Talk:Racial inequality in the United States

=Racial Wealth Gap in the United States=

Untitled
The only sections I have substantially changed are the Racial Wealth Gap (and I added all sections that begin with 2.1), Home Ownership, and Home Equity sections. After editing my contributions to WikiProject Sociology and WikiProject Discrimination, I added their banners at the top of this talk page so that people know that the topic is under the purview of both groups. I have fixed most of the clarity issues Allison pointed out by adding links to pages with more in-depth explanations, fixing a few grammatical errors, and adding sentences where she thought I was abandoning thoughts. I have also rewritten sentences for improved readability and simplified the citations within the page. The only advice from Allison I have not addressed, but may look into later, is what kinds of assets comprise the wealth of different races. Amanda noticed that other parts of the page have redundant, so later I will go through and edit the rest of the article for clarity and readability; however, I will try to keep the content of the other sections constant. Another edit I will make based on feedback is adding where my sources got their information and statistics from and including information from a source like the US Census Bureau so that I can start the Racial wealth gap section with the most recent statistics on racial wealth inequalities before getting into its potential causes.Kristianedosomwan5 (talk) 03:01, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

=Suggested revisions= This is a really huge topic, but your article right now is very comprehensive, so it’s hard for me to give too much advice. Anyway, here are a few of my suggestions:

The phrase “It is hypothesized by some scholars that. . . ” is in passive voice. To make that an active statement, reorder it like this: “Some scholars hypothesize that. . . ” Watch out for that grammatical trap throughout the article. The section that reads, “There are 4 frames of color-blind racism that support this view” is confusing, mostly because of diction. Maybe reword that phrase “4 frames”? You might also consider mentioning the concept of “implicit vs. explicit” racism in this section, since it seems to go along with the ideas and theories you're covering. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_Association_Test)

In the poverty section, think about varying your sentence construction instead of starting each part with “The U.S. Census Bureau defines” because being redundant might lose readers.

It would also be helpful to add some external links to websites that might provide further reading on the subject.

Hope this was helpful! Weatherby551 (talk) 02:18, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

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Suggested revisions
This is a huge article and one that you've done great work with! I tried to stick to what I think you expanded on in my suggestions.

In your first paragraph on racial wealth gap, you have a lot of sentences beginning with “wealth can.” Consider combining some of these or changing how the sentence begins. It also seems that you contradict yourself in that paragraph, saying “One-fourth of African Americans and Hispanics approach retirement with less than $1,000 net worth (without considering pensions and Social Security) and nothing in net worth(ex: savings accounts, checking accounts, CDs, bonds, stocks).” I think one of these times you’re misusing the term “net worth.” Something else that drew my attention in this paragraph was that you bring up things like financial literacy without showing their correlation to the racial wealth gap. You’re connecting the dots, but there needs to be an explicit academic correlation to include them. The last paragraph of this section is also confusing—you say that disadvantages are due to class, but it’s in a section discussing racial wage gap.

History: In the first sentence you say, “didn’t not.” I would add something in this section to make the end of the Civil War more explicit—that way you can link to it as well. Some of your sentence structures are slightly confusing here, as you when say “White Americans who leased the land.” This implies that the White Americans were leasing the land from the African Americans, which is obviously not what you’re trying to say. Don’t throw away lines like land grants not being enforced—set up what was supposed to happen, then say they weren’t enforced. In general this section was a little confusing for me. I understand that you were trying to keep it brief, but throwing in things like Freedman’s Bank without explanations made it more confusing than helpful.

In your section on Inheritance, you have a sentence saying, “African Americans were 7.3% less likely to have live parents, 24.5% more likely to have three or more siblings, and 30.6% more likely to be married or cohabiting (meaning there are two people who could gain inheritances to contribute to the household).” That they are 30.6% more likely to be married and gain inheritances seems to make it more likely that they would have inheritances—is that what you meant to imply?

I put forth minor edits in your Use of Financial Services section for typos and clarity—obviously change them if I detracted!

I would be interested to know what other assets make up White’s assets. In the Home Ownership section, the percentage of home ownerships of White assets is far lower than that of other races.

Make sure to define or link to terms in your Home Equity section—I didn’t know what FHA or VA loans were. Overall great job! Allisonraven (talk) 05:36, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Peer Edit Suggestions
I think your expansions are very pertinent and valuable to this wikipedia page. I do have a few suggestions for some changes. In your section entitled, Racial wealth gap you define wealth and its accumulation but then in the next paragraph you abruptly start talking about statistics. You should transistion from the definition of wealth to these facts by defining the racial wealth gap in the broad scope. Introducing this very clear definition will help readers understand the significance of your statistics.

Additionally, I like your section on inheritance and parental financial assistance but I think you should mention where these statistics came from aside from just in the citation especially if you are using National Statistics from a credible source. It validates your article without readers having to look through your sources.

Otherwise great job on the article. I really enjoyed reading it! Risadieken (talk) 02:52, 11 April 2012 (UTC)Risadieken

Wealth inequality
Looking at this article today, it bothered me that the lead section gave so much prominence to a single study about black vs. white wealth inequality. I initially moved the content about that down into a new body section headed "Wealth inequality", then moved it further down into the existing article subsection on "Manifestations of racial inequality" -> "Racial wealth gap". I've had second thoughts about having done this without discussion here -- perhaps I was too WP:BOLD. Feel free to improve. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 22:12, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Suggested Revisions
I would like to add a paragraph to this page that talks about police brutality. I see that there is some information on this page about racial profiling, but nothing on police brutality specifically. I plan on finding some statistics on the rates of police brutality towards white people vs. black people or people of color.

