Racial Inequality: Emphasis on Explanations‪.‬

Social inequality is a topic of long standing concern in the social science; however, I will not attempt to document the evolution of this concern. In the brief spurn of this article I will be concerned about one principal type of social inequality, i.e., racial inequality; however, in as much as inequality by race is but one instance of social inequality in general, my discussion should have some degree of generalizability to the larger theoretical question of who gets how much of what and why. All sorts if ideas, theories, and models are advanced to interpret, explain, or defend the social fact of inequality by race. Theories of racial inequality can be divided into three broad categories: 1) deficiency theories, 2) bias theories, and 3) structural discrimination theories (Barrera, 1979). A discussion of these broad theoretical perspectives, and their sub-types, is the principal concern of this paper. But first, a few words about social inequality in general.