Еssay on Race

The problem of interracial relations was traditionally one of the most serious problems that persisted throughout centuries in relations between different races and ethnic groups. At the same time, the essence of this problem heavily relies on the existing inequality between races, which lead to the gap between socio-economic position and opportunities of the dominant race compared to other races within society.

Basically, nowadays the problem of racial inequality is still unresolved and even though considerable changes were made in the national legislation it cannot fully prevent different ethnic groups from being discriminated by the dominant white community. In fact, the equality of rights of all people, regardless their ethnic background, is purely formal, while in actuality, representatives of African-American community, Latin-Americans and other ethnic groups are deprived of equal opportunities to realize their rights and liberties. At the same time, white Americans still remain in an advantageous position compared to the rest of the American society.

In this respect, it is possible to refer to the contemporary system of education which proves to be absolutely ineffective and unequal. To put it more precisely, at the present moment the overwhelming majority of African-Americans, Latin Americans, and other deprived groups have little opportunities to get a normal education, while the perspective of the higher education is extremely vague and it is practically an unachievable goal for an African-American from the inner city. Moreover, the existing system of public schools is absolutely ineffective because it cannot provide students with a good education of a high quality.

At this point, race plays a very important role because, speaking about contemporary public schools, it is hardly possible to avoid the question of segregation. It is not a secret that many public schools are predominantly non-white. What is meant here is the fact that students attending publics are basically representative of African-American community, or Latin Americans, Asians. At any rate, often the majority of the students of public schools are non-white. Moreover, in some schools the share of African-American students reaches 99% that indicates to the presence of racial segregation in public education.

Naturally, such a situation in the contemporary education undermines the psychological state of students and determines the future race-related problems increasing inequality. Obviously, students attending public schools and living in the inner city feel their exclusion from the American society and the fact that African-American and non-white students dominate in such schools enforces substantially racial inequality in the society because students believe that it is because of their race and ethnic background they are deprived of benefits of modern education and they are doomed to live in the inner city in a kind of ghetto. This psychological pressure along with low educational opportunities enlarges the gap between white and non-white population in the US because African-Americans and other non-white groups cannot get a perspective, well-paid job because they cannot get the higher education, while the education they have cannot give them good perspectives either. As a result, children, suffering from segregation at school and becoming low-qualified specialists in their adulthood because of the lack of educational opportunities, are deprived of good job opportunities that contribute to the growing socio-economic gap between them and white population of the US.

Thus, in conclusion it is possible to say that, at the present moment, the actual situation is very difficult because of the existing inequality of opportunities of representatives of different races since the modern elite is still white, while the representatives of non-white ethnic groups are often marginalized and doomed to live in poverty without even a chance to get higher education and change their life for better.