So far, this is the bibliography of sources that I have for police brutality:

Maguire, Edward R., and David E. Duffee. Criminal Justice Theory: Explaining the Nature and Behavior of Criminal Justice. Taylor and Francis Ltd, 2015, books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=VKqgBgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA149&dq=policy+brutality&ots=6APfNBFn9T&sig=vZlOSXYHKSXG9X1D_fmiMTIeilI#v=onepage&q=policy%20brutality&f=false.

Sears, David O. “A Perspective on Implicit Prejudice from Survey Research.” JSTOR, vol. 15, no. 4, 2004, www.jstor.org/stable/20447242?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents.

Cooper, Hanna LF. “Https://Www.tandfonline.com/Doi/Abs/10.3109/10826084.2015.1007669.”Taylor and Francis, Informa UK Limited, 16 Mar. 2015, www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/10826084.2015.1007669. Nina Thompson (talk) 03:58, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Police Violence
There are some new studies out that indicate that police violence is murkier than originally believed. This includes the fact that black police officers are more likely to shoot black suspects and that unarmed white men make up a larger portion of police shootings than unarmed black men, although when counting for population it still shows that unarmed black men are over-represented. I recommend a more nuanced argument based on new data, and potentially include data on police fears of media backlash (this appears to have driven down rates of violent interaction on the police side).Bgrus22 (talk) 18:22, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Expanding on Education
Although this article covers a broad subject area, I noticed that the "Education" section is relatively brief. I am considering some edits that would include information on school staff demographics, as well as the potential consequences of the lack of diversity in teaching professions. I have more information about my sources on my user page. Bgreaves18 (talk) 02:47, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * There are many factors that lead to students of color ending up on the School-to-prison pipeline. The teachers, who sign the Individualized Education Program forms to place a child in "special education" for "behaviorial problems", are mostly white, female teachers. Now if a woman of color teaches at that same public school in America, she will still be required / pressured into completing and signing the forms that lead that child into the "special program" (juvenile detention / alternative education) and then (sometimes) "prison" but it's not that simple. I'd be interested to see what the studies say. I'm not an expert but I did teach public school special education students housed in detention / alternative education programs / and at a maximum security prison.--The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 11:20, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Proposed merge of I'm not racist, I have black friends into Racial inequality in the United States
I am not convinced this article is best placed in its own article. I do believe it is important, however it may be better suited to the Racial inequality in the United States article. Skingo12 (talk) 21:19, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * strong oppose while the term/saying is pretty unique to the US, this isn't where it belongs and despite my earlier comment it might not be suitable for a standalone article, it is now. Praxidicae (talk) 21:22, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment: One of my main reasons for recommending for merging was Praxidicae comment. I tried stating a discussion on the articles talk page as I didn’t want to ‘Tag bomb’ it, however due to the low visibility I tagged it.
 * The content of the article is very negative in tone, which means that a merge wouldn't work; it would have to be VERY selective, so weak oppose. It would be more logical to tag it for deletion per either AfD or nominate it for speedy deletion under WP:G10. JJP...MASTER![talk to] JJP... master? 21:23, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * User:JJPMaster, you can try tagging it as such, but that is going to be a HARD NO from every single administrator. Tell me, are you seriously going to argue that white people are being attacked in this article? Would you like to take that up with the authors of the two peer-reviewed academic publications that I just cited in the article? Drmies (talk) 21:29, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment: I would agree with Drmies that it definitely should not be deleted. Also it definitely doesn’t constitute harassment. Skingo12 (talk) 21:32, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks Skingo12. I just don't think we should overburden those big articles with individual elements like this. Oddly enough I am firmly opposed to all the easy "popular media" topics we see all over the place, but if a phrase is discussed in books and academic articles, there comes a point when it achieves notability. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 21:42, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose. It isn't even about inequality; a better target would be Racism in the United States, which already is a terrible and bloated article. Drmies (talk) 21:27, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment: I agree that it probably would be better suited to Racism in the United States.Skingo12 (talk) 21:42, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose. As Drmies said, it isn’t about inequality. Plus, I’m not sure that we should be adding phrases to this article. Also, I’ve heard the term used outside the United States (mainly Canada.) JayPlaysStuff (talk) 21:45, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * JayPlaysStuff, you're right--the book I just added was Canadian. I haven't looked carefully at the first half of the article, haha, and maybe that needs tweaking. Drmies (talk) 22:07, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * For clarity, I added "White Americans" knowing that it has usage outside of the US but it's most prevalent usage is within the US cause, well...Praxidicae (talk) 22:14, 19 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose. Following what Drmies said, probably a merge isn't a good idea. Nor into Racism in the United States since as he said it's a bloated page too long to read comfortably already. If future circumstances on that page allow, or there's a better candidate for merging then I would go for it. Chillabit (talk) 16:55, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Article Suggestions
Great article overall! Many important statistics were provided throughout the article to best represent racial inequalities in the US. I would suggest to provide more insight into the article in the lead section. It is too concise, and it does not mention some of the bigger sections in the article, such as crime and incarceration. I would also suggest expanding the healthcare section, perhaps exploring some of the correlations between wealth and healthcare, and the impact they have on each other. LAM20 (talk) 03:40, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

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Lack of sources
There are not nearly enough references for this to be reliable. Also, the sentences are somewhat underdeveloped. Good to start here. JamesJohnsonJo (talk) 11:45, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

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