Class, Race, and Gender Relations Review

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Table of Contents

Introduction
The Dynamics of Class, Race, and Gender
Desegregation
Gender Discrimination
Income Factor
Impact of Education Reforms
Works Cited

Introduction

The socially constructed types of class, race, and gender not only locate groups and individuals within, national, local, and global social structures but specifically establish social identities that ultimately shape cultures and experiences of people. The prevalence of poor and underprivileged people, people of immigrants, and gender along with increasing concern about class and race, situate the overall work of the field in an interlocking system of oppression and power (Lorber, 2005).

Social inequality is experienced and described along with lines of class, race, and gender supports to determine who requires literacy instruction, who acquires it, how these learners ultimately experience it, and how does it affects their lives. Both policymakers and individuals in the society of the United States anticipate literacy as a remedy that overall impacts and eventually reduces economic and social inequality. In this paper, we shall discuss the role of educators and how education contributes to the enhancement of peoples cognitive growth. The paper argues and probes the phenomenon; can education play its due role to eliminate class, race, and gender inequality.

It is pertinent to mention that educators may be authorized to teach in different ways that, in fact, reinforcing instead of transforming inequality and differences of class, race, and gender orientation that impact the life chances of different learners. This social background along with the social locations and identities of learners and teachers, the political economy of finances for its programs, and typical differential reward its learners gain from educational accomplishment- increases concerns especially for adult educators in the areas of curriculum policy, and pedagogy.

The Dynamics of Class, Race, and Gender

The dynamics of class, racism, and gender inequality affect the lives of people in the United States. Educational research on inequality read as if class and racism impact only those in different minority groups. The racism experienced by individuals of color in the school of the United States could not exist in the absence of simultaneous privileging of whites by the same educational institutions.

Class, race, and gender impact the power of people to negotiate educational institutions for reaping benefits and rewards. This is specifically reflected in the poverty and predominance of individuals of color among those with a low level of education. Socioeconomic conditions are the robust predictors of educational accomplishments across gender and race, and educational accomplishment is a strong indicator of employment success.

In the last five decades, a series of educational policies and reforms, initiated particularly at the national level, have been implemented into domestic school systems. All such reforms focused to move education much closer to the theme of equality of educational opportunity. Given the significance of racism, class, and gender in the history of the United States, most of the federal education reforms and policies during this period endeavored to equalize the often egregious types of inequality based on class as well as race (Canford, pp. 409-438).

Desegregation

Since 1954, significant progress has been made towards the desegregation of the countrys public schools has been limited and uneven. Blacks experienced insignificant progress in desegregation up to the mid-1960s when a series of executive actions, judicial decisions, and a series of federal laws, in response to the movement of civil rights, resulted in huge gains, particularly in the South. Such development and progress continued until the year 1988 when the impacts of a series of decisions by a federal court and different national and local political developments particularly precipitated trends in the market towards the segregation of Black students.

Latinos historically were less segregated than most of the African Americans. From the mid-1960s to the 1990s, however, there was a continuous increase in the ratio of Latino students who, in fact, attended segregated schools. Resultantly, education for them is now more segregated as compared with Blacks. Given the history of legalized and legitimate segregation in the south, it is sarcastic that the school systems in the South are now most segregated in the country, whereas those in the northeast are by ability grouping. There exists a robust relationship between social class and race. Moreover, racial isolation is mostly considered the development of residential segregation along with socioeconomic background.

Evidence from current research suggests that children often benefit socially and academically from well-managed programs. Most of the black students enjoy ordinary academic gains, whereas the academic accomplishments of white children are often not hurt, rather helped in some cases, by desegregation. Moreover, in the school systems which has experienced desegregation attempts, the racial group and class in educational results have normally been reduced, although not eliminated (Acker, pp. 441-464).

The most significant short-run academic accomplishments are the long-run consequences or costs for black students. In contrast to those who attended schools regarded as racially isolated, black adults experiencing exclusively desegregated education particularly as children can more possibly attend multiracial colleges, work in high-status jobs, evaluate their capabilities more realistically while making a choice of an occupation, live in an integrated community or neighborhood, and to report interracial associations.

Despite these modest outcomes in the final decade of the twentieth century, American children, mostly, attend schools that are segregated by class, race, and ethnicity. Consequently, for the last fifty years, federal interventions focused on accomplishing equality of educational chances by school desegregation and have just taken insignificant steps towards accomplishing that aim; children from different classes and racial backgrounds should constantly receive segregated and unequal educations.

Gender Discrimination

Gender discrimination also exists in many areas of education taking different types. For instance, curricular materials, in K-12 education, feature a specific preponderance of mens character. Typical traditional gender roles are exhibited by male and female characters. Vocational education not only at the high school but also at the college level remains segregated by gender up to some level (Kramer, 2004).

Administrators in schools, at every level, are male even though most teachers in secondary and elementary schools are female. The situation in high school is more complicated. In academia, faculty women are often found in the lower ranks and there are few chances for them to get a promotion. They continue to earn less as compared with their male counterparts.

Similar to the policies, procedures, and laws focusing on eliminating inequalities of race in school outcomes and processes, those designed to reduce or eliminate race inequality in education opportunities have just narrowed them. Moreover, access to education in the U.S is also not equal for people of a different race, ethnic, gender, and socioeconomic background.

Although many programs focusing on eliminating inequality of education have not succeeded over the last fifty years or so, there exist only signs of considerable progress; measured specifically in median years, the gap existing in educational accomplishment between whites and blacks, and females and males have almost disappeared. However, the primary aim of educational reform is not just to provide entire groups the chance to receive the same quantity as well as the quality of education.

