The United States is a country founded on ideals and unfulfilled aspirations of a perfect nation in which all are equal and no one group of people has too much power. Our history is filled with the constant struggle between fulfilling those ideals and maintaining status quo and allowing the nation to stagnate or regress allowing inequality to reign and certain groups to control the country. While our nation has struggled on this point it bears to ask whether real political and social change is actually possible in the United States, or if throughout our history and in our future we simply continue as we have since our nation was founded? While change has never come quietly and it often feels as though the journey is a constant one step forward
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The United States holds the ideal that all people should be equal and yet that is rarely the case. The United States has a long history of inequality on the bases of race, gender, and social class. It is important to note that throughout America's history there has been important strides towards reducing inequality, but the simple fact is that inequality remains. One issue that possibly contributes to all the rest is income inequality. According to research compiled by Professor Domhoff of the University of California Santa Cruz, in a comparison of 134 different countries concerning levels of income inequality "... the United States ends up 95th out of the 134 countries that have been studied -- that is, only 39 of the 134 countries have worse income inequality. The U.S. has a Gini index of 45.0; Sweden is the lowest with 23.0, and South Africa is near the top with 65.0" according to this research the United States ranks close to countries such as Iran, Russia, and China and those nations actually have been found to have less income inequality than the United States (Domhoff). Yet another example of the enormous inequality in the United States is the fact that the wealthy of society have become more wealthy in recent years while the wages of those of …show more content…
To answer this question one simply needs to look at the history of the United States. Throughout American history there has been a constant struggle between change and maintaining the status quo, while many of these struggles were long and many unfruitful, there has historically been real social and political change in the United States. As the First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama explains in a commencement speech delivered at City College in New York, "...I wake up in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters — two beautiful black young women — head off to school, waving goodbye to their father, the president of the United States” (Blay). This very statement proves that change is possible from slavery, to segregation, to the first black president, While Barack Obama being elected president does not mean that prejudice and racism no longer exist in the United States it does show that there has been significant change, both socially and
The United States holds the ideal that all people should be equal and yet that is rarely the case. The United States has a long history of inequality on the bases of race, gender, and social class. It is important to note that throughout America's history there has been important strides towards reducing inequality, but the simple fact is that inequality remains. One issue that possibly contributes to all the rest is income inequality. According to research compiled by Professor Domhoff of the University of California Santa Cruz, in a comparison of 134 different countries concerning levels of income inequality "... the United States ends up 95th out of the 134 countries that have been studied -- that is, only 39 of the 134 countries have worse income inequality. The U.S. has a Gini index of 45.0; Sweden is the lowest with 23.0, and South Africa is near the top with 65.0" according to this research the United States ranks close to countries such as Iran, Russia, and China and those nations actually have been found to have less income inequality than the United States (Domhoff). Yet another example of the enormous inequality in the United States is the fact that the wealthy of society have become more wealthy in recent years while the wages of those of …show more content…
To answer this question one simply needs to look at the history of the United States. Throughout American history there has been a constant struggle between change and maintaining the status quo, while many of these struggles were long and many unfruitful, there has historically been real social and political change in the United States. As the First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama explains in a commencement speech delivered at City College in New York, "...I wake up in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters — two beautiful black young women — head off to school, waving goodbye to their father, the president of the United States” (Blay). This very statement proves that change is possible from slavery, to segregation, to the first black president, While Barack Obama being elected president does not mean that prejudice and racism no longer exist in the United States it does show that there has been significant change, both socially and