According to a publication, Kevin Leicht (an authority in the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign's sociology department) says that America is focusing too much around the earnings gap between white and black workers, and doesn't focus enough on the disparities within them. His writing was published in the Sociological Quarterly and delves deeper into the arguments surrounding income inequality and how America is distracted from finding practical solutions.
Currently, it has been reported that no one is doing something about the fact that economic inequality has increased compared to the previous decades, as told by The Atlantic. Leicht goes on to say that America is having the wrong conversations about income inequality.
His paper starts off saying that sociologists have been remiss in how they approach studying inequality because it has been ignored. Race and gender concerns are sensitive and the United States is not socially mobile enough to push it along.
Income inequality has potentially pushed other types of inequality further. The issue on well-paying job access, poverty and mobility has stumbled further while racial and ethnic concerns are slowly moving away from each other. This means that the issues are not being rounded up properly.
How will this get fixed? Zoning in on a not-so-sure fix, Leicht discusses that education could be the key - but not the exact key. There is no definite result to come out of the labor market. It doesn't mean that high quality jobs will present themselves when college graduates enter the job market.
Instead he suggests to focus on labor market policies that helps increase income and job security. "In the end, fighting income inequality is about fighting income inequality. It's not about closing educational gaps or getting more people married, or creating a diverse pool of Fortune 500 CEOs," notes Leicht.
