Question

Throughout this course we have been looking at social inequality when it comes to gender, race, ethnicity, and social class. According to Noam Chomsky, the inequality between the super wealthy and the poor is so extreme today that it is corrosive to our democracy. Our book tells that the “acceptance of inequality is not a recent occurrence; indeed, it is as old as human societies.”

So, how it is legitimate? Why do the majority of people (who have no wealth, a lack of power, and political influence) accept this inequality? Why is not questioned or challenged enough?

1) From the readings, explain how the wealthy and powerful create legitimacy through ideology.

2) Be sure to define ideology in your response and explain what is the “American Ideology” using one of the following value patterns individualism, equality of opportunity, meritocracy, the work ethic, or liberal capitalism. Support your claims with examples from the readings.

Answer 1

• Yes, it is legitimate in some manner that
• The culture of poverty is the phenomenon which enhances the concept of the cycle of poverty. In the 70s it gains policy and academic attention and criticism but emerges again in the 21st century. It explains why poverty remains even there in the presence of antipoverty programs. this concept describes that culture of poverty contains the strong feeling of dependency, vulnerability, untouchability, and lack of resources.

poverty is increasing rapidly at the very high rate in the U.S. and it is very difficult to identify and reduce it due to various reasons.

One of the main reason for it is the blind spot(policy). suburban towns are often neglected by policymakers when they make policies for the alleviation of poverty. main policies are formed for urban and rural areas.in the suburban area's lack of education system, poor health care services, inefficient public transportation, unemployment, drug addiction and alcoholism are the main problems responsible for poverty. Hence, it is correlated with lower IQ scores, lower achievement scores, higher risk of high school drop-out, and the lower likelihood of success.

Wage stagnation, great recession, lower income, inflation, privatization of many services are one of the main cause of poverty in the U.S.

• Powerful people use the ideology in order to create legitimacy. they use freedom, equal opportunity, consumerism, neutrality, and impartiality.

They argue that there equal chance of every citizen to become wealthy and successful due to equal opportunities in united states but it is not a true fact.

• The U.S is a great Democratic nation which consists of many cultures, societies, religions and races. It is the most powerful and one of the most culturally diverse, socially developed nation.

Citizens of U.S are very open-minded and proud of their nation. They are freedom-loving people. They live with each other in harmony and peace. however, there are some many racial, cultural and social conflicts also present in society.

The U.S.A as a nation believes in the five basic principles: Independence, impartiality, unity, humanity and neutrality.

Many countries follow the U.S as a role model country and they accepted many characteristics of U.S but they are both good like technological development, work ethics, business models etc and bad like racism, materialism, less moral social conduct, capitalism etc.