January 20th after every four years is an important date to Americans. This is the day which a new or re-elected president is sworn into office. Barrack Obama, a self-identified African American, took the oath of office as the forty-fourth president of America on January 20th of 2008.Obama’s election was not a fluke or the result of unusual political circumstances, this was confirmed by his reelection by a comfortable majority of the vote in 2012. Many Americans regarded this as an achievement after generations of struggle in the eradication of social and political inequalities founded on race and ethnicity. Race and ethnicity had been for so long a central part of America's heritage.
African American today occupies the highest political office in the land. However, the economic and social discrepancies between the blacks and the whites remain enormous. Blacks have to work twice as hard to earn half of what the whites make. The unemployment rate of the blacks doubles that of the whites. Speaking of poverty, the blacks are three times more likely to live below the poverty lines than the whites. Moreover, for most parts of America, blacks and whites continue to live apart, attend segregated schools and churches and intermarry at a low rate. It is clear that racial and ethnic divisions continue to create significant strains in the social fabric of America.
Social scientists had maintained for many years that industrialization and the forces of modernization would diminish the significance of race and ethnicity in heterogeneous societies. These scientists felt that the emergence of large impersonal bureaucratic institutions, people's loyalty will be directed to the national state rather than racial and ethnic communities. The opposite trend, however, seems to be the result. In Western Europe, ethnically based political movements have been on the rising of late. In Eastern Europe, massive economic and policy change had been witnessed during the late 1980s, rekindling ethnic loyalties that had been suppressed for several decades (Freire, 1970).
The problem of ethnic division and conflict, have arisen as a result of a veritable ethnic transformation. Initially, the United States was ethnically diverse, but for the past decades, large immigration has produced a vastly more heterogeneous nation. Many groups with varied racial and ethnic characteristics have occupied the U.S. population. All the regions in the country have been affected by this influx of immigrants. This has become a public debate, often passionate and shrill, over the issues of actions to be taken on this immigration and multiculturalism.
This increased immigration has led to more racial and class discrimination. The whites become more hostile to the black since they see this as an invasion. The whites look at immigration as a loss of jobs and resources for them. Therefore, racism tends to be widespread in the United States. Most of the immigrants are deported based on petty cases all this as an aim to eradicate immigration. In the recent past, there have been cases of police brutality to the African Americans. Although such situations of cruelty have been dwelt with, the African American still live in fear of the white police forces.
In short, racial and ethnic forces have emerged with great power in the United States. As we look ahead, their impact is not likely to diminish in this century. America has become a nation divided regarding race and class. Class stratification refers to the unequal distribution of property, power, and prestige. This stratification forms the basis of the division of society and categorizations of people. Moving from one class to another becomes a problem because those of the lower class are suppressed thus making them not to advance. Individuals and power are objectives, while prestige is subjective. Influence depends on people's perception and attitudes. Power and people are tangible.
The 2016 election saw the return of the white rule in the U.S., Donald Trump took an oath of office as the forty-fifth president of America. This was one of the most astonishing victories in American political history. Trump was widely ill-disciplined; there were outrageous behavior and offensive statements that alienated women, African Americans, Mexicans, Muslims and disabled people. In many years, such a candidate would be disqualified. But there are plenty who agreed with him. This showed that many Americans could stomach racial and class discrimination; they could also not allow being led by a female president. The modern politics has made big steps in celebrating the unity in diversity. Schools are no exception today, there is need to coexist and redefine racial boundaries so that other students can feel accepted and welcomed within the school premises (Freire, 1970).
The main aim of the oppressors is to change the consequences of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them. The more the oppressed are led to adapt to that situation, the more they are easily dominated. The truth is that the oppressed are not marginal; they live within the society which made them oppressed. Therefore, the solution is not to integrate them rather the people should transform the structure in which they live so that to make them "beings of themselves." Such transformation will undermine the oppressor's main aim, hence their utilization of the banking concept.
Those who espouse the cause of liberation are themselves surrounded and influenced by the climate which generates the banking concept. These people often do not perceive its real significance or its dehumanizing power. Those truly committed to liberation must reject the banking concept in its entirety; they instead adopt a concept of women and men as conscious beings upon the world. They must abandon the educational goals of deposit-making and replace it with the posting of human being's problems about the world.
