Political Economy of Race and Class - Essay Sample

Political economy growth and outcomes are controlled by individuals' trade relations and how they relate with the government. The government is assigned to make the policies and implement them to guide every economic term in favor of every party in participation. The term race is used as a human categorization method in different regions and has highly affected economic growth since racial disadvantages have been created. Social class is considered when allocating resources; some individuals will be granted access to material and symbolic resources depending on the social class they hold in society (Manstead 280). Human psychology is a stratification source as it leads to the emergence of cognitive boundaries and divides people into social categories.

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The human racial information cannot be used to observe individuals' functionality and determine how the traits of the individual. It is a bias that can only serve to prolong and lawfully prolong the existing racial inequalities. From my standpoint, focus on black people has led to the severity of discrimination brought by the slavery history and has raised to the present economic and political institutions that are racially oppressive. Contemporary nations have tried to work past the calamity of what impact race can cause and the strength embedded in the unity of every person living and serving on the economy of each state. When making judgments on a situation, the case will highly be based on individuals' visible character traits, including their skin color and hair texture, which are cognitive. Actions taken by the agents on the subjects should be formed based on their actions without looking at the race. There is no specific criterion that can be used to classify human beings and partition into small subgroups or subsets. Classifications in society are mostly based on differential actions and affect a person; hence, categorizing people according to their skin color can result in the implications of having a barrier in attaining social justice.

Racial stereotyping includes generalization of the popular conception of how some people regard themselves as a class (Belsky et al. 7280). Classifying individuals with no intrinsic importance can serve as useful indices around the human agents in organizing their expectations. Stereotypes often lead to conflicts and divisions among people who could have otherwise worked together and generated positive outcomes towards the country’s economy. People acquire their mechanism of symbolic expression when the communities are peculiar hence considering their relations with others. The mental process that underlies cognitive acts shows that interference can be found to be whole found and pattern-recognition of kind of activity (Chen 34). Durable racial discrimination can be said to be as a result of outgrowth on depraved accumulation. There is no cushion against racial minorities undergoing the same cognitive biases, just like everyone else, when drawing the main causes of racial inequality.

Social class classification is brought by individuals' interaction in different environments and ecological settings, which creates cognitive boundaries on the standard of living. Our environment may not define who we are, but rather, it is the people we interact with that can make us have expectations and a sense of economic direction. Categorical inequality is enacted socially to group individuals based on achieved and ascribed characteristics. The class system of inequality has no legal or formal institutionalized support; hence, social mobility chances are practiced by members of society. The groups distinguished by religion, gender, or ethnicity are not classes in economic categorization since they have characteristics of the Caste system. Research indicates that people’s minds have been programmed to make social judgments on every individual they meet and grouping them in social classes (Bjornsdottir et al. 730). While making stereotypical judgments on other individuals, the person is likely to decide after evaluating the persona on a warmth and competence basis. The two perspectives are the basic social class categorization of humans and intercepting, where one can be granted respect if they are of a friendly social group. The basic characteristic of human cognition of the social is provided by exploiting and creating chances in society.

Race and social class have great impacts on economic growth and sustainability. A country has to work towards eliminating all racial discrimination and treating its people as having equal chances to the resources to ensure the steady growth of the economy. Individuals also have an equal responsibility to avoid every action and behavior that leads to division and hatred among people serving in the same state and economy. No individual should have higher chances of allocation of the resources based on their skin color or racial background. Furthermore, social class categorization of lifestyle and assumptions of groupings should be discouraged as it brings disunity among society members, which can be a major setback in economic growth.

Works Cited

Belsky, Daniel W., et al. "Genetic analysis of social-class mobility in five longitudinal studies." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115.31 (2018): E7275-E7284.

Bjornsdottir, R. Thora, and Nicholas O. Rule. "The visibility of social class from facial cues." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 113.4 (2017): 530.

Chen, Daniel L., and Susan Yeh. "Government Expropriation Increases Economic Growth and Racial Inequality: Evidence from Eminent Domain." (2016).

Manstead, Antony SR. "The psychology of social class: How socioeconomic status impacts thought, feelings, and behavior." British Journal of Social Psychology 57.2 (2018): 267-291.

Zhang, Wei-Bin. "Inequalities with Racial Human Capital Externalities." The General Economic Theory. Springer, Cham, 2020. 93-101.