Download the ideology of inequality

VIEW POINT
COMMENTARIES ON THE QUEST TO IMPROVE
THE LIFE CHANCES AND THE EDUCATIONAL
LOT OF AFRICAN AMERICANS
THE IDEOLOGY OF INEQUALITY
Hugh J. Scott, Ed. D.
________________________________________________________________________
THE AFRICAN AMERICAN LEADERSHIP FORUM PACE UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE FOR
THE ADVANCEMENT OF EQUALITY OF EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY
SCHOOL OF EDUCATION – PACE UNIVERSITY
ONE MARTINE AVENUE, WHITE PLAINS, NEW YORK 10606 - Room 548
THE IDEOLOGY OF INEQUALITY
Human life is group life; human beings do not live apart, each seeking a
private solution to the problems of survival (Chinoy, 1965). Virtually all human
beings live in societies. A society can be defined as a relatively self-contained
and organized group of people interacting under some common political authority
within a specific geographical area (Farley, 1994). A society is the largest social
organization to which persons owe their allegiance. A society is that group within
which people can live a total common life. Thus, a society consists not only of
individuals related to one another, but also of interconnected and overlapping
groups. A Society is a social system of interdependent parts that are linked
together (Eitzen & Zinn, 1998). Society and culture are two sides of the same
coin; a culture cannot exist without society, and society cannot exist without
culture (Farley, 1994). Members of a society interact in patterned, recurrent, and
enduring ways, and they share a common cultural identity and a commitment to
others in their groups and believe that they are separated and distinct from
people in other societies (Thompson & Hickey, 1994). Culture is the values,
beliefs, behaviors, and material objects that together form a people’s way of life
(Macionis, 2002-04).
Every society requires some degree of common
understanding of reality and common rules for behavior in order to function
(Farley, 1994). Individuals are by their nature, social beings, and individuals are,
for the most part, socially determined (Eitzen & Zinn, 1998; Chinoy, 1965).
Society not only shapes our movements, but shapes our identity, our thoughts
and our emotions (Berger, 1963).
The United States is a nation of increasingly diverse people drawn from
many national, linguistic, and religious origins. In many respects, the United
States is a nation of minorities, with each minority attaching some importance to
its race, its culture, its national origin, or some combination of these (Howe,
1980). The society in which Americans interact is highly diversified and complex
and consists of many different groups of people with characteristically different
ways of life. Although the United States is politically one nation, it is a nation that
is deeply divided along the lines of race, ethnicity, class, and gender. In the
United States, who we are, how we feel about ourselves, and how other people
treat us are usually the consequence of our race/ethnicity, class, and gender
(Eitzen & Zinn, 1998). In America, as in all societies, some persons are identified
as superior and some persons are identified as inferior, and the contrasts
between higher and lower, rich and poor, and powerful and powerless constitute
the substance of social stratification (Chinoy, 1965).
The division of humans into classes or strata according to wealth, income,
power, and prestige is a prominent and virtually universal feature of all societies
(Tesconi, 1975). All societies distinguish between categories of people who are
entitled to a greater share of wealth, income, power, and privilege and categories
of people who are less deserving (Thompson & Hickey, 1994). Inequality is a
trait of societies, rather than simply a reflection of individual differences
(Macionis, 2002-04). Sociologists recognize differences between individuals, but
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most agree that social forces rather than biology are responsible for inequality
(Thompson & Hickey, 1994). Social differentiation is a process in which people
are set apart for differential treatment by virtue of their statuses, roles, and other
social characteristics (Thompson & Hickey, 1994). Social stratification is a form
of inequality in which categories of people are systematically ranked in a
hierarchy on the basis of their access to scarce but valued resources—wealth,
income, power, and prestige (Eitzen & Zinn, 1998; Macionis, 2002-04). Social
stratification does not occur by chance; it is determined by the people who have
the power to shape the system to their own advantage (Light, Keller, & Calhoun,
1989). The idea of a society in which all distinctions between individuals are
abolished transcends what is sociologically possible. (Tesconi, 1975) Social
stratification is universal, but what is unequal and how unequal it is varies from
one society to another (Macionis, 2002-04).
