ABSTRACT
In justice terms, social stratification is an unequal distribution of the rewards and burdens of society. In the social stratification game, there are advantages to being at the top, and disadvantages to being toward the bottom. The impact of this difference in status can be understood in terms of privilege and oppression. When social exclusion is experienced continually by a group of people, the end result is oppression. Intersectionality is the idea that where social statuses overlap has interesting implications for either the compounding of privilege and oppression, or their attenuation. In the language of social stratification, systemic racism is the oppression that results from the low status assigned to people of certain races. One crucial form of systemic racism to consider in the context of criminal justice is institutional racism. Social inclusion assumes equality among people, addresses the manifestations of social inequalities that threaten social cohesion, and attempts to include the excluded.
