Introduction
Racial stratification refers to the system-based structural disparity offering unbalanced access to limited and preferred resources based on ethnicity or racial identities. The facet assigns functions and roles to entities according to their ethnic or racial group membership. Such biased assignments exhibit social and physical consequences that communities promoting race-based stratification must bear. Accordingly, racial stratification arrangements fluctuate across space and time, with some specific structural and ideological factors necessary for its survival. The matter causes real societal inequalities and grading that make essential aspects, such as social cohesion, problematic.
Racial majority and minority groups are the two often resultant clusters born by the ethnicity-propped classification of humans, where minorities comprise fewer races relative to the principal racial group. The U.S. provides an excellent case of race-based stratification, with whites being the dominant racial group, while persons of color comprise the minorities. Accordingly, racial favoritism in the U.S. costs minorities and the nation while the majority enjoys short-lived benefits.
America is a significantly unique state on matters of race and racial compilation. Unlike almost all the other regions of the world, most of the U.S. dwellers are aliens based on their ancestry origins (Lord et al., 2022). The country’s original dwellers are the Aboriginals, whose numbers keep falling over the years due to race-based victimization and neglect. According to Lord et al. (2022), whites, the majority race in the U.S., arrived in the U.S. in the sixteenth century. How race dominates the region and implements racially blind policies and social strategies is hard to comprehend. Asians, Hispanics, and Blacks constitute the other racial groups in the country, mostly referred to as persons of color.
Blacks further form the largest minority cluster, where the group’s large number exposes it to significantly more racial concerns compared to the others. The point that most blacks entered the U.S. as slaves, while many whites view them as slaves to date, explains the rampant racial wars between the two races. Therefore, racial stratification is real in the U.S., causing harmful effects to the affected groups and the nation at large.
Racial stratification causes significant pain among communities and should never be tolerated. The problem mostly proceeds due to the existence of systemic ideological and structural factors that make discrimination seem usual or justifiable. America’s inability to contain and eradicate racism in the nation leads to racial stratification, whose effects include increased employment and wage gap, poverty, regional inequality and uneven neighborhoods, Prison overpopulation, homelessness, Challenged community policing, and poor health and low life expectancy.
Employment Gap
Employment constitutes a primary necessity for humans to lead a stable, quality life. The facet helps families and individuals to earn a living while supporting personal and societal needs. Accordingly, societies exhibiting fairness develop systems and policies that promote unbiased access to employment opportunities, according to Selden and Berdahl (2020). However, communities with racial classifications, such as the U.S., make individuals’ race a key determining factor when one applies for a job.
The matter leads to a severe employment gap, where blacks, Aboriginals, and Hispanics feature unsustainable levels of unemployment levels. Selden and Berdahl (2020, p. 1627) argue that unemployment among Hispanic is about 20% higher, relative to that of whites, whereas African Americans’ unemployment rate is over twice that of the majority race. The condition validates the existence of race-based treatment among qualifying job seekers in the country, costing the republic’s current and future economic potential.
Wage Gap
America’s racial stratification is responsible for the recurrent wage gap among workers with different racial identities. Shin (2022, p. 453) reports that black men in the U.S. earn about 0.78 dollars per hour of what whites receive. The existence of such differences, even among persons of different races with identical academic and work, justifies race as the primary contributor to the matter. On the other hand, Asian Americans receive significantly higher salaries compared to all the other races. The variations in earnings based on Americans’ races disadvantage the nation substantially. For example, having blacks, who constitute the largest minority race (Phillips et al., 2021), earn little money denies America significant economic stability and vitality. Consequently, low wages make many people of color dependent on the country’s social support programs, pushing the government to spend developmental finances on social support.
Wealth Gap and Poverty
The unsustainable wealth gap and poverty in the U.S. persists because of racial stratification. Mijs and Roe (2021, p. 131) maintain that about 90% of the U.S. wealth belongs to 1% of the country’s population, while approximately 12% of Americans live below the poverty line. Moreover, Mijs and Roe (2021, p. 133) report that 22% of aboriginals in America experience poverty, relative to only 6% of whites. The situation reveals distortional wealth acquisition potential, explainable by several race-based factors, such as imbalances in wages and employment rate. Consequently, the severe wage gap in America limits most citizens’ consumption capacity, thus affecting the country’s economy unfavorably.
Mijs and Roe (2021, p. 131) say that twice as many African Americans Hispanics experience poverty compared to whites, with the disadvantaged groups’ lost consumption ability exceeding one trillion dollars. Therefore, racial stratification in the U.S. promotes poverty among minorities, denying the economy substantial consumption potential that can transform the country’s budget.
