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Structured Inequality in the United States: Discussions on the Continuing Significance of Race, Ethnicity and Gender. Adalberto Aguirre, Jr. and David V. Baker. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 416 pages. $30.67.
Sociologists often struggle with getting students and others to realize that inequality and discrimination are still driving issues in our society. Aguirre and Baker here develop a reader for undergraduate stratification courses that attempts to make explicit the institutional impacts of racial, ethnic and gender discrimination in present day U.S. society.
Aguirre and Baker clearly thought about the types of information necessary to help students grasp the ramifications of economic, racial and gender inequality. They have applied issues of inequality to several social institutions: the educational system, the criminal justice system, the family, the economy and politics. Through each of these social institutions, the articles presented show evidence of past and present discrimination and prejudice resulting from inequality.
This book is somewhat unique. The reprinted articles are organized into chapters. For each chapter, the authors have written a substantial introduction. Aguirre and Baker do not merely summarize the upcoming readings; each introduction includes definitions of basic concepts. These introductions blend well with the four or five chapter readings. However, this blending causes the introductions themselves to seem choppy at times. On first glance, I thought the book could be a hybrid text/reader. Upon closer reading, though, their introductory sections are not detailed enough to replace a text.
The reader is fairly well written. Although the editors cannot be responsible for the writing of previously published works, they are able to choose the works for their reader. Some undergraduates will find a few articles challenging; specifically, legal documents on previous court cases are filled with legal...