In Fall 2016, I took a Frameworks for Inequality and Cultural Understanding at UIUC. I learned about racial, gender and social class inequality in the US in the context of history and changing social norms through critically reading historical literature. I explored the relationship among economy, power and inequality, and concluded that greater power and economic benefits are some of the incentives that cause and create inequality.

 

The biggest takeaway for me was that it is dangerous to misunderstand the meaning of ”inequality”. The issue of inequality that we are trying to fix is not to make everyone equal in the end, because in essence, everyone is different in their own circumstances and we need to acknowledge that. Furthermore, a society where resources are distributed equally to everyone is not ideal, because people will lose their incentives to work and produce goods and the society will therefore be not functional and not progressive. The issue of inequality that we are discussing here is the issue of fairness and justice. The fact that the dominating society groups, by exercising their power, try to control other groups in order to maintain their own power and gain economic benefits, shows that inequality is about the unfair distribution of resources due to the restriction imposed on less powerful groups by the more powerful groups. Inequality is therefore the unfairness and injustice in the access and opportunities of distributive
resources.

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Read about what I learned and my reflections from the class below.