The middle class and the rich also have moral failings and the middle class has also been experiencing unemployment as jobs are scarce.

Crime and mental illnesses should be viewed as some of the effects of poverty. It is not that the poor and mostly the Blacks have higher criminal tendencies. The middle class and the rich to stop discriminating against the poor and having someone to blame.

The author has also highlighted other concerns that I agree with. Hans says that the government, politicians and public are making life tougher for the poor. I agree with Hans that the focus should be on creation of jobs for the poor. If the country does not stop attacking the poor, the morale, quality of life and economic competitiveness will only go down.

Discrimination in Middle of the Class

The article Middle of the class published in the Economists is an argumentative piece of writing that questions the sustainability of the American Dream. America has always been defined as a country where anyone can become rich or wealthy if they just work hard. Shows like American Idol prove this.

The country has had presidents from humble backgrounds like Benjamin Franklin who was the 15 th child of a candle maker. However the equality of opportunity in America for all its citizens is rapidly diminishing.

The author gives the statistical figures on how the rich have become richer while the poor have become even poorer widening the income gap even more. Secondly social mobility has gone down. A lower and lower percentage of people are able to change the social class they are in through increase in earnings over a period of ten years.

There have also been changes in the economy with a shift towards technical skills requiring workers who have a university degree. This has caused a high increase of the income gap between college and high school graduates. It has become hard to climb the corporate ladder or change jobs if one does not have a university degree. The author suggests that the American society is becoming an educational stratified society

in other words a meritocracy. The rise in university education is also providing a hurdle for middle class families to attend elite universities. The representation of the rich in these elite universities has increased more than the representation of the poor. The mean income of the families that have enrolled their children in Harvard is $150,000(The Economist, 2007, pg 528).

During the period 2001-2004, States found themselves facing a budget squeeze. They responded by increasing the fees of state colleges where the middle class take their children to learn. This proves that the American system is enforcing more income inequalities through educational differences. The rich children are more likely to get a degree than a child from the bottom quarter income level.

There is also a worrying trend in the society that further aggravates class and educational stratification. The chances of an individual getting access to a good education, a good job and good prospects in life is determined by the family the person is born into.

College graduates tend to marry college graduates. Therefore in the graduates home the returns of the degree is double and their children benefit even more with opportunities to attend better schools.

There is therefore great trouble in being poor. If in the American society to be socially mobile you must have a great education, a job and married with children then the rich start off with higher advantages.

There needs to be policy changes where the method by which schools are financed is changed and giving more federal help to poorer colleges. This will only happen when the American politicians and the public recognize there is a problem.

Middle of the Class: Critical Review

The author, like Hans concurs with my argument that the poor are being judged too harshly in society. The reason the poor are not able to support themselves is not that they are lazy or lack ambition.

Rather there is a limitation on the equality of opportunity when it comes to the middle class and the poor in the corporate world. The country is being affected by globalization and technology changes; therefore the requirement of a degree is becoming mandatory.

If what it takes to succeed in the American corporate society is the attainment of a degree then the government should ensure that children from all social backgrounds have access to this type of education. Making education costs high does not help the poor and middle class at all.

It only goes to aggravate the existent inequalities between the rich and the poor. As the author has given statistics, in the last few years the rich have been becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer. The government needs to step in and address the situation.

Social Inequality in When Shelter Feels Like a Prison

The two articles narrated on the stereotypes held by society towards the poor while the article in the Economist discusses the widening gap between the rich and the poor. Both papers focus on the poor. The third article written by Charmion Brown tells of the author’s experiences growing up in a homeless shelter. The real life story further reinforces my argument on the distancing of the poor by society.

In light of her first hand experiences in the place she feels she can only compare it a prison. First of all, the place is cramped with four bunk beds fitted in each tiny room (Browne, 2007, pg 531).

There is absolutely no privacy. One has to take care of their things or they will be stolen. There is a queue for food for the homeless. The author learnt that if you do not make the line two hours before the kitchen is open, one would miss food. There are no curtains in the bathrooms yet the facility is being shared by more than one hundred people. The author felt like the place was a prison.

When Shelter Feels Like a Prison: Critical Review

The author’s experiences in the shelter confirm my views on the abandonment of the poor and homeless in the shelters. The author narrates how the social workers are rare and have no time for them. It is a prison. The government and public needs to stop abandoning the shelters. The living conditions needs to be improved. In my argument I had put forward the assumptions society has concerning the poor people.

