Democracy and equality are two American core values which, according to Henslin (2014), are shared by most of the groups that make up U.S. society (p.51). Living in a democracy gives a citizen an equal right to vote the leaders of his or her government, in fact the White House (2015) stated that “today’s citizens over the age of 18 cannot be denied the right to vote, regardless of race, religion, sex, disability, or sexual orientation” (para. 1). The equality each person has, consequently, does not allow each the same privileges. Those who live the life of a wealthy person have more access and means to privileges such as health care and education than those who are poor.
Democracy
In America and other democratic countries, …show more content…
What constituted a legal voter “were matters which neither the Constitution nor federal laws governed” (para. 1). There have been multiple Amendments, which have made vast improvements on voter equality such as the 15th Amendment which the United States Department of Justice (2015) continued to state, provided specifically that the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on the basis of race, color or previous condition of …show more content…
Equality is a relative statement as different social classes in America’s society still live different from one another. Americans can be grouped financially from wealthy to poor or; as Henslin (2014) stated, sociologists Kahl and Gilbert “developed a six-tier model to portray the class structure of the U.S. and other capitalist countries” and ranks the top income individuals as capitalists, who make more than one million dollars a year (P. 267). Every American is free to achieve this level of success, however barely 1% of them do. Henslin (2014) went on to depict that the highest percentage (34%) of American’s fall into the lower middle class and that roughly 5% of American’s are at the bottom of tier called the underclass (p.