Inequality Theory

Social inequality is the giving of privileges and obligations to one group of people while denying them to another. Inequality theory is a system in which groups of people are divided into layers according to their relative power, prestige, and property. It is a way of ranking large groups of people into a hierarchy according to their relative privileges. Social inequality affects individuals' life chances, the way they see the world, and even the way they think.

Every country in the world has inequality; some societies have greater inequality than others, but inequality theory states that inequality is universal. In addition, every country uses gender as a basis for its inequality. On the basis of gender, people are either allowed or denied the good things offered by their society.

[Page 385]In no society is gender the sole basis for inequality, but the categories into which people are sorted and given different access to the good things in their society always favor males. The lower status of women is almost universal and timeless; few societies have been found where women habitually dominate men. For example, in every society in the world, men earn more money than women. In addition, according to UNESCO estimates, 64% of the world's illiterates are women, a figure unchanged since 1990.

Inequality theory does not limit inequality to gender. Gender inequality affects females and males throughout their lives, and it starts when they are young. Childhood differs structurally from adulthood; children are subject to additional levels of social control (by parents, teachers, and other adults). Adults are structurally positioned to take advantage of available resources; they create and use power to their advantage, and they control access to valued resources. Also, adults have accumulated advantages over time that children have not had the opportunity to achieve. Moreover, children's economic utility makes them a drain on resources, and both behavioral and attitudinal variables (female infanticide, son preference, affection, the social inclusion and evaluation of boys and girls) are specific to childhood gender inequality.

Inequality theory recognizes that skin tone is a paramount criterion of social acceptance in America and that race often supersedes the influence of class, background, religion, or language in terms of access to the good things offered by society. The darker a person's skin is, the greater his or her social distance is from the dominant group and the more difficult it is to make personal qualifications count. Racial disproportionalities in American rates of arrest, imprisonment, and capital punishment are indisputable, although debate about the sources of these disproportionalities persists. There is evidence that race is more important than social class for explaining variation in urban American arrest rates. In support of this view, researchers point to the intense surveillance of Black neighborhoods, the relative absence of surveillance in White neighborhoods, and differences in punishments for White and Black offenders that reinforce perceptions of a racist and unequal criminal justice system designed to oppress Black people.

Race is also a salient comparative point of reference for understanding perceptions of the criminal justice system in America. African Americans overwhelmingly perceive these differences in the criminal justice system as unjustifiable, and the massive numbers of African Americans (especially youth) who come into contact (or conflict) with the criminal justice system perceive it as unjust. This has led to a growing concern that perceived injustice itself causes criminal behavior, which adds urgency to developing a better understanding of racial and ethnic differences in the criminal justice system. Middle-class African American professionals distrust the criminal justice system. Low-income African Americans are more inclined to restrict their frame of reference to their immediate community when judging their experiences. The separ-ateness of the African American urban experience may make police harassment so common that they are less outraged than would be expected.

...