They are not successful because they are lazy. The author cautions society and informs them that there were people from broken homes in the shelter due to drug abuse, AIDS and early pregnancy and not because they are lazy. The poor also lack knowledge on how to improve their lives.

The three articles have gone further to reinforce my argument on the existence of negative attitudes and stereotypes for the poor in society. Hans goes further to explain that it is because the poor have become a scapegoat to make other members in the society better. In my argument I had put forward the way society views the world in black and white. The hardworking succeed the poor are the lazy ones.

The article in the economist supports my argument and goes ahead to tell society that actually there is a limitation on equality of opportunity in the country. One may desire a job but he cannot get that job. In my argument I also said that the society distances itself from the poor. The article, When Shelter feels like a Prison clearly shows the abandonment of the poor by society.

Browne, Charmion. “When Shelter Feels Like a Prison” Writing in the Disciplines: A Reader for Writers . Ed. Mary Kennedy. 6 th Ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. 2007. Print.

Hans, Herbert. “The war against the poor instead of programs to end poverty” Writing in the Disciplines: A Reader for Writers . Ed. Mary Kennedy. 6 th Ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. 2007. Print.

The Economist. “The Middle Class” Writing in the Disciplines: A Reader for Writers . Ed. Mary Kennedy. 6 th Ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. 2007. Print.

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1. IvyPanda . "Social Class Discrimination." June 4, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-class-and-inequality/.

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The U.S. Inequality Debate

• Income and wealth inequality is higher in the United States than in almost any other developed country, and it is rising. 
• There are large wealth and income gaps across racial groups, which many experts attribute to the country’s legacy of slavery and racist economic policies. 
• Proposals to reduce inequality include a more progressive income tax, a higher minimum wage, and expanded educational opportunities.

Introduction

Income and wealth inequality in the United States is substantially higher than in almost any other developed nation, and it is on the rise, sparking an intensifying national debate. The 2008 global financial crisis, the slow and uneven recovery, and the economic shock caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have deepened these trends and challenged policymakers to respond.

Economists say the causes of worsening inequality are complex and include a failure to adapt to globalization and technological change, shifting tax policy, reduced bargaining power among workers, and long-standing racial and gender discrimination. The effects of inequality are similarly varied, and they have exacerbated crises such as the pandemic and deepened societal divisions. Inequality can also weaken democracy and give rise to authoritarian movements. President Joe Biden has pledged to reduce economic inequality with new social spending financed by higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations, but he faces opposition from those who say his plans go too far.

How unequal is the United States?

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According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office [PDF], income inequality in the United States has been rising for decades, with the incomes of the highest echelon of earners rapidly outpacing the rest of the population. Even among high earners, income gains have been heavily skewed toward the top of that bracket. 

The growth of CEO pay is illustrative of this trend. In 1965, a typical corporate CEO earned about twenty times that earned by a typical worker; by 2018, the ratio was 278:1, according to the Economic Policy Institute , a progressive think tank. Between 1978 and 2018, CEO compensation increased by more than 900 percent while worker compensation increased by just 11.9 percent. 

The picture is much the same when looking at wealth—that is, total net worth rather than yearly income. In 2021, the top 10 percent of Americans held nearly 70 percent of U.S. wealth, up from about 61 percent at the end of 1989. The share held by the next 40 percent fell correspondingly over that period. The bottom 50 percent (roughly sixty-three million families) owned about 2.5 percent of wealth in 2021. 

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Moreover, inequality in the United States outpaces that of other rich nations. This is captured by the steady rise in the U.S. Gini coefficient, a measure of a country’s economic inequality that ranges from zero (completely equal) to one hundred (completely unequal). The United States’ Gini coefficient was forty in 2019—the same as Bulgaria’s and Turkey’s, and significantly higher than that of Canada, France, and Germany—according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a group of advanced economies. 

Recent economic shocks have deepened these trends. The so-called Great Recession from 2007 to 2009 caused incomes to fall, and even when they recovered to pre-recession levels in 2015, the median income was the same as it was in 2000: $70,200. The recovery was also unequal: by 2016, the top 10 percent had more wealth than they did in 2007 while the bottom 90 percent had less. 

