“The capitalist city has no reverence for life. It bulldozes over neighborhoods to make way for business. It abandons entire regions, because profits are greater somewhere else. Deprived of their life spaces, people’s lives are reduced to a purely economic dimension as workers and consumers” (Bluestone and Harrison 1982, 20). As illustrated by Bluestone and Harrison, capitalism is responsible for the disenfranchisement of certain groups of minorities. Capitalism is solely concerned with making a profit and will do anything possible to maximize that profit regardless of how it affects the people. This paper will examine the negative social structures that have been built by the capitalist system arguing that the public education system inherently reproduces social stratification, especially in regards to the achievement gap between African Americans and Whites that is translated through grades in the classroom and through standardized testing. Thus in order to solve any inequalities in the education system one must adopt a socialist view and truly provide equal opportunity for all.
The first step to understanding the Black-White Achievement gap is to understand the position African Americans were in after slavery was abolished in 1863. Slavery was an institution that terrorized and dehumanized Africans, and forced them into labor as a result of European colonialism. This industry was extremely profitable and seemed to make a lot of sense at the time. Europeans owned these slaves for over three centuries. Giving these people freedom from slavery and nothing else puts them at an extreme disadvantage in the capitalist system, when every other white person who was free had many acquired assets that help them remain in a better socioeconomic position. The capitalist system requires many groups of society to remain on the bottom in order for the concept of a meritocracy to work where one works their way up by achievement in the education system. African Americans...