Similarities Between Racial Inequality And Social Barriers

A scholar named Cornel West wrote about race inequality and how different barriers can make it difficult to climb the social ladder. He pointed out that many African American live in poverty despite having a strong work ethic and that barriers to success are not solely the result of economic issues. He argues that we will only overcome the barriers to success if we stop focusing on a single area of the problem. These barriers can also be applied to gender, class, and other areas of diversity. These barriers can be divided up into two categories, personal barriers, and social barriers. Personal Barriers are individual issues that make it harder to be successful. They include, not being self-aware, a lack of self discipline, being uneducated about other cultures, and poor diversity consciousness. Personal barriers can also be our individual biases and behaviors towards other cultures. An example of personal barriers On the other hand, social barriers are barriers are focused on society. They are things that happen externally that are out of personal control. They include the perceptions, prejudice, and discrimination from others. However, it is important to remember that the lines that separate personal and social barriers are often crossed. An example of this is when a discriminatory language around a child and the child …show more content…
The first barrier is limited perceptions. Limited perceptions is the when a conclusion or judgment is made that may or may not be accurate using discriminatory information. An example that has happened in my life is after I had my first child at age twenty-one, I would run errands with her while my husband was at work. More than once I had a stranger approach me and tell me how adorable my daughter is and then ask me in a whispered tone if "Daddy was in the picture". This was limited perception because they were making an unwarranted assumption about young