Experts say the economic turmoil caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, including the largest spike in unemployment in modern history, will similarly exacerbate inequality. Low-wage workers were far more likely to be laid off and less likely to be rehired, though massive government stimulus helped blunt the impact. Meanwhile, a boom in stock and home prices primarily benefited wealthy Americans, who own more of these assets. Though wages rose at the fastest pace in decades, so did prices , and this inflation effectively canceled out wage gains.  

Why does inequality matter?

Inequality is a drag on economic growth and fosters political dysfunction, experts say. Concentrated income and wealth reduces the level of demand in the economy because rich households tend to spend less of their income than poorer ones. Reduced opportunities for low-income households can also hurt the economy. “When those at the bottom of the income distribution are at great risk of not living up to their potential, the economy pays a price not only with weaker demand today, but also with lower growth in the future,” economist Joseph Stiglitz writes [PDF].

Recent years have seen the election of populist leaders around the world , which some researchers have linked to insecurity caused by economic inequality. Wealthy people can exert outsize influence on the government by financing political campaigns, further entrenching their power. A 2020 United Nations report warned that rising inequality is eroding trust in democratic societies and fostering the spread of authoritarian and nativist movements.

However, some experts say that the harms from inequality are overstated. Analysts at the libertarian Cato Institute, for instance, argue that it makes more sense to focus on poverty because inequality does not matter so long as everyone is doing better. Also, entrepreneurship benefits society as a whole, even as it makes some individuals wealthy, they argue. The overall poverty rate in the United States fell sharply, by more than 10 percentage points, between 1959 and 1969, but it has since fluctuated around 12.5 percent. 

“We should want to live in a society with a reasonable degree of mobility rather than one where people are born into relative economic positions they can never leave,” conservative analyst Ramesh Ponnuru wrote in 2015. “But so long as those conditions are met, the ratio of the incomes of the top 1 percent to the median worker should be fairly low on our list of concerns.”

What is the state of U.S. economic mobility?

Americans have long prided themselves on the ability to move up the income ladder, but there are signs that U.S. economic mobility is disappearing. The fraction of Americans who earn more than their parents has shrunk from more than 90 percent of those born in the 1940s to 50 percent of those born in the 1980s.

Harvard University economist Raj Chetty, who has studied social mobility extensively, found that mobility in the United States varies widely across the country [PDF]. Some wealthy cities have high mobility, on par with countries such as Denmark and Canada, while children in some lower-income areas have less than a 5 percent chance of reaching the top fifth of the income distribution when starting from the bottom fifth.

Overall economic mobility is lower in the United States than in many other developed countries, which some experts argue hampers U.S. economic growth. In a 2016 Stanford University study [PDF], the United States ranked behind several other wealthy countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and Japan. 

How do race, ethnicity, and gender factor in?

The relationship between race, ethnicity, and inequality has been well-documented. Since 1960, the median wealth of white households has tripled while the wealth of Black households has barely increased . For decades, the unemployment rate among Black Americans has been roughly twice that of white Americans. Black Americans are also underrepresented in high-paying professions, including corporate leadership. As of 2020, only four of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are Black. Black and American Indian children have far lower economic mobility compared to white, Asian, and children of Hispanic ethnicity, according to Chetty’s research.

U.S. inequality today is rooted in systemic racism and the legacy of slavery. Through a policy known as redlining that resulted from a New Deal program in the 1930s, Black Americans were systematically denied mortgages, leading to housing segregation and a disparity in home ownership, which is a major source of wealth. Though racial discrimination in housing was banned by the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the effects persist. Black Americans were similarly excluded from the benefits of the G.I. Bill after World War II, which is widely credited with helping to grow the middle class.

Black Americans also face discrimination in the labor market, because hiring is often done internally via networks that exclude them, says William E. Spriggs, an economics professor at Howard University and the chief economist at the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).

The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare many of these disparities. American Indian, Black, and Latinx Americans were more likely to be hospitalized with and die from COVID-19 than white Americans—an inequity that CFR’s Catherine Powell calls the “ color of COVID .” People of color were more likely to be laid off; and they were more likely to be considered essential workers, performing jobs that typically came with greater exposure to the virus, such as cashiering and package delivery.

The existence of a gender pay gap is also well-founded, though there is a debate over its causes. The pay gap has narrowed over the past forty years as women have obtained more education, but it has not shrunk as much since 2000, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s Elise Gould. Gould attributes this in part to discrimination and the underrepresentation of women in high-paying jobs.

What role does education play?

