Social Mobility in the United States
Here is the URL to a video about social mobility in the United States made by Athenian School students. Please view and comment.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjFM5Xq5Fhg
This post was edited on: 2013-03-12 at 01:47 PM by: FriedmanML (Moderator)
3 Replies
From Athenian student Pierson Tan - One of the most interesting things about the video was the quote from Warner and Stroll. The fluctuation of racial and ethnic equality after world war II was possibly because of the relative lapse of time between each immigration group. The connection between racial equality and economic success was also something I had never thought of before. After the success of getting rid of Jim Crow laws and the economic prosperity of the 1960's, the creation of a large black middle class finally offered some equality to blacks. Although I have not taken any race or equality classes nor studied it extensively, I would say that today in our relatively good economic standings of the US, there is not too much overt racism. I had never thought of the correlation between the two before the video. Yet the statistics shown in the video show that blacks account for over twice the amount of people in 'poverty' than white people do. Another thing I would like to further consider is what is considered 'poverty' and what is that being compared to. I recently saw this video about poverty. Very interesting too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM
From Athenian student Noah Lourie - It was a very interesting video, and I really enjoyed the points and arguments you guys brought up. I would like to comment on a couple of things especially the solutions. In my opinion social mobility for race is particularly a problem because all of the solutions that you mentioned in your video such as affirmative action and "breaking the glass ceiling" seem to both be very optimistic and hard measures to achieve, especially the glass ceiling. How can one break the glass ceiling, this would seem to depend on the person and not the actual policies of government. And even when it is broken what is the certainty that that will create the improvements your video suggests. Thanks.
From Athenian student Mateo Franco - I found the data regarding the various education levels very interesting. There seems to be a direct relation between the levels of higher education and socio-economic status, and I was wondering what people though the relationship between the two exactly is. Is it that minorities have greater trouble finding economic prosperity in the U.S., and so as a result they do not have access to the same educational resources as Caucasians do? Or is it that the lack of educational opportunities in the U.S. for minorities handicaps their ability to reach economic success?
Mark Friedman
Mar 15, 2013 at 2:11 PM