In Joseph F. Healey’s Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Class we are treated to a sociological perspective of race and race relations in the United States. Healey (16) argues that “minority group status affects access to wealth and income, prestige, and power…even a casual observation of US society will reveal that minority groups control proportionately fewer resources.” We see that the capitalist, Marxian nature of our culture and society shapes the economic system to favor the dominant or ruling class. In this way, inequality is on the rise in America as the gap between rich whites and poor minorities continue to widen. One good example of this is that even though the majority of players in the National Football League are black, there are only two active black coaches and no black franchise team owners.
There are others who make note of historical racism and prejudice in American society, but these individuals argue that inequality is not on the rise. They suggest that Civil Rights legislation and the move of a large segment of the minority population into the middle-class are evidence that the only thing holding back blacks is blacks themselves. As Shelby Steele notes “With eyes on innocence we see racism everywhere and miss opportunity even as we stumble over it. About 70 percent of the black students at my university drop out before graduation—a flight from opportunity that racism cannot explain” (Healey 132).
Many blacks cause their own social problems because of a mindset that includes viewing themselves as passive victims who are too overwhelmed by oppression to advance in society “Innocence pressures blacks to focus on racism and to neglect the individual initiative that would deliver them from poverty” (Healey 133). Booker T. Washington might agree with this sentiment because the efforts of individuals are what progress a race collectively.
In Harlen Dalton’s Racial Healing we see that racism...