Essay on social policy and social divisions and inequalities

The most fundamental way in which social policy can often exaccerbate rather than reduce racial inequality is through its dependence upon values, concepts and ideologies that are prior to and therefore not reflective of actual conditions of racial descrimination, tensions and inequality (Blakemore, 2003: 17-39).

This is perhaps most obvious in the case of approaches to social policy that are based upon utilitarian principles. For the utilitarian belief in distributing goods and services upon the premise of catering for the greatest good/happiness of the greatest number may fail to differentiate social needs or it may privilege the needs of the majority ethnic population. Another example, argueably, is the Marxian approach to social policy. The Marxian conception of equality tends to reduce inequality to its economic conditions and therefore fails to properly recognise that cultural marginalisation can continue even when there is greater ’economic’ equality.

To be sure these two approaches are rarely employed to guide social policy in contemporary societies. However, more recent ideologies or theories can be said to be similarly preclusive of race equality. These argueably include the new right approach and even, as I shall explain later, the so called Third Way approach.

During the period of the post-war consensus, from 1945 to the late 1970’s social policy in Britain was guided by ‘welfarism’. The original motivation for the development of the welfare state in Britain, after the second world war, was to reward the working classes and returning soldiers for their contribution to the war and to compensate for the devastation brought about by the war. It was principally designed therefore for the benefit of the white British working classes (Alcock, 2003: 291). This is evidenced by the observation that the redistributive principles of the welfare state were predominately economic - that the simple provision of…

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Tags: 1945, economic equality

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