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Lecture 8 Social Problems In The United States Focal Points ● Racial problems ● Poverty as a social problem ● Drug abuse ● White-collar crime ● Richard Nixon Socially-Stratified American Society • American society is a stratified one in which power, wealth and prestige are unequally distributed. It is divided into social classes that have varying degrees of access to the reward the society offers. For example, the richest fifth of American individuals and families owns more than three-quarters of the wealth in the United States, whereas the lowest fifth owns only 0.2% of the wealth. The richest fifth of American families receives over 40% of the national income, whereas the poorest fifth receives only 5.2%. Racial Problems • The black “Underclass” • The majority of the blacks today have failed to share in the general gains of progress made in the past decades. The urban ghettos now contain a permanently impoverished “underclass” of habitually unemployed or underemployed black people. Many of them are young and unskilled. They live in cities where the unemployment rate for teenager black workers run as high as 50% or about 8 times the rate for the American work force as a whole. This “underclass” could continue to persist---that is, for reasons of social-class inequality. Living in an environment of poverty, decay, crime, drug addiction, joblessness, and hopelessness, this ghetto underclass offers an explosive potential for the future. Poverty as a social problem • The United States is one of the most wealthy countries in the world. Yet over 24 million people or about 10% of the population are living at or below the official poverty line, in incomes that the federal government considers insufficient to meet basic requirement of food, clothing, and shelter. There are millions more living slightly above the poverty line, whose plight is not much better. Also, the social services in the United States compare unfavorably with those in most industrialized societies. Furthermore, the affluent majority seems indifferent to the problems of the poor. This raises some serious moral problems and inevitably creates fierce conflicts or interest and many political controversies. Therefore, poverty in the United States is a big social problem. Drug Abuse • Drug abuse in the United States has come to be regarded as one of the most challenging social problems facing the nation. The drug issue always excites strong emotions of Americans because drug is perceived as a major threat to American society, particularly to its younger members. Drug abuse is a social problem because it has a wide range of social costs. For example, drug is closely related with crime, automobile accidents. It has serious effects on individuals physically and mentally. And the economic losses caused by drug abuse are great. White-collar Crime • White-collar crimes are those committed by higher income groups such as the crimes of fraud, false advertising, corporate price fixing, bribery, embezzlement, industrial pollution, tax evasion and so on. Yet the statistics provided by the FBI tend to overlook white-collar crimes. In fact, white-collar crimes are often ignored by law enforcement agencies. Some sociologists argue that the higher classes may actually have a higher rate of crime than the lower classes. Richard Nixon • Richard Nixon was a former President of the United States. In the early 1970s, he was involved in the Watergate scandal, for which he was forced to resign from the presidency.