America is equal and America is free: is a saying I have heard many times throughout my life as a student. In elementary school, we learned about the American Revolution and the fight for freedom and equality against the British. We learned about the Civil War and the freedom of slaves. We learned about the Industrial Revolution and how people immigrated over to America from Europe and found a better life. We learned about the Civil Rights movement and how the abolishment or Jim Crow lead to the equality of black and white people. We learn about the American Dream, the idea that with hard work, dedication, and the drive to improve anyone can be successful in American society. The America I learned about was the country people on the North
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The income gap limits the opportunities of the working class and widens the advantages of the richest Americans. Upper-class Americans can afford an increasing amount of extracurriculars for their children that allow them to get ahead start at a very young age. According to an article in the Atlantic, between the 1990s and the 2000s, the gap between money spent on children in higher classes and lower classes has only grown (Garland). As a result of decreasing incomes, families in the lower half of income distribution have to spend less on their children than previously (Garland). Now more than ever success in education and in life is based on assistance and financial support. Classes like after school Mandarin or SAT/ACT tutoring is out of the budget of most Americans. Yet it is challenging to succeed in a higher education without these things. Even before a child can speak the inequality is evident through the word gap. By the age of 3, children born into low-income families have heard roughly 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers (NPR Staff). This sets up children in working-class families to be less literarily advanced than their higher class counterparts. It is the first faulty rung in the ladder of the American …show more content…
Black men are constantly seen as criminals in a justice system that is stacked against them. When a white man and a black man commit similar crimes, the black man is typically put away for 20 years longer than the white man (Jarecki). African Americans are incarcerated six times more than white people are (Jarecki). One of the major reasons that the rate of African American incarceration is so high is because of the war on drugs. 5 times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites (Jarecki). This is because instead of doing an equal patrol of all areas, police will pace the streets of low-income areas where a major of the population is black and search for drugs there. Also the sentences of these drug arrests are a sign of racism in the justice system. Crack cocaine mostly used by black people in low-income ghettos, but powder cocaine is used predominantly by white businessmen. The charge for carrying one gram of crack cocaine is equivalent to the charge of someone carrying 18 grams of powder cocaine
The income gap limits the opportunities of the working class and widens the advantages of the richest Americans. Upper-class Americans can afford an increasing amount of extracurriculars for their children that allow them to get ahead start at a very young age. According to an article in the Atlantic, between the 1990s and the 2000s, the gap between money spent on children in higher classes and lower classes has only grown (Garland). As a result of decreasing incomes, families in the lower half of income distribution have to spend less on their children than previously (Garland). Now more than ever success in education and in life is based on assistance and financial support. Classes like after school Mandarin or SAT/ACT tutoring is out of the budget of most Americans. Yet it is challenging to succeed in a higher education without these things. Even before a child can speak the inequality is evident through the word gap. By the age of 3, children born into low-income families have heard roughly 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers (NPR Staff). This sets up children in working-class families to be less literarily advanced than their higher class counterparts. It is the first faulty rung in the ladder of the American …show more content…
Black men are constantly seen as criminals in a justice system that is stacked against them. When a white man and a black man commit similar crimes, the black man is typically put away for 20 years longer than the white man (Jarecki). African Americans are incarcerated six times more than white people are (Jarecki). One of the major reasons that the rate of African American incarceration is so high is because of the war on drugs. 5 times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites (Jarecki). This is because instead of doing an equal patrol of all areas, police will pace the streets of low-income areas where a major of the population is black and search for drugs there. Also the sentences of these drug arrests are a sign of racism in the justice system. Crack cocaine mostly used by black people in low-income ghettos, but powder cocaine is used predominantly by white businessmen. The charge for carrying one gram of crack cocaine is equivalent to the charge of someone carrying 18 grams of powder cocaine