Inequalities in Politics - Term Paper Example

Inequalities Ever since time immemorial, the rule of survival has always been that only the fittest survive. Humans understand this law of natural selection. They have thus construed a number of survival techniques from it. C Wright Mills, a great19th century psychologist asserts that humans have used the idea of superiority to exploit others and ensure their survival all through history. Natural resources have always been scarce, to survive therefore, humans find a way of eliminating others through discrimination most of which have been based on race, gender and ethnicity. In doing this, a race, or gender or an ethnic group considers itself better or superior to the others and therefore holding onto a bigger or the entire resource through a number of properly formulated discriminating hypotheses. One principle that has been misconstrued and misunderstood all through the American history is that most people tend to assume that nationalism and racism in an ethnocentric group are naturally the same (Jonathan, 2005). In this sense, a group of people considers themselves owners of the land and the rest as mere intruders. Following this understanding, the owners of the land therefore in a feeling of the right to posses back their land discriminate on other races and ethnic groups in an attempt of making them abandon their possession on the land. Indigenous Americans commonly referred to as the Hispanic Americans previously owned the United States of America. During the colonization period, Britons migrated into the land and gained possession of most of the means of production. Their entry into the land gave room for other white immigrants to settle in. the world was not industrialized then and they therefore needed free labor in their plantations, thus compelled the white colonial masters to obtain Africans through an illegitimate act of slave trade. This way, Africans too found their way into the country. The indigenous Americans became a marginalized community and has remained so for a long time, the white colonialists and other white immigrants became legitimate Americans and in a sense of nationalism formed a number of discriminating structures to frustrate the Africans living among them and many other marginalized community. Analytically, America belongs to none of the contenders, the Africans moved from Africa while most of the whites emigrated from Europe, coming to a foreign country and developing a strong feeling of nationalism towards the very country is delusional and was simply a means to survival. The whites created a sense of more self worth and self-impotence and the expense of the Africans thereby gaining more economic power through owning most of the means of production. Most people approach discrimination either psychologically or sociologically. This kind of approach is somewhat narrow since it does not consider the fact that prejudice exist in both. Young Bruehl an American psychologist purports that there is a great interplay between psychology and sociology. He believes that the discriminating factors of race, ethnicity and gender among other are always in the human background and that more often than not, human refer to such segregating thoughts when formulating their interactions with others. In this, the discriminating attitudes come naturally to humans. More often than not, women have considered themselves weaker to men and men have considered themselves stronger than women. Such acts of self-discrimination and chauvinism portray themselves in social places where both genders interact and come naturally without coercion. It is natural fore the oppressed to form an oppressed mentality; such people will always see discrimination in every action of the dominant group. In the American society, the most oppressed group, the African Americans always found a way of raising discrimination in nearly all aspects of life and social coexistence with their white counterparts. Both races commit crimes and the laws of the land defines a particular mode of treatment to such offenders as criminals. The police force constituted of both Africans and their white counterparts too. However, an African American being arrested by a white police officer would always deem this as an act of discrimination, one bin that he is arrested merely because he is a black but not a criminal. In doing this, such victims attach a race to a particular behavior oppressive behavior that is a lot psychological but posses interlocking features with the society. The discriminative mindset is psychological while the constitutionality of the police force is a sociological. The African Americans recognized that there were more white police officers than there were black police officers, a feature that points to a discriminative social balance (Chip, 2004). Structural violence: class, race, ethnicity, and gender is an article that deduces an effectively formulated series of violence against a weaker group. Class is economical and most psychologists rarely take notice of the discriminations that exists within its system of cluster. The more economically viable population looks down upon the poorer who in turn form systematic attacks on the rich especially when the economic structure fails to favor them. this pre planned and systematic attack on the economically stronger group was experienced in the united states of America in the early 18th century but the most recent constituted the great revolutions witnessed in Arabic countries of Libya, Egypt Tunisia and Syria among others. Most societies in the modern world have the class system of stratification, this allows for free movement from one economic class to another. Some societies such as India had the caste system of stratification in which a person was deemed poor by virtue of birth. The poor interacted with the poor and therefore was never transfer form one caste to another. Such is an oppressive society, one that possibly results in more oppression of people right from birth. Gender based violence on the other hand have been rampant especially in families. Men beat their women mostly because everyone believes that men are stronger than women. This is psychological but becomes integrated into the sociological spheres in which no even if a woman is physically stringer than a man, she should not possibly beat him and should she do, the act is considered bizarre and the society may interject in favor of the men. In brief, discrimination has always been a social creation, it imparts the mind of an individual thereby becoming a psychological attribute. All these are creations of humans to ensure that the strongest and the most enlightened survives the competition for the natural resources. In doing these, a number of violent interactions arise most in which the favored group further their hold on to the resources through the systematic development of highly prejudicing ideas and philosophies governing the distribution of the very resources. These are achieved through the creation of societal norms and customs’ most of which never give regards to equality. References Chip, B. (2004). “Mapping the Political Right: Gender and Race Oppression in Right-Wing Movements.” In Abby Ferber, ed, Home-Grown Hate: Gender and Organized Racism. New York: Routledge. Jonathan, K. (2005). The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America.New York: Crown. Read More