The American society is divided into layers or strata of people who have
unequal amounts of our society’s most valued but inequitably distributed
resources—wealth, income, power, and privilege. What makes the United States
unique with regard to inequality is the nature and scope of structured inequality in
the United States. The United States displays the most extreme economic
inequality in the developed world (Lindsey & Beach, 2002-04). The United
States has passed Great Britain and Ireland as the Western industrial nation with
the largest gap between rich and poor (Hacker, 1997). Although the United
States is the world’s richest and most powerful nation, it is the industrial nation
with the highest incidence of poverty among the nonelderly and the widest
distribution of poverty across all family and age groups (Eitzen & Zinn, 1998;
Macionis, 2002-04). Because the United States has more economic inequality
than other industrialized countries, it also has more poverty, even by the
standard of absolute poverty (Farley, 1994; Macionis, 2002-04). While certain
segments of the American population—Blacks, Hispanics, women, and
children—bear the heavier burden of structured economic inequality in the United
States, America’s growth, development, and power result in large measure from
the exploitation of the majority of Americans (Bell, 2004).
Social stratification in the United States disadvantages far more
Americans than it benefits. Yet, structured inequality endures in America from
one generation to the next.
Michael Parenti (1996) noted that Americans
support positions and candidates that violate their own professed interests and
that the U.S. public manifests no mobilized opposition to the existing social order.
William Kornblum (2003) wrote that Americans tend to accept their place in the
stratification system, even those at or near the bottom of the system. Kornblum
(2003) noted that the working class, the working poor, and the underclass in
America lack not only wealth and opportunities, but also lack the power to
change the system. Along with the monopoly of the nation’s wealth, the very rich
in America tend to hold enormous power far beyond their numbers. This power
often translates into the capacity to control the actions of others, and frequently
(but not always) the correlative phenomenon, the authority or recognized right to
command others (Chinoy, 1965). The dominate elites in a society generally
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enjoy a tremendous ability to shape how people think, an ability called ideological
hegemony (Robertson, 1988; Abercrombie et al., 1990).
The concept of ideological hegemony in sociology addresses core and
crucial questions about power—its longevity, who controls it and how it is,
exercised (World of Sociology, v.1, 2001). The dominant ideology of any society
is always that of the ruling class or dominate elites (Thompson & Hickey, 1994;
Eitzen & Zinn, 1998). The ruling class or dominant elites use their position at the
top of the social ladder to fashion an ideology that rationalizes and support their
power and privileges (Eitzen & Zinn, 1998; Lindsey & Beach, 2002-04).
Whichever group controls a culture’s ideology—the value system defining social
inequality as just and proper—also determines how power and resources are
allocated (Lindsey & Beach, 2002-04). A major reason that social hierarchies
endure from one generation to the next generation is cultural beliefs that justify
particular social arrangements, including patterns of inequality (Lindsey & Beach,
2002-04; Macionis, 2002-04). Any social group which seeks to maintain power in
the long-term needs more than control over the military or the economic means
of production; they need to win the moral and intellectual consent of the great
majority of citizens (World of Sociology, v.1, 2001). The dominant elites in the
United States exercise ideological hegemony by exercising the power to socialize
Americans—in school, in church, by the media, and by their own families—to
accept an ideology that legitimates economic inequality (Parenti, 1978; Lindsey 7
Beach, 2002-04). Social stratification in the United States involves not just
inequality but beliefs; any system of inequality not only gives some people more
than others, it defines these arrangements as fair (Macionis, 2002-04).
A central feature of the American Dream is that our standard of living, and
that of our children, will continue to improve. Most Americans continue to
embrace the ideology of the American Dream—anyone who works hard can
achieve success and wealth (Kornblum, 2003). The socialization process of
getting Americans to accept the ideology of the American Dream is so powerful
that disadvantaged people may accept the system that disadvantages them
(Eitzen & Zinn, 1998). Acceptance of the ideology of the American Dream places
any lack of success on the individual and reduces pressures to change the
system (Henslin, 1995). The limitations imposed on the life chances of the poor,
women, and minorities belie the open system of social stratification that so many
Americans pridefully claim exists in the United States (Light, Keller, & Calhoun,
1989; Eitzen & Zinn, 1998). However, Americans, in general, have what
sociologists refer to as false consciousness—a condition in which ordinary
people subscribe to beliefs that are opposed to their interest, but that benefit
elites (Thompson & Hickey, 1994; Eitzen & Zinn, 1998; Lindsey & Beach, 200204).
