Talk:SOCI370/DuBois

DuBois brought up how the opportunities for black individuals are still lacking purely because of their color of their skin and how class consciousness is required in order to promote change. I recently read an article that shows a contemporary example of this. It is about how African American women are now the most educated group in the United States . However, despite this, they remain very underpaid compared to their white counterparts. Class consciousness plays a role, for example in that they are now voting at much higher rates than they historically have . These smaller acts lead to a larger class consciousness and further opportunities for women of color, as in a butterfly effect.

I totally agree with you. Although a lot of African American people received better education, they would still suffer the oppression based merely on the skin color. That's why I think in order to understand the differences of wages, we need to take all the complicated factors together, such as race, gender and ethnicity. In western world, there always exists an ideology "White privilege". In some way, it does seem that the society only favors those people. Actually, since the inequality even happens within the same racial group, so I guess it's not surprising that inequality happens between different racial group. White man> White women> Black man> Black women

I agree with you that wage gap is usually affected by various factors. The level of educational attainment is not a decisive factor in predicting a individual's income. There are some black people who hold positions of power within the social, economic, and political structures of society, but others still occupy disadvantaged positions. The white race promote the idea of racial segregation as a way of maintaining white superiority. The white superiority have held them back from getting well-paid jobs. Even if an African American woman has a degree, she is not as likely as a white woman to earn a decent wage in a white-dominated society.

Other than the issue on the wage gap between people with different skin color, there is also gender discrimination in the labor market. This is similar to what DuBois proposed on the unequal treatment between Black individuals and White individuals. In the current labor market, some positions are only open towards female applicants and some are only accepting male applicants. Although the employer may not indicate this requirement prior the interview, but when it comes to decision making on who to accept, they will filter out the undesired gender.

I agree with you that gender discrimination is also an issue in the labour market. Although in the text, DuBois mostly focuses on race, but he also emphases that reconstruction for economy is not only for race, but there is more than that. The current market seems to be still unfair to female, but compared to back in the days, the labor market improved slowly after the feminist movement. Women in the present are being respectful but when we look at different race of women, they might still need more improvement on being respect to women not only on labor force, but also in different areas.

Your point of discrimination against African American women actually reminds me of a article I read as well; the article was called "What Colour is Your English?" by Gillian Creese and Edith Ngene Kambere. I read this article in Introduction Sociology and Canadian Studies and I think many people in the class must have read it as well. A lot of people in the discussion so far have talked about how African American women are discriminated against through the colour of their skin but in this article Creese and Kambere talk about how African women are also discriminated against through their accents, they are though to have limited English skills due to their accents even though they may be really educated, fluent in English and hold post-secondary degrees.

I agree that even with a high education degree, the black population still faces discrimination in the work force and in the society simply due to their colour of their skin. The idea of "white privilege" exists and it is not very hidden. Many other races such as Chinese, Indigenous population and more also experience similar discrimination due to this ideology. Furthermore, gender discrimination happens within every group, not just in a larger societal context but also within smaller racial groups. The society needs to consider many aspects, such as race and gender in order to pursue change.