Most high wages come from jobs that require a high level of education. In 2016, U.S. families headed by someone with a bachelor's degree earned double that of those headed by someone without, and families with a postgraduate degree holder earned nearly three times as much, according to a 2019 study [PDF] by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The share of the nation’s income earned by families with at least one bachelor’s degree increased from 45 percent to 63 percent between 1989 and 2016.

The difference is even starker for net worth. In 2016, families headed by a postgraduate degree holder had nearly eight times more wealth than families without a college degree. In 2015, nearly 25 percent of people without a high school diploma were living in poverty, compared to just 5 percent of those with a college degree, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The percentage of Americans with a bachelor’s degree has steadily increased since the end of World War II, reaching around 38 percent in 2021. The United States is above the OECD average in attainment of higher education but is behind several other wealthy countries, including Canada, Japan, and South Korea. 

However, college degrees do not guarantee good jobs. Though the college wage premium (the percentage by which the wages of college graduates exceed those of high school graduates) grew rapidly from 1979 to 2000, it has since fallen off , and there is significant income inequality even among college graduates. The Federal Reserve study found that the college wealth premium (the increase in net worth from having a degree) has declined significantly for white Americans born in the 1980s and has disappeared entirely for Black Americans born that decade. According to the study, these diminishing returns could be due to the surging cost of college—which has risen by almost triple the rate of consumer price increases since 1978.

What about tax rates?

The top U.S. income tax rates have been repeatedly cut over the past half century, which some experts say has contributed to growing inequality. When President John F. Kennedy entered the White House in 1961, the top tax rate was more than 90 percent. Today, the top rate stands at 37 percent. The top 1 percent’s share of income dramatically increased after President Ronald Reagan slashed taxes in the early 1980s.

Likewise, the corporate income tax has declined steadily as a share of corporate profits and as a percentage of gross domestic product over the past half century. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 dramatically lowered the corporate rate from 35 percent to 21 percent.

The capital gains tax , a tax on the sale of assets including stocks, land, and art, has also declined over time, though the rate was increased in 2013 to 20 percent. The wealthy generally benefit more from capital gains than from regular employment income, leading some experts to argue that the gap between the capital gains tax and the income tax contributes to inequality.

What are some other drivers of growing inequality? 

Long-term economic forces play a role, both by boosting rewards to high earners and undermining wages for low- and medium-skill jobs. Those forces, experts say, include waning worker power, increased monopolization of the economy, and globalization. Some Americans have greatly benefited from a globalized world, whereby they can reach more consumers and manufacture products at lower costs. But globalization has also introduced tough competition for American workers, as some jobs were moved overseas and wages stagnated. 

The decline of unions is another contributing factor: the average union member earns roughly 25 percent more than their non-union counterpart. In 1983, about 20 percent of all workers were represented by unions. By 2019, that number had dropped to just 6.2 percent. This has disproportionately affected Black workers, who historically have been more likely to unionize. However, union power is on the rise , as the rapid economic recovery from the pandemic has created a tight labor market in which workers have greater leverage.

Then there is trade policy, a perennial controversy that was supercharged by President Donald Trump’s election in 2016. Trump has long been critical of U.S. trade deals, claiming that other countries, particularly China , have taken advantage of the United States to the detriment of U.S. workers. Many economists have disputed the role of trade in manufacturing job losses, arguing that such losses were offset by gains in other sectors [PDF] and that wages have increased as a result of trade.

Still others say that technological change, including automation, is primarily responsible for job losses, not trade. In Foreign Affairs , former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer writes that even though trade is not the sole reason jobs have disappeared, “it cannot be denied that the outsourcing of jobs from high- to low-wage places has devastated communities in the American Rust Belt and elsewhere.”

What are some policy proposals to address inequality?

Proposals put forward in recent years to address income and wealth inequality have included supporting unionization and raising the minimum wage; making the tax code more progressive, as well as taxing wealth alongside income; and increasing access to education, including early education and college.

One tool for addressing income inequality that has received significant attention is a more progressive tax code , meaning that higher incomes are taxed at a higher rate than lower ones. Some experts and politicians argue that shifting more money from the rich to the poor would reduce inequality and benefit society overall. But others say that higher taxes would stifle economic growth and innovation. Democrats generally subscribe to the former view and Republicans to the latter, though some Democratic presidents have cut taxes and some Republican presidents have raised them. The parties’ positions on taxes have calcified in recent years.