Ideological Social Control
The term ideology is usually defined in sociology in any one of the
following ways: a coherent body of ideas about any given subject; a worldview or
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way of thinking; a conscious and systematic organized program of political ideas
designed to explain or simplify complex social phenomena and to mobilize
people politically (World of Sociology, v.2, 2001). Ideology is often taken to
mean a set of knowledge, values, and beliefs that give legitimacy to the social
structure, such an ideology is promoted by those in influential positions in the
society, but it may be widely accepted throughout the society (Farley, 1994).
Ideology used here refers to a belief that legitimates existing patterns of
structured social inequality (Lipset, 1963; Marger, 2002). The ruling classes in
every age “use symbols, language, objects, and myths to transform economic
privilege into public good and raw power and authority” (Thompson & Hickey,
1994). Power is the ability to carry out your will in spite of resistance (Henslin,
1995). Power encompasses both the ability to command—to exact obedience to
one’s orders—and to make decisions that affect, directly or indirectly, the lives
and actions of others (Chinoy, 1965). Robert M. Maclver (1947) wrote that when
individuals possess authority, they possess “the established right” within a social
system to determine policies, to pronounce judgments on relevant issues, and to
settle controversies.
Through socialization Americans learn the cultural norms that justify our
society’s system of stratification. The term ideology is very similar in meaning to
the term culture, except that culture also includes rules concerning behavior
(Farley, 1994). Socialization is the process whereby people learn through
interaction with others that which they most know in order to survive and function
within their society. Socialization is the means by which people learn the roles,
knowledge, beliefs, and values of their culture (Farley, 1994). Socialization is the
process whereby we learn “to fit” within the social order (Light, Keller, & Calhoun,
1989). Through socialization the values and traditions of the past are carried
forward and perpetuated.
The family is the most influential agent of
socializations, but family, school, religion, and the media, all to a greater or lesser
extent influence the socialization of individuals. The agents of socialization are
controlled largely by the dominate elites. The dominate elites shape through
language the articulation attached to words, ideas, images, and behavior which
the “countless lay intellectuals of civil society”—such as parents, priests,
teachers, counselors, club leaders, and politicians—intentionally and
unintentionally communicate to others and thus reinforce the ruling class
hegemony (World of Sociology, v.1, 2001). Michael Parenti (1978) wrote: “The
interests of an economically dominate class never stand naked. They are
enshrouded in the flag, fortified by law,…nurtured by the media, taught by the
schools, and blessed by the church.”
Every society appears to have ideologies that justify stratification and are
used to socialize new generations to believe that existing patterns of inequality
are legitimate (Kornblum, 2003). Once people have adopted an ideology, usually
through socialization, it then serves as a filter to screen out beliefs and proposed
actions that do not fit (Stark, 2001). Ideological social control is the attempt to
manipulate the consciousness of citizens so that they accept the ruling ideology
and refuse to be moved by competing ideologies (Eitzen & Zinn, 1998).
Ideological social control is more effective than overt social control measures
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because individuals impose controls upon themselves (Collins, 1992). James
Farley (1994) argued that those in the dominant group use their considerable
power to promote belief in values and ideologies that support the existing social
order, and when they succeed, as they often do, subordinate groups accept the
dominate group’s ideology and believe things that are not in their own interest to
believe. Some sociologists view the mass acceptance of the ideology of
dominant groups as a form of cultural tyranny that promotes political
conservatism, inhibits creativity, and encourages false consciousness (Eitzen &
Zinn, 1998).
Ideology is used by dominant elites to soothe and pacify nonelites or to
confuse, distract, and divide them (Thompson & Hickey, 1998). The control of
ideas can be remarkably more effective than brute force (Henslin, 1995).
