Another explanation of racial and ethnic inequality focuses on supposed cultural deficiencies of African Americans and other people of color (Murray, 1984). These deficiencies include a failure to value hard work and, for African Americans, a lack of strong family ties, and are said to account for the poverty and other problems facing these minorities. This view ec

Claimsmaking: In this step, people and groups identify an issue, and they try to convince others to take it seriously. The problem in this step is called a claim “an argument that a particular troubling condition needs to be addressed” (Best 2020:15). In this stage, people who may not agree that a problem exists agree on what to do about it or who should take action Media Coverage: In the second step, claimsmakers use media to build a base of people and groups who agree with them on the causes, im

In order to explain why social problems arise, sociologists look for patterns across many social problems. As early as 1940, Richard Fuller and Richard Myers proposed a model for social problem creation, action, and resolution. They called the model a natural history of a social problem. It may seem odd at first

Once a new policy is put into place, institutions must act to implement the change. For the civil rights movement, this work included integrating schools, which we will talk about more in Chapter 5. It included registering Black and Brown people to vote. It included ending the legal segregation of public spaces, even though de facto segregation still exists today. Step Six: Policy O

In this step, people and groups identify an issue and try to convince others to take it seriously. In this step, the problem is called a claim, or “an argument that a particular troubling condition needs to be addressed” (Best 2020:15). In this stage, people disagree about whether a problem exists. They disagree on who should take action. In Best’s classic example, civil rights activists claimed that racial segregation in public spaces, employment, housing, voting and other aspects of social life was unacceptable. Predominantly Black activists held

To help you further understand the different views of these three theoretical perspectives, let’s see what they would probably say about armed robbery, a very serious form of crime, while recognizing that the three perspectives together provide a more comprehensive understanding of armed robbery than any one perspective provides by itself. A functionalist approach might suggest that armed ro

The Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century reinforced these concerns. Starting first in Europe and then in the United States, the Industrial Revolution led to many changes, including the rise and growth of cities as people left their farms to live near factories. As the cities grew, people lived in increasingly poor, crowded, and decrepit conditions, and crime was rampant. Here was additional evidence, if European intellectuals needed it, of the breakdown of social order. In response, the intellectuals be

To help us understand a blaming-the-victim ideology, let’s consider why poor children in urban areas often learn very little in their schools. According to Ryan, a blaming-the-victim approach would say the children’s parents do not care about their learning, fail to teach them good study habits, and do not encourage them to take school seriously. This type of explanation, he wrote, may apply to some parents, but it ignores a much more important reason: the sad shape of America’s urban schools, which, he said, are overcrowded, decrepit structures housing old textbooks and out-of-date equipment. To improve the schooling of children in urban areas, he wrote, we must improve the schools themselves and not just try to “improve” the parents. As this example suggests, a blaming-the-victim approach points to solutions to social problems such as poverty and illiteracy that are very differe