The Inequality of Opportunity In America Written by Stephanie Anne Kubota Boston University Principles of Sociology CAS SO100 Professor Julian Go March 27 2014 Word Count 1202 1 President Obama s second Inaugural Address used soaring language to reaffirm America s commitment to the dream of equal opportunity However according to the observations of sociologists Lane Kentworthy William Wilson and Loic Wacquant the disparity between aspiration and reality could not be any larger Despite the proliferation of jobs created during the Industrial Revolution in the 1800 s and the affirmative action implemented after the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960 s the wealth gap between whites and African Americans has expanded over time Today the United States has less equality of opportunity than any other developed nation in the world Kentworthy 2012 Under the legacy of the historically silenced racial discrimination a new hegemony of negative stereotyping has come about in the form of class bias Conley 2013 362 Thus the adage If you work hard enough in America you can be anything you want to be is evidently false The inequality of opportunity has increased through racial history and class discrimination This is demonstrated in education employment and criminality in black citizens The lack or poor quality of education is one of the biggest factors that hinder success Minority and lower class students are disproportionately enrolled in the weakest public schools These are institutions that do not have the means to purchase updated textbooks hire the best teachers and offer enriching extracurricular programs Children of minority and lower class are the subjects of less favorable teacher expectations whereas white and wealthy students are the beneficiaries of the cultural capital accumulated from their mere socioeconomic standing Conley 2013 521 Economist James Heckman claims the gap in cognitive skills between children from poor and 2 affluent homes is already present by the time they enter kindergarten Sean Reardon of Stanford University s School of Education found that this gap continues in the average test scores between elementary and secondary school students Kentworthy 2012 In addition children from affluent families are given educational opportunities during summer vacations that supplement the academic school year Unlike children who grow up in single parent households higher income and more educated parents could afford extra tutoring enforce study habits and be better abled to help with homework for students who are lagging behind But income alone cannot justify the entire achievement gap theory suggests African American students hesitate to excel in school because of their fear of being accused of acting white Years of oppression and questions about innate intelligence have led blacks to doubt their own intellectual abilities and tend to associate learning and school with being white Conley 2013 525 In a society that aspires for equal opportunity every American should have the same 20 percent chance of landing within the five levels of the income ladder Nonetheless intergenerational mobility research shows that there is a 30 percent chance of upward mobility in adulthood for a child born into a family that falls under the bottom percentile compared to the 80 percent his counterpart would have from the top Kentworthy 2012 Subsequently opportunities for employment may also lead to upward mobility Nonwhites especially African Americans lag behind on a number of social outcomes such as income and corporate attainment Blacks are twice as likely to be unemployed and are half as likely as whites to hold a professional or managerial job Conley 2103 363 On the one hand there is a growing low wage sector populated by poorly trained 3 and educationally limited African Americans and on the other hand there is an increase in talented and educated blacks experiencing exceptional job opportunities comparable to those of whites with equivalent qualifications Wilson 1980 These two opposing developments support the fact that the discrimination against race has shifted towards the economic subordination for the black underclass Herein it becomes evident that the black underclass is falling further behind the middle and upper brackets within the developing community Although one third of the entire black population is in the underclass under represented whites Latinos and Native Americans could also play victims of class discrimination in the capitalistic American society Wilson 1980 This disregard of other minorities demonstrates the historical disadvantage of the negative stereotypes towards the black underclass and the way this disadvantage has accrued over time Thus to say that race is no longer significant implying that the opportunities of blacks have less to do with their physical appearance than with their economic class affiliation is presumptuous In fact Devah Pager s study of The Mark of a Criminal Record discovered that not only is a criminal record more pronounced for blacks than it is for whites but also that whites with criminal records have a 3 percent higher likelihood of getting hired than blacks without criminal records Pager 2003 Thus Wilson argues that that the occupational climb of the black middle and upper class could only be temporary gains industries could return to their old racial practices when the economy experiences prolonged recession or the government presents less pressure from affirmative action Wilson 1980 4 Lastly the association between the black underclass and criminality adds to their disadvantages to climb up the socioeconomic ladder Although the ethnic patterns of criminal activity have not fundamentally changed in the past four decades Loic Wacqant s study on racial inequality and imprisonment in contemporary America found that there has been a rise in incarceration rate for African Americans over time By historically affiliating the ghettos as a home for the poor mentally ill homeless jobless and useless thereby essentially makes black neighborhoods a pseudo prison Herein it is predicted that one third of African American men in their twenties will find themselves behind bars on probation or on parole this makes the unsettling proportion of eight black to one white male ratio in any given prison a sound observation Wacquant 2002 In fact public schools in the ghettos have deteriorated to institutions of confinement whose primary mission is no longer to