Knowledge is power, and power is obtained through access to significant
information (Sexton, 1966). After a lifetime of exposure to the ideology that the
wealthy deserve their privileges and that the poor are largely responsible for their
plight, most Americans—including many who do not have any of the material
rewards of the American society—view their lack of economic success as an
individual matter rather than linked to structural barriers (Henslin, 1995).
Simpson & Yinger (1965) noted that it is commonly believed in America that the
United States has no class structure, no ruling class, because such concepts
violate our ideas of individualism and democracy. This false consciousness
serves the function among other things of obscuring the class alignment and the
pattern of conflict in the United States (Simpson & Yinger, 1965). The working
class, the working poor, and the underclass in America do not choose to be such.
But they are limited by the opportunities accorded to them by the economic
structures of the American society. The belief that America offers sufficient equal
opportunity for all to succeed largely ignores structural barriers to upward mobility
and implies that success or failure, depends almost entirely on what individuals
do—or fail to do (Lindsey & Beach, 2002-04). There are not nearly enough wellpaid positions open for all who wish to enter them (Giddens, 1996). The lowskilled service jobs pay barely enough—or not enough—to keep workers out of
poverty (Lindsey & Beach, 2002-04). The middle-class in America is declining
with many who once thought of themselves as middle-class now competing for
jobs that would classify them as working class (Krugman, 2004). Yet, Americans
still cling to the ideology of the American Dream—but that vision is being
challenged by the realities of global competition and the “export” of jobs to lowerwage regions of the world (Block, 1990; Krugman, 2002).
Life Chances in America
Life chances refer to the distribution within a social system of the
opportunities that affect people’s health, survival, and happiness (Light, Keller &
Calhoun, 1989) Life chances are the opportunities people will have or be denied
throughout life (Kornblum, 2003). The way people are grouped with respect to
access to the valued but inequitably distributed resources of wealth, income,
power, privilege and prestige determines their life chances—the kind of
education and health care they will receive, the occupations open to them, how
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they will spend their retirement years (Kornblum, 2003). Nothing affects one’s
social standing in America as much as birth into a particular family; ancestry has
a strong bearing on future schooling, occupation, and income (Macionis, 200204). The place in a society’s stratification system into which a person is born (be
it a comfortable home, with access to good schools, doctors, and places to relax
or a home that suffers from the grinding stress of poverty) has an enormous
impact on what he or she does and becomes throughout life (Kornblum, 2003).
At least half of America’s richest people-those with hundreds of millions of dollars
in wealth—derived their fortunes mostly from inheritance (Thurow, 1987;
Queenan, 1989). By the same token, inherited poverty just as surely shapes the
future of many others (Macionis, 2002-04). Wealth does not ensure a life of
happiness, nor poverty a life of unhappiness. However, more than any other
social condition, poverty has the greatest adverse impact on an individual’s life
chances (Kornblum, 2003).
Almost everything that can go wrong in a person’s life is exacerbated by
poverty. Deprivation is a general term used to indicate a separation of an
individual either from the people or things he or she needs in order to round out
his or her life satisfactions, or round out unfulfilled desires (Symonds, 1946). The
most basic form of deprivation is a lack of life’s necessities: inadequate food,
shelter, and clothing (Light, Keller & Calhoun, 1989). Almost a quarter of
America’s children grow up in poverty—all too many of them in rotting
communities and smashed families confronting a path that often leads to warped,
empty, and destructive lives (Hamburg, 1992; Macionis, 2002-04). The greater
the family’s economic resources, the better the chance to live past infancy, to be
in good health, to receive a good education, to have a satisfying job, to avoid
being labeled a criminal, to avoid death in war, and live the good life (Eitzen &
Zinn, 1998). No child truly escapes during his or her lifetime from his or her
social environment; and unless countervailing social and psychological pressures
intervene, knowledge of a child’s environment and group affiliations is often
sufficient to predict and account for some of his or her actions (Chinoy, 1965).
Kornblum (2003) noted: “A poor child may overcome poverty and succeed, but
the experience of struggling out of poverty will leave a permanent mark on his or
her personality. Personality is a person’s fairly consistent patterns of acting,
thinking, and feeling (Macionis, 2002-04). The structure of personality as well as
many of its components—habits, attitudes, values, beliefs—although built upon
anatomical and physiological foundations, is derived largely from the culture via
social relationships (Chinoy, 1965).
