Although the United States has made efforts to address racial inequality since the civil rights movement, current statistics reveal that many racial disparities continue to exist extensively, and, in some cases, have gotten progressively worse.

Other findings include:

• Median income for white households was $50,622 compared to $30,939 for black households, and $36,278 for Hispanic households.
• Median income for black households has been consistently lower than white households since 1980, remaining at an approximately 60 percent gap.
• In 1980, Hispanic households made almost 76 percent as much as white households, yet the current number has actually decreased to 72 percent.
• In 2005, the poverty rate for Anglo-Americans was 8.3 percent compared to 24.9 percent for African-Americans, and 21.8 percent for Hispanics.

The republic known as the United States, since its inception, has existed as a class system deeply rooted in race. America's history is that of a nation built on the enslavement of one group of people, and the genocide of another. So it only stands to reason that the effort to close many of the racial disparities would be met with difficulty at best, and, at worst, with resistance and violence.

One such example of trying to improve the standard of living for minorities in America with regards to future generations would be to allocate more funds to inner-city public schools, which currently is far below the funds allocated to public schools in predominantly white communities.

Another example of improving the standard of living among all the races is to make college more affordable. Unless funds for education are distributed equally (or, in the very least, near equal numbers), there will continue to be a perpetuation of inequality among the races. One idea mentioned often as a means to generate more funds for education is to cut some military spending, where many contractors are given multi-million and billion dollar no-bid contracts.

Race and the Prison Industrial Complex

On February 28, 2008, the Pew Center on the States released a report stating that for the first time in U.S. history, more than one of every 100 adults is either in jail or prison, ranking America as the world's top incarcerator. The report claims that 2,319,258 Americans were in jail or prison at the beginning of 2008 (the highest prison population of any nation, whether it be in terms of raw numbers or per capita).

The Pew Center's report goes on further to say that the 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year. Moreover, prison costs were six times greater than that of funds received for higher education.

Prison Population and Race

• One in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, while the ratio of black males in that same age group is one in nine.
• One in every 355 white women aged 35 to 39 is behind bars, while the number of black women behind bars in that same age group is one in every 100.

Since 1990, the economic incarceration business has boomed because of privatization, with many corporations trying to receive their cut of the proverbial economic pie.

In an online article called The Prison Industrial Complex by thetalkingdrum.com, an example is given on the influence of big business as it pertains to incarceration. It goes on to state, "A pay phone at a prison can generate as much as $15,000 a year -- about five times the revenue of a typical pay phone on the street. It is estimated that inmate calls generate a billion dollars or more in revenues each year. The business has become so lucrative that MCI installed its inmate phone service, Maximum Security, throughout the California prison system at no charge. As part of the deal it also offered the California Department of Corrections a 32 percent share of all revenues from inmates' phone calls."

The article goes on further to state, "The prison complex now includes some of the nation's largest architecture and construction firms: Wall Street investment banks that handle prison bond issues and invest in private prisons, plumbing supply companies, food service companies, health care companies, companies that sell everything from bullet resistant security cameras to padded cells available in a vast color selection. A directory called the Corrections Yellow Pages lists more than a thousand vendors. Among the items now being advertised for sale: a violent prisoner chair, a sadomasochist's fantasy of belts and shackles attached to a metal frame, with special accessories for juveniles B.O.S.S., a body orifice security scanner, essentially a metal detector that an inmate must sit on."

It is interesting to note that most people occupying prisons are there without having committed a violent crime, but are incarcerated, in many cases, because of stricter crime laws such as the three strikes laws. In addition, even though most drug users are white, the majority of those in prison because of drugs are blacks.

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