Max Weber suggests that racial inequality deals with status and prestige. There are two different types of status in America; Achieved status which is a status that a person earns throughout their lifetime and ascribed status which is status that a person is born with. Status can lead to social differences which in return can lead to social inequality. Social inequality is a large determining factor when if comes to suicide because in many studies, results suggest that because of a certain race having unequal occupation and income levels, this leads to different suicide rates. Suicide is very important in society today. A reason for this is that in order for suicide to take place, there has to be some negative feelings involved. In our present society, inequality is a large factor leading to these negative feelings. Inequality leads to larger social gaps, which leads to exploitation of the lower class, which leads to people in the lower class feeling that they are less important than those of the upper class. In our case, certain races can be tied into the different social classes, therefore making a connection between social inequality and suicide rates. This is was I will focus my paper on. .
My study examines the intersection between race and suicide. I examine the existing evidence on whether race has any impact of the outcome of suicide rates. As evidence for my paper, I use three different studies. These studies vary according to gender, but they all link to race and suicide in some way. I will state the used sample and report a brief summary for each of the studies. .
Suicide has many different meanings depending on your study. According to the first study that I examined, the operational definition of suicide is a death by self-inflicted means where there is evidence that the intent was to cause death. (Peter Gutierrez 1999) In this study, Gutierrez's majority of samples came from predominately White adolescents and college students.