Eitzen & Zinn (1998) opined: that social problems are societally induced
conditions that harm any segment of the population and that the major social
problems in the United States are in large measure the result of the form of the
economy. James Loewen argued that while capitalism in America offers much
that can be praised: “Social stratification cannot be justified so neatly because it
results from the abuse of wealth and power by those who have the advantages to
shut out those who do not.” Alan Pifer (1982) stated that the free enterprise
capitalist economy in America does not function in a manner that ensured
equality of opportunity for all, employment at decent wages for everyone who
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wanted to or needed to work, and a distribution of economic rewards sufficiently
equitable to meet basic standards of fairness. A long-standing criticism of
capitalism is that it creates a tiny, top-layer of very wealthy and powerful people
who exploit a large bottom layer of unemployed and underemployed people. The
concentration of wealth at the very top of the American population is staggering.
Paul Krugman (2002) argued that concentrated effort to deny that inequality in
America is increasing is itself a symptom of the growing influence of our
emerging plutocracy. As the gap between the rich and the rest of the American
population increased over the past three decades, America stopped being a
middle-class society (Krugman, 2002; Krugman, 2004; Parenti, 1996). America
became a middle-class society only after the concentration of income at the top
dropped sharply during the New Deal, and especially during World War II
(Krugman, 2002; Thompson & Hickey, 1994). America stopped being a middleclass society in the 1970’s when the “middle-class squeeze” began as a
consequence of global competition and the “export” of jobs to lower-wage
regions of the world (Thompson & Hickey, 1994; Kornblum, 2003).
Deindustrialization, a process in which the manufacturing sector of
economies of the developed nations declines while the service sector expands
has led to the lost of millions of good-paying, mostly unionized jobs, being
shipped to less-developed nations in order to take advantage of inexpensive
foreign labor (Barnet, 1993; Myles & Turgeon, 1994; Reich, 1991). Economic
inequality in the United States has been made more severe by a fundamental
shift in income distribution with the middle-class shrinking and the gap between
the rich and the rest of the populations expanding (Eitzen & Zinn, 1998). Since
1973, millions of “good-paying” jobs in manufacturing have been lost; these
manufacturing jobs traditionally allowed working-class Americans to move into
the middle-class (Lindsey & Beach, 2002-04). Also, corporate downsizing since
1980 has resulted in the lost of about 25 percent of all executive positions
(Uchitelle & Klienfeld, 1996). Many “downsized” workers are rehired by the same
firms, but as part-timers or consultants, at lower salaries than they previously
earned, and with fewer benefits, if any (Newman, 1999). The number of highly
technical “good-paying” jobs has increased, but the increase has not been at a
sufficient rate to replace the “well-paid” executive positions that have been lost
(Lindsey & Beach, 2002-04). Many middle-class individuals who lost “goodpaying” jobs now compete for jobs that were once the exclusive domain of the
working class, and this reduces the upward mobility of those in the working class
(Lindsey & Beach, 2002-04). The competition for “good-paying” jobs has sharply
increased not only because of the lost of a high percentage of “good-paying”
jobs, but also because women now compete for such jobs in increasing numbers
(Macionis, 2002-04).
The top one percent of the American population holds almost 40 percent
of the national income, more than is held by the entire bottom ninety percent of
the population (Lindsey & Beach, 2002-04). The top twenty percent of the
American population holds about 84 percent of the national income, leaving
eighty percent of the American population to compete for the remaining 16
percent of the national income (Shapiro & Greenstein, 2001). Most social
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mobility in America usually involves limited movement within one social class
rather than dramatic moves between classes (Macionis, 2002-04). Yet, the
13,000 richest families in America have incomes about 1000 times that of
ordinary American families (Krugman, 2002). Tens of millions of Americans at
the bottom of society have become so poor that regardless of their abilities, they
stand little or no chance of getting ahead (Lindsey & Beach, 2002-04). The
majority of Americans in the underclass are non-White, and while the majority of
those born into the underclass do escape it, few rise farther than the lower rungs
of the working class (Marger, 1998). Some sociologists question whether it
should be called social mobility when the sons and daughters of blue-collar
workers find employment in low-level service positions while the class system
itself remains relatively unchanged (Thompson & Hickey, 1994). When financial
assets are balanced against debits, the lowest-ranking forty percent of the
American population has virtually no wealth at all (Macionis, 2002-04). The
poorest twenty percent of the American population actually lives in debt
(Macionis, 2002-04). Lindsey & Beach (2002-04) noted that this generation of
Americans may very well be the first not to do economically as well as their
parents. Many Americans who once thought of themselves as middle class are
finding it increasingly problematic to afford decent housing, health care and child
care (Eitzen & Zinn, 1998).
