Segregation and the Racial Wage Gap Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Segregation and the Racial Wage Gap - Term Paper Example The image of the black man, being relegated to lower rung jobs, being inadequately compensated and constantly striving to prove himself has gone through a drastic change, report Mary Daly, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Kenneth A. Couch, University of Connecticut. Their study has pointed out that an increase in the weekly pay of black male workers rose substantially so as to narrow the gap between black and white earnings to its lowest historically recorded levels. (Gene Koretz) This Discrimination in wage earnings begins at an early stage in the careers of black men and these have a direct impact on the â€Å"future labor earnings.† This wage inequality starts with the first job and continues to grow during the first five years of â€Å"post-school labor market activity† (Renna, King, 2007) This gap in earnings is considerable, growing from 12.46% during the first post school job to 25.86% even five years later. The statistics concerning racial wage gap may reveal the narrowing of the phenomena, but in all economic matters, racial inequality is an undeniable fact. African Americans face unemployment two times more than their white counterparts and even when employed they may earn only 75 per cent of what their white colleagues receive as wages. (Council of Economic Advisers, 1998) In the first few years in the job market, the incumbent is at a lower rung due to educational qualifications, but over the years this factor ceases to have an impact on the wage potential, because the employer is aware of the productivity levels of the employee. Thus, while the wage gap narrows over the years, it shows a direct proportional decrease with the increase in the number of years spent in the wage market. The lower wage workers have seen an increase in their pay structure, and more importantly, the reduction in wage gap

Influence of Age on Alcohol Addiction Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Influence of Age on Alcohol Addiction - Essay Example Everything that happens to their individual life as they grew up is influenced by their age. Richard grew with little understanding of the world around him. â€Å"I grew silent and reserved as the nature of the world in which I lived became plain and undeniable; the bleakness of the future affected my will to study.   Granny had already thrown out hints that it was time for me to be on my own† (Wright 181). However, as he aged, consciousness started to grow deep within him, allowing him to create remarkable realization of the reality of life and the one that he is trying to follow. â€Å"I was in my fifteenth year; in terms of schooling I was far behind the average youth of the nation, but I did not know that.   In me was shaping a yearning for a kind of consciousness, a mode of being that the way of life about me had said could not be, must not be, and upon which the penalty of death had been placed.   Somewhere in the dead of the southern night my life had switched on to the wrong track and, without my knowing it, the locomotive of my heart was rushing down a dangerously steep slope, heading for a collision, heedless of the warning red lights that blinked all about me, the sirens and the bells and the screams that filled the air† (Wright 187). The above points only show that Richard’s understanding of the world around him comes with age. His realization of the things around him is a depiction of his actual response to his world which is clearly associated with his age as we could clearly see the level of his maturity in here. Thus, we have created the point that our specific response to what is happening around may have potential impact on our actual thoughts or actions, but this clearly comes with age just as the kind of thought like this of Richard when he was already at the right age. â€Å"I dreamed of going north and writing books, novels.   The North symbolized to me all that I had not felt and seen; it had no relation whate ver to what actually existed.   Yet, by imagining a place where everything was possible, I kept hope alive in me† (186). Similarly, Caroline Knapp would have never realized what an alcoholic is when she had never become one as she aged. According to her, â€Å"Craziness, dark secrets, alcoholic furies, that's how you become an alcoholic, right? It's encoded in your DNA, embedded in your history, the product of some wild familial aberration. There was always an undercurrent of moral failing in the stories I heard about alcoholics: they were unstable, unwell, irresponsible, and if they were parents, they tore through the lives of their children like tornadoes, drinking and divorcing, screaming and raging" (Knapp 28-29). The reason why Caroline actually defines this is because she had so much experience from her growing years with alcohol and she could actually associate the actual feeling involved in such a habit. Those things that influence her to gulp an alcoholic beverage, which could be more than what is substantially required, are integral components of her past growing years. In fact, there is an indication that she pre-learned everything from her father, but later was full blown when she already stood at the right age. "My father had a probing manner, an analytic intensity tempered by a vague detachment, and whenever I sensed him turns his attention to me, the feeling on my part was