As per the dominant theme or ideology, the eventual aim of such reforms is to support, provide, and ensure equality in education for facilitating equal access to housing, jobs, and different features of the American dream. As such it becomes vital for examining the phenomenon of whether the practical elimination of the gap in attaining education has specifically been accompanied by a comparable reduction in different other measures and actions of inequality.

Income Factor

Income, of the different ways in which inequality may be measured, is regarded as most useful. Most of the social standing by individuals and overall access to the decent aspects of life depends to a large extent on income. The dramatic progress, unfortunately, in reducing the gap in educational acquisition has not been particularly matched by a similar reduction of the gap existing in income inequality.

Median personal earnings by gender and race signify that white men earn more as compared with any other group while black men trail them. Moreover, all women earn considerably less as compared with white men. Studies highlight that it is only white and black women with an alike educational record in the same job earning almost the same. The difference between the almost elimination of the gap found in acquiring median education and the continuing gaps in the middle-income group is another evidence that eliminating the inequality of education is inappropriate for addressing wider sources throughout the community (Wilson).

This discrepancy can be narrated by the nature of the political economy of the United States. The major reason for income inequality is the operation and structure of capitalism in the United States, a set of institutions that rarely have been impacted by different educational reforms. Opportunities for equality in education have not led to a matching reduction in income inequality as educational reforms have not created extra well-paid jobs, impact gender-segregation and also occupational structures racially segmented, or restrict the mobility of capital between different areas of the country or between other countries and the United States. For instance, no matter how well education is received by minority youth or the white working class, it does not change the phenomenon that there are thousands of well-paid manufacturing jobs which does not include inner cities of the north, the sunbelt, or even foreign nations (Mcquillan, pp. 477-496).

A segment of scholars argue that many service jobs either remain or manufacturing positions have been made available in the context of capital flight. Yet they pay less as compared with the previous manufacturing jobs, are mostly temporary or part-time, and most do not provide any type of benefit. Even youth in the middle class have apprehensions about the nature of jobs they anticipate after completing formal education.

Impact of Education Reforms

Without changes in the operation or structure of the capitalistic economy, many scholars believe that educational reforms are not successful in improving the economic and social conditions of disadvantaged groups. This is the major cause that educational reforms have an insignificant impact on the social inequalities that motivates them in the first place.

Educational reforms in the country have not accomplished overall equality for many reasons. While gender, class, and racial gaps found in attaining education have narrowed to a huge extent, educational accomplishment remains differentiated by gender, class, and race. Most of the aspects of auricular content and school processes are associated with class, race, and gender inequality. Yet gross measures related to educational outcomes like median years at the level of the school, cover these symbols of inequality.

It is pertinent to mention that educational experiences are not considered the same, for example, four years completed at the high school in an area like Beverly Hills are altogether different from the same period spent in a school located in an inner-city; race, gender, class, and family background significantly impacts whether an individual attends college and which higher education institution is attended by him/her. For example, female trail men slightly in depiction in institutions of high status as it is less likely for the females to attend doctorial or engineering programs and mostly possible to become part-time students (Malkin).

Gender segregation in the areas of study remains highly linked, with females less likely as compared with men to study in mathematical and scientific fields. Moreover, there is considerable ethnic, class, and racial segregation between higher education institutions. Latinos and Asian-Americans are considered as more segregated from whites as compared with African-Americans. Asian-Americans and whites are most likely to join universities of higher status than Latinos and African-Americans.

These patterns of class, race, gender, and race inequality in higher education have implications for race, class, and gender gaps in income and occupational attainment. Recipients of science and math degrees are most likely to acquire lucrative jobs. A degree obtained from a state college is not considered as competitive compared with an elite university in the private sector. Part of the benefits of attending prestigious schools is derived from the current social networks to which an individual can join and has access (Zinn).

Credential inflation is another example of continuous inequality for opportunities in the education field. Although minorities, women, and different members of the working class nowadays acquire higher levels of education than they previously did, members of privileged or advantaged social groups attain even much higher education levels.

The educational requirements necessary for well-paid jobs- with the highest salaries, comfortable working conditions, extra benefits, autonomy, etc- are increasing. People with more education attained from the best institutions are mostly among the top candidates for the highly-paid and high-status jobs. As people from privileged backgrounds are almost at all times in a much better position to obtain enviable credentials, whereas working class, minorities, and women are at a competitive disadvantage.

Works Cited

Acker, Joan Inequality Regimes, Gender & Society, 20 (4), 441-464, 2006.

Canford Its Time to Leave Machismo Behind! Challenging Gender Inequality in an Immigrant Union, Gender Society, 21(3): 409-438, 2007.

Kramer, Laura The Sociology of Gender: A Brief Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2004.

Lorber, Judith, Gender Inequality: Feminist Theories and Politics. Oxford University Press, 2005.

Malkin, Stuart. Gender Bias, Gender Discrimination, Gender Equality, Web.

Mcquillan & Shreffer, The Importance of Motherhood Among Women in the Contemporary United States, Gender society, 22(4): 477-496, 2008.

Wilson, Flannel Organizational Behavior and Gender. Ashgate 2Rev Ed Edition External cooperation programs.

Zinn, Maxine Gender Through the Prism of Difference. Oxford University Press Gender Equality, 2005.

Gender equality. Facts. Web.

Monitoring Gender Equality, Responsibility, Accountability & Monitoring, 2001. Web.

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