Although the U.S. economy has always been based on the principles of
capitalism, the present economy is no longer based on competition among more
or less equal capitalists. Capitalism is now dominated by huge corporations that
contrary to classical economic theory, control demand rather than respond to the
demands of the market place (Parenti, 1996; Krugman, 2004). While many
individual enterprises remain, the bulk of wealth is owned, produced, and sold by
corporations (Farley, 1994; Macionis, 2002-04; Krugman, 2004). Globalization—
the trend whereby production, competition, and economic exchange increasingly
occur on a worldwide scale—has produced the growth of multinational
corporations. Globalization affects capital markets—that is the buying and selling
of stocks and bonds and the lending and borrowing of money; these activities
have become so worldwide that international borders have almost ceased to
have any meaning. The revolution in information technologies has made it
possible for manufactures to locate production facilities wherever in the world
they can find low labor costs and a favorable business environment (Kornblum,
2003). Deindustrialization in America—the decline in the manufacturing sector
and expansion of the service sector—has resulted in the lost of millions of goodpaying jobs in manufacturing (Lindsey, & Beach, 2002). Barlett & Steele (1994)
argued that globalization has unraveled America’s social fabric, as the longtime
social contract between employer and employee, citizen and government has
been canceled.
Eitzen & Zinn (1998) wrote that capitalists are constantly devising ways
and means of eliminating jobs in order to cut labor costs and that capitalists will
build or destroy communities as investment opportunities dictate. Barlett &
Steele (1994) argued that capitalism emphasis on private profitability rather than
social needs results in the failure of capitalists to do things that sustain the
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nation’s economy and its people: to hire American workers, to invest in
American plants and equipment, and to create products that the United States
can export to bring money into the country. Capitalism promotes greed, and
some critics of capitalism have argued that capitalism cannot work without greed
(Farley, 1994). As the gap between the rich and the rest of the American
population grows, economic policy in the United States increasingly caters to the
interests of the elites (Eitzen & Zinn, 1998; Krugman, 2004). The close
relationship between economic power and political power appears to preclude
government curbs on the abuses of capitalists (Eitzen & Zinn, 1998). Money
buys political influence, and used cleverly, it can also buy intellectual influence
(Krugman, 2002). True market competition has largely been replaced by
corporate planning and the mass manipulation of consumers through advertising
(World of Sociology, v.1, 2001). Capitalist societies are marked by striking
inequality of wealth, and more so than in other Western democracies, capitalists
in America are allowed to make investment decisions relatively unfettered by the
concerns of society (Eitzen & Zinn, 1998).
Economic growth in the United States is largely a “spectator sport.” Pifer
(1982) noted that the metaphor of all the boats rising with the tide may be good
imagery, but poor social analysis. The ideology of the American Dream has
served to obfuscate the fact that social stratification in America is far from being a
harmonious system that benevolently distributes greater resources to society’s
supposedly more qualified people (Henslin, 1995). The distribution of wealth and
poverty in America is not the result of natural forces at work in accordance with a
“Social Darwinian” concept of “the survival of the fittest” applied to life chances in
America. The American society is not humane, caring, and provident in
developing the talents of all its people (Pifer, 1982). The American society
continues to allow ascriptive factors such as gender and race to substantially limit
access to elite positions, even for highly qualified people (Eitzen & Zinn, 1998).
