Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Secondly, this different approach also led the American society to experience a distinct social evolution. The fact that the British colonists were less reluctant to encourage social mobility offered the new settlers the change to become an important member of the society despite his eventual modest origin. Consequently, the highest level of the social scale was that of the colonial aristocrats, represented by wealthy planters and merchants, the middle class was represented by the land owning farmers, while the hired help made up the lower class. Indeed, there were racial frictions as well, which forced African-Americans to be considered the least important in the society. Nonetheless, despite this hierarchy, the geographical conditions enabled every man to go in search of wealth and thus improve his social conditions.
The Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires, although they offered a different social structure for their colonies, they left little mobility between classes. The most important were the landowners, who were most often the conquistadores, which was therefore a rather elite club. Following were the merchants, then the slaves and women. Thus, there was no strong intermediate middle class, which comes to prove the lack of...
Therefore, as opposed to the American society, would promote favoritism rather than those based on personal merits. This is why the Latin American society reached an inferior level of development.
All in all, the different evolution of the North American society as opposed to the Latin part of the continent can be explained to a certain extent by the difference in the social and racial relations governing the colonial period. While the British encouraged personal improvement and offered its colonies the chance to evolve on the social scale, the Spanish and the Portuguese, through their policy of restricted access to the higher levels of the society, promoted a social system based on group adherence rather than individual achievements, which in turn did not allow for people to evolve and have better living and social conditions.
Bibliography
Lewis, Laura. "Spanish ideology and the practice of inequality in the New World." Racism and anti-racism in world perspective. Ed. Benjamin Bowser. London: Sage Publications, 2002.
Loury, Glenn C., Tariq Modood, and Steven Michael Teles. Ethnicity, social mobility, and public policy:comparing the U.S. And UK. London: Cambridge UP, 2005, 22-25.
Bibliography
Lewis, Laura. "Spanish ideology and the practice of inequality in the New World." Racism and anti-racism in world perspective. Ed. Benjamin Bowser. London: Sage Publications, 2002.
Loury, Glenn C., Tariq Modood, and Steven Michael Teles. Ethnicity, social mobility, and public policy:comparing the U.S. And UK. London: Cambridge UP, 2005, 22-25.
Race, Class, And Gender in the United States The purpose of the book Race, Class, and Gender in the United States by Paula Rothenberg is to explore sociological implications of these three topics. The book discusses how each of these ideas, which some believe to be innate, are actually mere labels that people have given to describe certain generalizations. Each of these sociological terms is coupled with the actual term. Rothenberg
Race, Class, Gender Journal Word Count (excluding title and works cited page): 1048 Race, Class, and Gender is an anthology of articles that express various interpretation and insights of the relationship between race, class, and gender and how these things shape the lives of people and society. The topics and points-of-view offered in the anthology are vast and interesting. They offer a strong historical and sociological perspective on such issues as prison
In the Struggle for Democracy (Greenberg, 483-84) the author explains that gradually, little by little, the Supreme Court of the United States responded to the need to rule segregation unconstitutional. And in the process the Court ruled that any law passed using the criteria of race was also unconstitutional. The Brown v. Board of Education vote in 1954 meant that segregation in schools was not constitutional and it was the
In fact, the Toy is considered to be one of the most racist films of all time due to these issues (Sastry). Blazing Saddles and the Toy approach comedy from distinct perspectives, and although they may have common elements, the differences in their approach to humor, comedy, and race allow the audience to understand why Blazing Saddles is successful in its commentary on society and why the Toy fails miserably
For example, one of the interesting points that grabbed my attention was Dill's discussion of gender relations among African slaves. Slave men and women had a more egalitarian relationship than free white men and women. That is because slave men did not possess the power and authority of free men. So, power is inherently corrupting? At least, this is what Dill's description of gender relations in antebellum America suggest. I
The different "isms" such as sexism, heterosexism, and racism are creating very real schisms -- in our minds, and between people. The chasms of communication that are created by hatred and misunderstanding are socially constructed. They can be socially deconstructed too. Such rifts occur between groups of people and between whole cultures. In some pockets of the United States, social conservatism threatens to erase the social progress made since the