Proposed taxes on wealth, rather than income, have become increasingly popular among Democrats and were championed by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the 2020 presidential primary. In March 2022, for the first time as president, Biden called for a wealth tax, proposing a “billionaire minimum income tax” in his annual budget request. Households worth more than $100 million would have to pay a tax of at least 20 percent of their income, including on so-called unrealized gains from assets such as stocks that have increased in value but have not been sold. Critics challenge the merits of such redistribution, arguing that such a tax would be bad for the economy, difficult to implement, and even unconstitutional. 

Biden has also proposed increasing the tax on inherited wealth , which is known as the estate tax or, to critics, as the death tax. While proponents say such a tax would dramatically reduce inequality, others argue that it could lead to more tax evasion and discourage investment and entrepreneurship. Biden has also called for raising the corporate tax rate, the top income tax rate, and the capital gains tax.

To address the rising cost of college and increase access to higher education, some policymakers, including Sanders and Warren, have proposed tuition-free public college and the elimination of student loan debt . Some Republicans, including Trump, meanwhile, have pushed to allocate more federal money toward teaching skills and trades as an alternative.

To help close the Black employment gap, Howard University’s Spriggs suggests making all job postings publicly available, using computer algorithms to better match job seekers with job openings, and encouraging companies—particularly Silicon Valley firms—to recruit more Black students. Spriggs also argues for stronger monitoring and enforcement of antidiscrimination laws.

Some experts, including CFR’s Edward Alden, say the pandemic should compel Washington to retool the U.S. economy. A stronger social safety net, including better unemployment benefits, robust sick leave policies, and more job retraining programs, could help workers manage shocks and make the economy more resilient. “What the country needs is not a series of short-term bailouts, but long-term plans to ensure that most Americans are protected against such crises in the future,” writes Alden.

Recommended Resources

Economists Jason Furman and Valerie Wilson discuss inequality at this September 2021 CFR event .

In the Atlantic , author Matthew Stewart argues that inequality has created a new American aristocracy . 

Opportunity Insights, a nonprofit based at Harvard University, researches economic mobility in the United States .

Trymaine Lee examines the U.S. racial wealth gap as part of the New York Times ’ “1619 Project.”

Explore these charts from the Urban Institute about income and wealth inequality.

Steven J. Markovich contributed to this report. Will Merrow helped create the graphics.

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The criminal justice system has an important role in society to maintain order and to ensure that law is equal and fair; no matter age, ethnicity, race, sex, or social economical status. Unfortunately, this is not true within the current judicial system. Racial discrimination, youth incarceration, and health related infirmities result from incarceration (Simonson, 2017). Three Problems of the Criminal Justice System and How to Fix Them There are many problems that plague our current criminal justice system. The problems […]

Discrimination and Prejudice in Frankenstein

During our human history, prejudice and discrimination have existed. Prejudice refers to the irrational and inflexible attitudes that members of a particular group hold about members of another group (Sibley and Duckitt 248). Prejudices are either harmful or positive. Both forms of prejudice are usually preconceived by the people who hold them and are extremely difficult to alter (Stephan, Cookie and Stephan 33). The negative form of prejudices leads to discrimination- unjust behaviors that holders of negative prejudice direct against […]

Frida Kahlo’s Experience of Discrimination

In America, everyone will experience discrimination in their lifetime, it's not a matter of when, but why. Discrimination, although diminished from previous decades, still holds strong in our societies present day. Frida Kahlo is famous for her self portraits which depicted her culture and female experience, and the ways they suffered. One of the first photos shown to us in this module was a painting of Frida herself, standing on a broken piece of land. It highlighted clues to many […]

Discrimination of the LGBTQ Community

Since the beginning of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community, it has been one of the most discriminated against groups in the world as they are denied the basic rights that most people get to enjoy. Today, it is still legal to discriminate someone based on their sexual orientation or gender identity in thirty states. The following pages will inform readers on discrimination of the LGBTQ community by the general public, in schools, and in the workplace. […]

Depiction of Discrimination in to Kill a Mockingbird

"Our generation has had no Great war, no Great Depression. Out war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives" (Chuck Palahniuk). Discrimination was most common in the 1930's and was performed by prejudice people against others. In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, discrimination is one of the main conflicts in the story. Till this day, people still face discrimination and injustice. Throughout the novel, sexism, classism, and racism are prominent in the lives of the characters. […]

