That’s a BIG question. Last spring, I was given the opportunity to attend the State Leadership Conference (SLC) for Business Professionals of America (BPA). At this conference, there were leadership workshops and competitions that pertained to a variety of business skills. In one of the workshops that I attended, a group of fifteen people and I were placed in a mock, social environment where there were four squares on the ground. I should also mention that I was the police officer during this experiment. The southmost squares were considered “the bad side of town” while the upper-west side was considered the working class and the upper-east side was the capitalist class. As the police officer, I was told not to worry about the individuals on the north side of town and to careful watch the southern part. I was also told to strictly enforce the laws on the poverty-stricken individuals and to let things slide with the people on the north side of town. The main purpose of this experiment was to show how societal norms influence racial and economic inequality. At the end of the workshop, we discussed what we saw during the experiment. The answers varied from unfairness about how the laws were enforced to how the north side received more resources from the government. Towards the end of the discussion, a person asked: “How are we going to solve this inequality problem?” I clearly remember what the trainer, Matt Meulener, …show more content…
As Mr. Meulener stated earlier, half of the solution is knowing that it exists. I believe courses, such as College Social Problems, are one of the best ways to solve the racial/ethnic inequality epidemic through the United States. When faced with the numbers, it is clearly obvious that there is inequality among different racial/ethnic groups. For example, the unemployment by race between 2007 and 2012 are two-fold when comparing blacks and whites (O’Brien 65). Also, the median annual income of year-round full-time U.S. workers by race clearly show a discrepancy between different racial groups. Whites’ and Asians’ median annual income consistently surpassed the median annual income of Blacks and Hispanics (O’Brien 64). These discouraging numbers enforce that racial/ethnic inequality exists in the United States. The one issue with this is that most people are not informed about this. I believe that education is the best solution to the racial/ethnic inequality problem in the United States. In a U.S. News article written earlier this year, Corydon Ireland described how education is the key to inequality. Ireland stated, “The odds of his escaping a poverty-ridden lifestyle, despite innate intelligence and drive, were long. So how did he help mold his own narrative and triumph over baked-in societal inequality? Through Education” (Ireland). This solidifies the idea that education, both standard and about the actual racial/ethnic