11 Conclusion

While Max Weber did not make his original observation of “closed” socioeconomic castes regarding 21st-century American society, the myriad of evidence for inequality and immobility within the factors that shape much of childhood in the United States speaks to its 21st-century relevance. The scholars who have described America’s stratified, immobile society as a kind of “caste system” (Wilkerson, Voegeli) had a great validity in making such claims, as I prove throughout this paper, but particularly with its regard to childhood and child development. Such stratification contributes to long-term, cyclical inequality that is reinforced by the “power elite” (Mills) and the uneven distribution of financial stability.

Even as African American citizens progress within American society, the power elite’s (Mills) rendering of African American labor as “unnecessary” (Alexander) restricts opportunities for young people of color to develop themselves and their identities as contributors to society. And the unfair treatment that young children of color experience with schoolteachers and other figures of authority can skew their perceptions of both themselves and the world around them. This irregularity couples with their lack of role models and makes a harmful impact on how they see themselves as members of American society and contributors to it. Similarly, growing income inequality hinders low-income parents’ ability to successfully raise and socialize their children, which restricts the opportunities to which their children have access. Parents occupying low-paying jobs cannot invest the same level of time or capital as upper-class parents, which hinders their children’s cognitive development in comparison with upper-class children and thus passes down the long-term disadvantage. Low-income children struggle to acquire the education or opportunity to make a difference in their lives or the world around them, which would otherwise allow them to transcend their low-income backgrounds.

The United States prides itself on the ideal of the American Dream, by which “equality of opportunity is available to any American, allowing the highest aspirations and goals to be achieved” (Oxford Languages). Yet the caste-like phenomena investigated in this paper prove anything but an “equality of opportunity.” If the United States is to regain its international reputation through the Biden administration’s return to traditional American values, it should also try to regain its domestic reputation as a progressive society in which “equality… and goals [can] be achieved.” Resolving to reduce the caste-like factors limiting childhood equality and its long-term effects would be a good place to start.