Madisonian Democracy

Madisonian Democracy was based on the idea that human are self interested. Factions would be form due to common interest. There would be fragmented power to avoid the tyranny of majority and minority power. The point of the Civil Rights Movement was to have minority fight against tyranny of the majority, and they wanting their basic rights. With their hard effort they were able to pass the Civil Rights Act. They did use Madisonian Democracy but it fail. This was […]

Discrimination against Women in the Workplace

Various studies report that inequality still persists despite women making great milestones in the place of work (Bach, 2018). A recent survey conducted by Social Institutions and Gender Index (2018) shows that women discrimination in the United States is much higher when compared to discrimination against women in Australia, Colombia, regions of Eastern Europe, and Western Europe (Bach, 2018). The report by Social Institutions and Gender Index also highlighted the existing gender compensation differences in US, as well as the […]

Gender Discrimination Lawsuit against Nike

Abstract This article sets to expand on the recent discrimination lawsuit that has been brought against the Nike Corporation. Former female employees in leadership roles have filed a complaint against Nike citing pay disparities and an unfavorable work environment. Claims of gender disparity and unfavorable work environment floods the Nike Corporation after alleged claims that the company discriminates against female employees. Findings suggests male employees are paid more than female employees of the company who hold the same position. Women […]

Society and Racial Discrimination

Racial Discrimination Our society has turned into a hatred and politics place throughout the years. Racial discrimination is into what America has grown up on. This issue has always existed because of fundamental part of America's history. From the KKK's aggressive campaign against immigrants, to the police violence against black people, racism and discrimination continue to be a big controversial problem. People need to take the responsibility of this culture to address racism and learn how to accept and embrace […]

Religious Discrimination Throughout Cultures and the Workplace

Religious discrimination refers to the treating of an individual unfairly because of his or her religious beliefs (Kerner). P. Smith (2017) defines religious discrimination as the adverse treatment of an individual who is either an employee or any other person considering the religious beliefs of the person rather than the merit of the employee. Additionally, religious discrimination can refer to the unjust, or the prejudicial treatment of a group of people or just an individual because of his or chosen […]

Gender Hierarchy of Power

There has been gender discrimination over the years in our societies by power. Most of the society has been structured in such a way the culture value one gender more than the other, and this is what has led to gender discrimination. In many societies, the gender hierarchy has brought unequal opportunities in power, and this has discriminated the female gender leading to the feminism in our societies. According to the Bechdel movies, it has explained the gender hierarchy in […]

Racial Discrimination in Justice System

Abstract It is essential to analyze the racial disparity in the criminal justice system because the criminal courts are important in society because, especially in making judgments, they are expected to bring equal opportunities for all people. It must ensure that, despite the political statuses and other backgrounds of the individuals, every person in the country follows the rule of law and order. When making important judgments, they should not have the bias of allowing any favor. The manner in […]

The Discrimination of Women in Society

The unequal treatment of individuals based on their gender is a deeply rooted problem in most societies, even our own. Discrimination of women in health, education, and politics has consequences for the development of their lives and their freedom of choice. A country’s culture directly impact how gender equality is exercised as a basic human right. The first step to finding suggestion and solutions for this global problem, is understanding what it is: “Gender equality is, first and foremost, a […]

The is Immigration Discrimination

Immigration has always been a problem, Native Americans used to call it 'white people'. Some scientists consider human came to America for the first time about 20,000 years ago over the Bering Straits ( The Statue of Liberty- Ellis Island Foundation). These people were the Native American ancestors, who would populate the landscape for thousands of years. Around the year 1000, a small number of Vikings arrived and five hundred years later, the great European migration began. Crossing the Atlantic […]

Related topic

Additional example essays.

• Gender Inequality in the Medical Field
• Gender Inequality in the Workplace
• War On Drugs and Mass Incarceration
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• The Gender Pay Gap and the Equality
• Gender Inequality in Education
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• Socioautobiography Choices and Experiences Growing up
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How To Write an Essay About Discrimination

Understanding the concept of discrimination.

Before you begin writing an essay about discrimination, it's crucial to understand its definition and the various forms it can take. Discrimination is the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age, sex, or disability. Start your essay by defining discrimination and differentiating it from prejudice and bigotry. Explore the different types of discrimination, such as racial, gender, age, religious, and disability discrimination. Understanding these variations is important to provide a comprehensive view of the topic in your essay.

