SIEL 2: Poverty, Inequality & Structural Risk
This is an APA-formatted analytical essay that uses academic and official sources, including U.S. Census Bureau data, to compare poverty rates across ethnic communities and explain inequality as a structural, not moral, issue. I wrote it for a sociology course assignment that required applying course concepts and outside scholarly research to evaluate inequality in the United States. The original audience was my professor and teaching assistants, who evaluated the essay for academic rigor and proper APA citation. The piece demonstrates risk identification at a population level, the ability to interpret official data sources, structural thinking about how systems (education, employment, healthcare access, immigration, discrimination) drive disparities, and disciplined research and citation practices. Rhetorically, I led with evidence grounded in cited statistics rather than personal opinion, kept first-person voice minimal to maintain an objective academic tone, and used APA formatting alongside a logical progression from data, to interpretation, to structural implications to signal credibility to an academic audience.