A New Segregation? (Edison) Zac Cleveland

When we think segregation our mind normally jumps to racial segregation, although racial segregation has been a hot seat issue in the past in public and in court, with such trials as Plessy V. Furguson and brown v. Board of Education, both relating to racial segregation, But in today’s America there is a different type of segregation, financial segregation. According to a study in 2004, the wealthiest 1% of families owns roughly 34% of the nation’s net worth, the top 10% owns 71%, and the bottom 40% of the population has only 1% of the wealth. Policies that were made to help the bottom part of the population end up helping the top percent more than it helps the bottom percent. The strange thing is that even though 2.3-3.5 million people a year become homeless nothing is done. The price to live in today’s society is sky rocketing, while incomes stay low and more and more families begin to struggle. America is heading into a new type of segregation, a segregation of wealth that might as well become more harmful than any civil rights movement. It is becoming a norm in today’s society for over priced gas, clothes and electronics, and yet the people that work to produce these items can hardly afford them for themselves. American Society is spiraling out of financial control, I wouldn’t be surprised if in a few years there was a new type of movement, not a movement for rights or citizenship but a movement to reform the financial institutions and processes that help build America’s financial ways.

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