- "Social inequality occurs when resources in a given society are distributed unevenly, typically through norms of allocation, that engender specific patterns along lines of socially defined categories of persons." - "The differentiation preference of access to social goods in the society is brought about by power, religion, kinship, prestige, race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, and class."
Prejudices are not formed in a vacuum but develop within specific historical contexts. Understanding the histories of social inequality is essential for tracing the emergence of present-day prejudices.
Colonialism and Imperialism: The era of European colonization and imperialism in the Americas, Asia, and Africa and its impact on cultural and ethnic groups.
Civil Rights Movement: The struggle of African Americans and other minority groups to gain equal rights and eradicate racial discrimination in the US.
Slavery: The institution of slavery, its historical roots and legacy, and its effect on ethnic and cultural groups.
Gender and Sexuality: The historical treatment of women and LGBTQ+ people in society, and how it has affected cultural and ethnic groups.
Immigration: The historical influx of migrants from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds and their experiences of discrimination and prejudice in their new home countries.
Religion: The role religion has played in historical conflicts and discrimination against ethnic and cultural groups.
Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing: Historical examples of mass killings and forced displacement of ethnic and cultural groups.
Apartheid: A system of institutionalized racial segregation that existed in South Africa from 1948 until the early 1990s.
Suffrage: The struggle of women to win the right to vote and their ongoing fight for full political rights.
Anti-Semitism: Discrimination and prejudice against Jewish people, its historical roots, and legacy.
Indigenous People: The historical oppression and marginalization of native peoples and their continued struggle for justice and recognition.
Forced Labor and Human Trafficking: The historical and current-day exploitation of people for labor and sexual purposes, and its link to ethnicity and cultural prejudice.
World Wars: The historical impact of World War I and II on cultural and ethnic groups and how it shaped the subsequent social and political landscape.
Jim Crow Laws: Laws that enforced segregation and discrimination against African Americans in the US.
Islamophobia: Discrimination and prejudice against Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim.
Racial prejudice: Discrimination or bias against individuals of a certain race or ethnic background.
Gender prejudice: Discrimination or bias against individuals based on their gender or sex.
Religious prejudice: Discrimination or bias against individuals based on their religious beliefs (or lack of beliefs).
Class prejudice: Discrimination or bias against individuals based on their social or economic status.
National prejudice: Discrimination or bias against individuals based on their nationality or country of origin.
Age prejudice: Discrimination or bias against individuals based on their age, often targeting the elderly or the young.
Sexual orientation prejudice: Discrimination or bias against individuals based on their sexual orientation, including but not limited to homophobia and heterosexism.
Disability prejudice: Discrimination or bias against individuals based on their physical or mental disabilities.
Political prejudice: Discrimination or bias based on a person's political beliefs or affiliation.
Historical prejudice: Prejudice based on events or ideologies in history, such as anti-Semitism, slave trade, or colonialism.
- "It poses and creates a gender gap between individuals that limits the accessibility that women have within society."
- "Power, religion, kinship, prestige, race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, and class."
- "Social inequality is linked to economic inequality, usually described on the basis of the unequal distribution of income or wealth."
- "The social rights include labor market, the source of income, health care, and freedom of speech, education, political representation, and participation."
- "Although merit matters to some degree in many societies, research shows that the distribution of resources in societies often follows hierarchical social categorizations of persons to a degree too significant to warrant calling these societies 'meritocratic'."
- "Young was concerned that the Tripartite System of education being practised in the United Kingdom at the time he wrote the essay considered merit to be 'intelligence-plus-effort' and that it would create an educated middle-class elite at the expense of the education of the working class, inevitably resulting in injustice and eventually revolution."
- "In many cases, social inequality is linked to racial and ethnic inequality, gender inequality, and other forms of social status."
- "The most common metric for comparing social inequality in different nations is the Gini coefficient, which measures the concentration of wealth and income in a nation from 0 (evenly distributed wealth and income) to 1 (one person has all wealth and income)."
- "Two nations may have identical Gini coefficients but dramatically different economic (output) and/or quality of life, so the Gini coefficient must be contextualized for meaningful comparisons to be made."