8 Theoretical Inequality

Racial Misrepresentation

According to C. Wright Mills, the “power elite” is the United States’ group of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant men who run the corporate, political, and military industries and are therefore “in command of the major hierarchies and organizations of modern society” (Mills et al, 4). This power elite’s opposition to demographic change has limited the opportunities for people of color to advance professionally. W.E.B. DuBois wrote that White American society attempts to limit the societal advancement of people of color with a “strong undercurrent of apprehension” (DuBois, 39). As a result, sociologists believe that the power elite has taken steps to stop this advance, one of which is that the American economy has come to view African American labor as “largely irrelevant and unnecessary” (Alexander, 272).

Even as people of color continue to advance their accomplishments and value within American society, the economy’s effect of making African American labor “unnecessary” seems to counter their progress. This discriminatory effect takes a toll on young African Americans as members of society by instilling beliefs that African Americans are “irrelevant and unnecessary” into their developing identities. This inequity can create a condition of psychological instability in young people, known as anomie, but also damage their self-esteem through Cooley’s idea of the ‘looking-glass self, in which individuals base their senses of self on how they believe others view them (Cooley). Such ideas are quite difficult to overturn because color prejudice reduces employment opportunities for people of color (DuBois, 47). As a result, the opportunities for people of color to “show their capabilities” to both themselves and others are limited to “only a comparative few” (ibid., 43). While young people of color face harmful prejudice in developing themselves as valuable contributors to the American economy and society, they simultaneously confront a lack of economically accomplished role models. This misrepresentation is an issue for children of color because “people do what they see other people doing. And if you look around and you don’t see very many people who look like you doing something, you worry that maybe there’s a good reason for that, and you go and do something else” (Simon). If children of color “don’t see very many people” like them in highly respected or lucrative jobs, the lack of representation may deter them from pursuing one or reversing the traditional narrative against professional opportunity.

Divided Circumstances

Similarly, low-income youth confront limited opportunity and socioeconomic mobility, which has been amplified by increasing income inequality. Stratification by class or status is significantly correlated to a monopoly of material goods and opportunities (Weber et al, 4) that contributes to an imbalance of social resources among American youth. But the American government’s welfare program does little to reverse this monopoly, let alone level the distribution of opportunity. And scholars have observed that many low-income Americans – those who turn to the government for help – are also the citizens “most harassed by government policies” (Ehrenreich). As a result of this inequality and a lack of resources for lower-class citizens, American status groups evolve into what may be described as “closed castes” (Weber et al, 3), with minimal opportunity for socioeconomic mobility or economic success among the lowest American classes. These “castes” grow increasingly divided and increasingly inhibitive as the inequality of income and social resources grows.

This rising income inequality reshapes parents’ ability to successfully raise children and thus influences their children’s future opportunities. Sociologists have theorized that socioeconomic inequality is “reshaping parenting practices in the United States along class lines” (Schneider et al, 28) and further placing children in divided circumstances of resources and opportunity. Children of ‘decent families’ grow up with values characteristic of upper-class, professional environments, whereas children of children of ‘street families’ develop within a less professionally favorable culture (to use Elijah Anderson’s terminology). Furthermore, parents’ ability to successfully socialize their children is related to the nature of their personal experiences (Sanders-Phillips et al, 4). Sociological literature has proven that one’s class corresponds with one’s quality of life (Wingen et al), so the condition of a child’s socialization can be connected to the favorability of the child’s social class. If a child matures in an upper-class family with optimistic parents who can devote time to leisure, the child will socialize more successfully and acquire an improved understanding of society and his or her place within it. It relates to Peter Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital, in which one’s social assets dictate social mobility (Kingston). As a result, affluent families are increasingly able to transmit their advantages to children, (Schneider et al., 1) thus keeping the upper class primarily exclusive to those born into it and reaffirming Weber’s description of social classes as “closed castes.”