Regional Inequality and uneven Neighborhoods
Racial labeling in the U.S. causes regional inequality and the creation of uneven neighborhoods. America exhibits specific habitation policies that promote racial categorization by making favoritism towards the majority race normal. The Racial Covenant, which operates to date in the U.S., is an excellent exclusionary zoning policy promoting racial segregation in the country (Mijs & Roe, 2021). The nineteenth-century policy sets aside particular occupation regions for racial minorities while leaving highly productive locations for the majority race (Mijs & Roe, 2021). As a result of this and several other related regulations, whites in the U.S. mainly live in neighborhoods with the majority of whites, while blacks mostly prefer zones dominated by African Americans (Mijs & Roe, 2021).
The law-backed racial issue sees many minorities occupying neighborhoods exhibiting increased poverty rates, where quality schools, reliable transportation, and access to quality health care are missing. Using regulatory procedures to disconnect people based on race increases the citizens’ dependence on social support programs for survival. The situation costs America economic stability potential as the government often borrows money to support its impoverished locals.
Prison Overpopulation and Biased Criminal Justice System
Prison overpopulation is a major social issue in the U.S. The problem is directly connected to racial stratification, based on the minority races’ overrepresentation in the correction facilities. Khan (2022) notes that over half of the U.S. inmate population comes from minority races, specifically African Americans. Laws such as Jim Craw and Drug War, enacted during the twentieth century, are significantly responsible for the present challenge. The two regulations branded African Americans and people of color as the most critical perpetrators of the illegal drug business in the U.S. while deliberately assuming white drug lords’ centrality in the matter.
Breen (2022) accuses the passage of minimum imprisonment decrees, in relation to the race-based war on drugs, for the rise in prison populations, with African Americans being the majority. Imprisoning minorities due to a biased drug war makes them felonious and unemployable (Breen, 2022). Therefore, the connection between racial stratification and minority races disenfranchisement promotes social programs’ dependence while weakening America’s economy.
Homelessness
Homelessness is a critical challenge in the U.S. and many other developed countries. The issue connotes the absence of affordable and quality houses for a nation’s population. Unlike many other developed and developing economies, America’s homelessness never purely comes from economic issues. The challenge is deeply connected to racism and racial categorization based on the significant overrepresentation of minority races in the problem. For example, American Aboriginals’ seclusion within tribal areas pushes most of them to homelessness (Fowle, 2022).
Fowle (2022, p. 947) reports homelessness among Alaska Natives to be 23%, while less than 5% of the whites experience a similar problem. Discrimination towards racial minorities, particularly towards blacks and Hispanics, when renting houses worsens the homelessness condition in the state (Fowle, 2022). The problem arises mostly from racial branding among the various racial groups, with the majority of Caucasians distrusting those from minority groups. Homelessness exposes the U.S. to immense social issues, including crimes and the rise in social programs’ expenditures.
Challenged Community Policing
A safe community is what a nation requires to realize stability and real progress. Alvarez-Pereira (2019) refers to growth in humanity and care for one another as the most superior civilization. According to scholars, material and technological advancements constitute baseless secondary aspects without a unified society. Accordingly, the existence of people’s varying interests often causes misunderstandings, even in highly cohesive neighborhoods.
That explains the necessity of effective community policing, where the government acts unbiasedly to enact inclusive laws and policies that make every party feel appreciated. However, racial favoritism in the U.S. makes the realization of effective community policing a major challenge (Brown et al., 2021). The biased employment of police officers by the government, due to various underlying racial factors, makes it very hard for the experts to deliver results in highly racially charged communities. The outcome of such is the rampant extrajudicial killings of minorities by officers, making the nation socially unstable.
Poor Health and Reduced Life Expectancy
Health and life expectancy differences among American races form the epitome of racial stratification’s hurting consequences to the community. According to Alvarez et al. (2022), racism and minority racial discrimination deny many persons of color access to health care. The aged, those with disabilities, veterans, and children are some of the highly impacted clusters from the minority races (Ellis et al., 2022).
Unfavorable immigration laws seeking to protect the whites’ supremacy are to blame for the ongoing healthcare access crises among the minority races. The lack of documentation for medical cover makes it substantially hard for many racial minorities to access medication (Ellis et al., 2022). Therefore, racial stratification promotes ill health in the U.S., thus jeopardizing the country’s ability to realize set health targets, such as the healthy people proposal.
Conclusion
America is a great nation with the potential to realize rare achievements based on its social diversity. However, the country struggles with numerous social issues, typical to developing economies, due to maintaining race-aligned policies and laws. For example, the republic loses noteworthy economic potential by disenfranchising its minority racial groups. Denying blacks, Hispanics, and Aboriginals fair employment and education opportunities dwarf the nation’s productivity and consumption capacities, thus limiting its economy’s growth. Moreover, America relies on borrowed money to finance costly social problems due to racial stratification, while biased healthcare access makes the nation sickly.
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