Professor Roy states one of the central questions about society that sociologists have tried to answer is: Why do some people have more of life’s goodies than others? Sociology addresses inequality as a core question more than any other fields. In Professor Roy’s lecture, he explains Max Weber’s hierarchical structure of class, status and party. Inequality is the existence of unequal opportunities and rewards for different social status within a society. There are many types of social inequalities. There is power, wealth, income, social class, education, occupation, gender, race and ethnicity and age. Everyone experienced at least one of the following inequalities in their lives. Kozol’s “Savage Inequalities in American’s Schools and Pascoe’s
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Education perpetuates inequality through the lack of resources in different schools. In the reading, Kozol discusses two schools that are at opposite ends of financial spectrum. For example, the East St. Louis school has very little resources “waste in their backyards” (Kozol, 260) and “teeth that look like brownish broken sticks” (262). It is identified as the less fortunate school, therefore students suffer from a poor student teacher ratio, severe teeth pain, and crumbling infrastructure which gradually erodes their energy and aspiration” (262). On the other hand, the elite school in New York is the total opposite. The students have a much better student teacher ratio and is provided with a student lounge so “they can stretch out and be comfortable while reading” in the libraries (265). The differences strongly affect an individual 's social mobility which guides them towards a path of either being in poverty or …show more content…
The author observed that the students use the word “fag” to portray heterosexuality and masculinity. For example, Pascoe wrote, “Brian, a senior, yelled to a group of boys visiting from the elementary schools, There’s a faggot over there! There’s a faggot over there! Come look!” (316). Pascoe found out that it was “central to social life at River High” for boys to call other boys faggots. “Homophobia is too facile a term with which to describe the deployment of fag as an epithet” (316). By using the word “fag,” this shows the “relationship between masculinity and “this sort of insult.” Inequality due to race can be seen in this reading. For example, “African American boys simply did not deploy it with the same frequency as white boys and they were “much more likely to tease one another for being white than for being a fag” (321). Overall, through the reading, Pascoe emphasizes how masculinity and sexuality is portrayed more as in groups than through
Education perpetuates inequality through the lack of resources in different schools. In the reading, Kozol discusses two schools that are at opposite ends of financial spectrum. For example, the East St. Louis school has very little resources “waste in their backyards” (Kozol, 260) and “teeth that look like brownish broken sticks” (262). It is identified as the less fortunate school, therefore students suffer from a poor student teacher ratio, severe teeth pain, and crumbling infrastructure which gradually erodes their energy and aspiration” (262). On the other hand, the elite school in New York is the total opposite. The students have a much better student teacher ratio and is provided with a student lounge so “they can stretch out and be comfortable while reading” in the libraries (265). The differences strongly affect an individual 's social mobility which guides them towards a path of either being in poverty or …show more content…
The author observed that the students use the word “fag” to portray heterosexuality and masculinity. For example, Pascoe wrote, “Brian, a senior, yelled to a group of boys visiting from the elementary schools, There’s a faggot over there! There’s a faggot over there! Come look!” (316). Pascoe found out that it was “central to social life at River High” for boys to call other boys faggots. “Homophobia is too facile a term with which to describe the deployment of fag as an epithet” (316). By using the word “fag,” this shows the “relationship between masculinity and “this sort of insult.” Inequality due to race can be seen in this reading. For example, “African American boys simply did not deploy it with the same frequency as white boys and they were “much more likely to tease one another for being white than for being a fag” (321). Overall, through the reading, Pascoe emphasizes how masculinity and sexuality is portrayed more as in groups than through