[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Racial Inequality
Three extensive academic varieties of racial discrimination are discussed, that is deficiency theories; bias theories: and structural discrimination theories. Deficiency theories rest on the notion that racial inequality is due to deficiencies within the minority groups and has assumed three varieties; biological, structural and cultural. The second broad category, bias theories, sees racial inequality as rooted in the biases of leading group members. The third group, structural theories, locates explanations of racial inequality in the structure of society itself and has assumed two basic varieties; class, and colonial. The author reveals a greater ideological kinship with structural theories.
The author concludes by suggesting that three basic strategies exist as remedies for racial inequality; the civil rights strategy (prohibiting discrimination and enforcing the laws); the poverty approach (helping the poor out of poverty; and the affirmative action strategy (taking race into account). These and other remedies will be needed; however, prospects for the reduction of racial inequality for the larger majority of African Americans are not promising at the present time.
In 1905 a number of black activists, led by W. E. B. Du Bois, the first black to receive a doctoral degree from Harvard University, met in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada to plan strategies to fight for racial equality. By 1909 the Niagara Movement, as the group called itself, led to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a racially integrated organization dedicated to fighting segregation and inequality. In addition to Du Bois, the prominent founders included a number of white activists such as philanthropists Joel and Arthur Spingarn, Jane Addams, educational reformer John Dewey, and Oswald Garrison Villard, the grandson of abolitionist William Loyd Garrison. Among the important black leaders joining Du Bois was Ida B. Wells, a prominent opponent of lynching.....