Developing a Focused Thesis Statement

A strong, focused thesis statement is essential for an effective essay on discrimination. This statement should present a specific angle or argument about discrimination. For example, you might choose to write about the impact of discrimination in the workplace, the role of systemic discrimination in society, or strategies to combat discrimination. Your thesis will guide the direction of your essay and ensure that your analysis is structured and coherent.

Gathering Supporting Evidence

An essay about discrimination should be supported by relevant facts, data, and examples. This might include statistical evidence, case studies, historical examples, or current events. For instance, if you are discussing racial discrimination, you might include recent incidents that have gained public attention or historical legislation that has contributed to systemic racism. Use this evidence to support your thesis and strengthen your arguments.

Analyzing Causes and Effects

Dedicate a section of your essay to analyzing the causes and effects of discrimination. Discuss various factors that lead to discriminatory practices, such as stereotypes, ignorance, and societal norms. Explore the impact of discrimination on individuals, communities, and society as a whole. For instance, consider how workplace discrimination can affect employee morale and productivity. This analysis will help readers understand the complexities of discrimination.

Proposing Solutions and Conclusions

Towards the end of your essay, discuss potential solutions to address discrimination. This could include policy changes, educational programs, or grassroots initiatives. Highlight initiatives that have been successful in combating discrimination and suggest areas where more work is needed. Conclude your essay by summarizing the key points discussed, restating the importance of addressing discrimination, and encouraging further research or action.

Final Review and Editing

After completing your essay, it's important to review and edit your work. Ensure that your arguments are clear and supported by evidence. Check for grammatical errors and ensure that your essay flows logically. It might also be helpful to get feedback from others, perhaps classmates or a teacher, who can provide a fresh perspective. A well-polished essay will communicate your ideas more effectively and demonstrate your understanding of discrimination and its impacts.

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Home / Essay Samples / Sociology / Identity / Social Inequality

Social Inequality Essay Examples

The dynamics of social class: exploring inequality and mobility.

Social class is a fundamental concept that underpins the structure of societies and shapes individuals' life experiences. It refers to the hierarchical divisions of society based on factors such as economic resources, occupation, education, and cultural capital. This essay delves into the complexities of social...

Discussion of Whether Racial Discrimination is Wrong Or Right

What is racial discrimination? And why do people continue to be racist after many things happen, and after many talks about how much the racism is a disgusting thing? When we look at the meaning of racism word in the dictionary, we see and discover...

Canadian Minorities, the Forgotten People: Racial Discrimination in Canada

Canada has always been under exceptionalism in the aspect of discrimination of people of a visible minority. Racism in the country has long been believed to only be persistent in the neighboring southern nation, USA. Multiculturalism in Canada has faced various threats from the legal...

Causes and Solutions to Racial Discrimination in America

Civil rights refer to rights upheld to protect individuals of a particular region from violation of human rights by private individuals, government, and social organization. However, in the United States there are department that act as civil rights justice, although many of the black Americans...

Advantages of Universal Basic Income for the Future Society

Many people have suffered from financial and economic problems throughout the globe. The idea of a universal basic income (UBI) has sparked this trend. The UBI is an actual cash payment for all people (2016), the economist states. Indeed, the idea behind the UBI is...

The Relation of Socioeconomic Status to Health Inequities and Inequalities

People from different backgrounds and social communities living in different countries enjoy health at different levels. In Australia, the level of health enjoyed by its citizens is generally good, however, good health is sometimes not shared equally. There are noticeable differences in the health status...

Socially Disadvantaged Castes and Poverty in India

This paper is composed considering the constraints and in addition positive experiences from prior scholarly endeavours on the issue of inter-social group inequalities and human poverty and destitution and prohibition of socially burdened and disadvantaged groups in Indian culture. The investigation endeavours to embrace a...

Social Inequality in America as a Result of Social Stratification

I believe that over the years or looking at the history of where the social inequality really generates from is very important. As we look back, we might be able to see the real reason members of U. S. society see social inequality as a...

Racial Discrimination and Its Traumatic Impact

It was dreamlike to see the people of colour walking down Oxford Road all accompanied by unarmed British cops. The instinctive frightfulness of George Floyd's public execution under the knee of a Minneapolis cop has sliced through the worldwide cognizance in a manner unheard of...

How Racial Discrimination in the United States Violates Human Rights

Racial discrimination is one of several words used to express the suppression of a race or various races, but more specifically, it refers to the ill-treatment a person or group receives as a result of differences in their culture, color, nationality, ethnic origin or immigrant...

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