Despite strong notions about individualism and freedom, most Americans still
evaluate others according to gender, race, ethnicity, and social class (Macionis,
2002-04). The U.S. culture values males over females, Whites over Blacks, and
the rich over the poor (Macionis, 2002-04; Lindsey & Beach, 2002-04). The
capitalist class systematically exploits the principle that pitting group against
group in a win-or-lose situation creates prejudice and reduces worker solidarity
(Henslin, 1995). The exploitation of racial and ethnic strife produces a “split-labor
market”: workers divided along racial and ethnic lines (Reich, 1972; James,
1988). Blackwelder (1993) wrote: “Pitted against one another, racial and ethnic
groups learn to distrust one another instead of recognizing that their common
class interests and working for their mutual welfare.
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Conclusion
Inequality has always been a feature of the American society (Giddens,
1996). The “founding fathers” of the American democracy were upper--class
holders of wealth who established a government that favored the needs of the
wealthy. The “founding fathers” held views about common “White folks” in
America that were not dissimilar from how the European ruling class viewed the
“common folks” of Europe: “too unruly, too ignorant, and too brutish to handle
freedom responsibly or to manage their own lives, much less participate in
governing society” (McClosky & Zaller, 1984). The “founding fathers” developed
and enacted a Constitution that contained awesome violations of the human civil
rights of the poor, women, and Black Americans. The “favored aristocracy” of the
South popularized the idea that slaves were biologically inferior to the master
race and political power in the Federal government was allocated in direct
proportion as they owned slaves (Dumond, 1965). Race, class, and gender
discrimination continue as fundamental violations of the principles of the
American democracy. The American society in the 21st century is structured in
ways that confer substantial advantages to Whites over Blacks, males over
female, and rich over poor (Lindsey & Beach, 2002-04). The powerful in America
continue to use their wealth and political clout to increase their benefits at the
expense of not only the poor and powerless, but also of the majority of
Americans (Eitzen & Zinn, 1998).
The emphasis on the individual in American society and the ideology of
the American Dream make it difficult for most Americans to recognize and/or
confront the structured inequalities in America which adversely affect
opportunities for securing such things, as wealth, income, health, education,
autonomy, leisure, and a long life. Americans have been effectively programmed
or indoctrinated to be loyal and obedient to the prevailing social order. In
particular, the formal and informal educational processes and systems seek to
conserve and preserve the dominant ideologies, customs, and traditions of the
American society (Goldnick et al., 1976). Schools indoctrinate children to the
prescribed ways of society and to preserve the culture, not to transform it (Eitzen
& Zinn, 1998). George S. Counts (1932) called upon the schools to reform
society, as well as perpetuate it. But schools, more often than not, process youth
to fit into economic slots quite similar to those of their parents (Eitzen & Zinn,
1998). Education is a form of social policy; a means by which society distributes
power and privilege. Schools perform the dual role of aiding social mobility, and,
at the same time, working effectively to hinder it (Oakes, 1985).
The principle of equality of opportunity neither advocates that America
should be a classless society nor that society should ignore individual differences
in abilities in facilitating the life chances of Americans. But the principle of
equality of opportunity does advocate that society should free individuals from
discrimination based on race, class, gender, family, religion, or community so
that they might rise in society according to merit and conduct (Light, Keller, &
Calhoun, 1989). Lessening the impact of social advantages and disadvantages
is the general thrust of the principle of equality of opportunity (Tesconi, 1975).
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No matter how buoyant the American economy, there will always be a sizable
number of Americans who must receive public assistance if they are to live
decently and if their children are to have anything like an equal chance in life
(Pifer, 1982) Fidelity to one’s country should include rational criticism. The
attempt to alter elements of the social structure in order to provide equal
opportunity for all members of the structure is valid since no set of empirical
propositions can be advanced for the denial of such equal opportunity (Nelson,
1965). The American society not only condones inequality but promotes it
through its basic public policies. Alexis de Tocqueville (1840). The French
statesman and commentator on democracy in America in the 1800’s, stated:
“Among the laws that rule human societies there is one which seems to be more
precise and clear than all others. If men are to remain civilized or to become so,
the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which
the equality of condition is increased.” Paul Krugman (2004) opined: “nothing
has gone wrong in America that can’t be repaired. But the first step in the repair
job is understanding where and how the system got broken.”
11
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