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Lecture 8
Social Problems In The
United States
Focal Points
● Racial problems
● Poverty as a social problem
● Drug abuse
● White-collar crime
● Richard Nixon
Socially-Stratified
American Society
• American society is a stratified one in which
power, wealth and prestige are unequally
distributed. It is divided into social classes that
have varying degrees of access to the reward the
society offers. For example, the richest fifth of
American individuals and families owns more
than three-quarters of the wealth in the United
States, whereas the lowest fifth owns only 0.2%
of the wealth. The richest fifth of American
families receives over 40% of the national income,
whereas the poorest fifth receives only 5.2%.
Racial Problems
• The black “Underclass”
• The majority of the blacks today have failed to share in the
general gains of progress made in the past decades. The urban
ghettos now contain a permanently impoverished “underclass”
of habitually unemployed or underemployed black people.
Many of them are young and unskilled. They live in cities
where the unemployment rate for teenager black workers run
as high as 50% or about 8 times the rate for the American
work force as a whole. This “underclass” could continue to
persist---that is, for reasons of social-class inequality. Living
in an environment of poverty, decay, crime, drug addiction,
joblessness, and hopelessness, this ghetto underclass offers an
explosive potential for the future.
Poverty as a social problem
• The United States is one of the most wealthy countries in the
world. Yet over 24 million people or about 10% of the population
are living at or below the official poverty line, in incomes that the
federal government considers insufficient to meet basic
requirement of food, clothing, and shelter. There are millions
more living slightly above the poverty line, whose plight is not
much better. Also, the social services in the United States
compare unfavorably with those in most industrialized societies.
Furthermore, the affluent majority seems indifferent to the
problems of the poor. This raises some serious moral problems
and inevitably creates fierce conflicts or interest and many
political controversies. Therefore, poverty in the United States is
a big social problem.
Drug Abuse
• Drug abuse in the United States has come to be
regarded as one of the most challenging social
problems facing the nation. The drug issue always
excites strong emotions of Americans because drug is
perceived as a major threat to American society,
particularly to its younger members. Drug abuse is a
social problem because it has a wide range of social
costs. For example, drug is closely related with crime,
automobile accidents. It has serious effects on
individuals physically and mentally. And the economic
losses caused by drug abuse are great.
White-collar Crime
• White-collar crimes are those committed by
higher income groups such as the crimes of fraud,
false advertising, corporate price fixing, bribery,
embezzlement, industrial pollution, tax evasion
and so on. Yet the statistics provided by the FBI
tend to overlook white-collar crimes. In fact,
white-collar crimes are often ignored by law
enforcement agencies. Some sociologists argue
that the higher classes may actually have a
higher rate of crime than the lower classes.
Richard Nixon
• Richard Nixon was a former President of
the United States. In the early 1970s, he
was involved in the Watergate scandal, for
which he was forced to resign from the
presidency.