What Is The Key Role Of Social Stratification In The United States?

Social stratification has been a key role affecting the lives of many people in the Unites States. As a country that once allowed slavery, the United States has been a place in where inequality base not only in skin color, but gender, class, and ethnicity has always been present. Although we are now living in a country that had abolished slavery and has laws against discriminations, inequality still affects the lives of many people.
In order for individuals to succeed and socially and intellectually develop they need to have access to important social resources such as education, food, shelter, health care, and such (pg. 208). However because of the unequally distribution of resources many have been left out. As stated in the book, 10% of the population in the United States own 72% of the national wealth while the remaining 90% of the population have access to just 28% of wealth (pg. 228). The consequence of the inequality affects individual’s education because they will not have access to an appropriate education system, individual’s health, and housing.
the book define race as “a category of people who have been single out as inferior or superior, often on the basis of real or alleged physical characteristics such as skin color, hair texture, eye shape, or other subjectively selected attributes” (pg.274). Through history the views on race has been changing, during ancient time race was perceive to be related to a person’s culture, it then shifted to a person’s family and ancestors, until it came to been seen as a person’s physical