A teacher and a student pose a significant relationship in or out of school. This relationship involves a narrating subject and a patient. A teacher normally expounds on a topic new to the student; his main task is to fill the student with the contents of his narration which are detached from reality and could give them significance. The student, therefore, records and memorizes and repeats the phrases without realizing what they mean. Education, therefore, has become an art of depositing, in which the teachers are the depositors while the students are depositories. The teacher communicates while the student patiently receives (Freire, 1970).
The public education cripples the kids because the kids are emphasized the theory. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention. In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those with knowledge in the society. The teacher presents himself to the students as their opposite by considering ignorance as absolute. The kids are therefore alienated like slaves. A comprehensive education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students (Gatto, 2008).
Most of us think that schooling is getting an education. The two are very different. Schooling involves the deadly routine of six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year for twelve years. Many schools going children hide themselves behind the reading, writing, and arithmetic. Those who have been homeschooled can testify that it has helped them. Schools train students to be employees and consumers rather than teaching them to be leaders and adventures. Moreover, school teaches children to obey reflexively rather than teaching them to think critically and independently.
Schools are just laboratories of experimentation of young minds, drills centers for habits and attitudes. The real purpose of mandatory education is to turn them into servants. The geniuses in this society are suppressed only because the society hasn't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution should be simple; they should be left to manage themselves.
Assimilation is referred to as the process by which a person's or group's culture comes to resemble those of another group. It may involve quick or gradual change depending on circumstances of the group. Pluralism, on the other hand, refers to a situation in which two or more states or groups coexist. I prefer assimilation because it allows the different races a chance to learn about each other's culture and therefore respect among them is earned. This reduces instances of racial discrimination (Marger, 2014).
One thing that should be noted is that ethnic conflict is not maintained at a constant rate, that is, it does not take the same form, and it is not based on the same factors all the time. In some cases, it is more intense than in some cases. Assimilation, therefore, makes sure people from different societies coexist while still embracing their different cultures. Societal conflicts are based on power relations that stem from differences in class, age, gender, and numerous social factors. Therefore, it should be noted that conflict is not a characteristic only of multiethnic societies or even in ethnic conflicts.
Other theorists have stressed the assimilation of ethnic communities. They emphasize the way in which different groups progressively become more unified and indistinct. In contrast, other theorists emphasize the inequality among ethnic groups and patterns of dominance that develop among them. Pluralism underscores the persistence of group differences and divisions. Assimilation over the years in the United States has ensured that multiethnic societies gradually but inevitably move towards a fusion of diverse groups. Although sociologists today increasingly recognize the complexity of interethnic relations, assimilation still proves to minimize racial discriminations.
The end point of this assimilation is the disappearance of any cultural or racial distinction setting it off from other groups. The entire ethnic groups fuse regardless of their cultural, social, and political differences. Following this idea, it is evident that with complete assimilation racial discrimination comes to an end. This, however, does not mean that other forms of social differentiation and stratification such as age, gender and class do not exist; it only means that ethnic forms are no longer operative.
Assimilation however in its complete form is rarely achieved. Instead, it takes different forms and is evident in various degrees. That means that it can range from the smallest beginnings of interaction and cultural exchange to the thorough fusion of the groups. Therefore, in support of assimilation, I prefer its policing in the coming future, in the effort of humanity to stop racial stratification.
A social network is an abstract concept consisting of a set of people with relationships linking pairs of humans. A multi-dimensional social layer, therefore, explains the coexisting ethnical groups in society at different social layers. Racial discrimination will continue to be a pulling back factor to many developing countries unless they take necessary and long-term solutions. Such solutions include assimilation or even pluralism. Assimilation creates fusion, and therefore there are no differences in social, cultural or political basis.
Human beings should be given equal opportunities in the society to avoid creation of social layers and class stratification. Immigrants in a country are there to improve its economy, and therefore the native people should not see it as an invasion of their land. The immigrants perform jobs and start-up business and therefore at the end of the day they are only improving the economy of that country. Assimilation through ways such as intermarriage among ethnic communities brings about interaction and interrelation. Therefore, assimilation should be practiced to avoid prejudice (Kopan, n.d).