Category: Essays on Controversial Topics
Browse our collection of essays on controversial topics. Each topic in this category represents a controversial issue and thus is a good choice if you are looking for argumentative or persuasive essay topics. When writing an argumentative essay or a persuasive essay you should focus on picking a topic that is current and relevant to society and can be argued logically.
While a strong interest in a topic is important, it’s not enough to be interested. You have to consider what position you can back up with reasoning and evidence. It’s one thing to have a strong belief, but when shaping an argument you’ll have to explain why your belief is reasonable and logical. As you explore the topics, make a mental list of points you could use as evidence for or against an issue.
Hollywood fueled popular perceptions of psychopathy with film representations of deranged serial killers such as Dr. Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs, and unhinged jilted lovers such as Glenn Close’s portrayal of Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction. Off screen, the real-life characteristics of …
Psychosis is a state in which one loses contact with reality. Originating from either mental or physical conditions, its symptoms include delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech or behavior, and a decrease or loss of normal functions. A hallucination can be hearing a voice that is not actually there, while …
Public opinion is a collective attitude or preference concerning political issues shaped by a varied and complex interplay of factors. Group membership, personal experience, gender, race, education, class, media, government officials, elites, religion, geographical region, culture, and political ideology all affect socialization and knowledge acquisition that influence and …
Using the public-private dichotomy to describe social policies can be misleading. Characterizing any dichotomy are two mutually exclusive parts that together comprise the whole. A public-private dichotomy fits a social policy system if its components are clearly public or private, but not both. Together, public and private exhaust …
Queer is often used as an umbrella term by and for persons who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, intersex, and/or transgender, or by and for individuals who use the term as an alternative to LGBTI (lesbian-gay-bisexual-transsexual-intersex) labels. Some individuals, depending upon their race, class, personal experience, and also …
The term race in its modern sense was first used in the 1700s by Europeans and European Americans to refer to what is now also called a “racial group.” Initially, race referred to biological differences believed to exist as distinctions between individuals or groups; however, racial groups can …
Race-blind policies, also referred to as color-blind policies, are policies that seek to eliminate racial or ethnic categories and preferences from admissions or applications processes. Race-blind policies are a response to affirmative action policies that use race as one of the factors in determining admission to an institution …
Racial formation theory is a theoretical perspective created by sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant that focuses on race relations in the United States. By racial formation, they refer to the sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed, and they treat the concept …
Racial profiling is the increased scrutiny or selective enforcement of rules, norms, and laws for members of specific social groups. The increased scrutiny or selective enforcement results in the increased likelihood that these racial groups will experience significantly higher levels of negative sanctions than would be expected given …
Racism refers to ideologies, actions, and policies that create and maintain a system of social inequality based on race (socially constructed categories on the basis of physical characteristics imbued with social significance). As a social problem, racism has been connected to substantial inequalities between whites and African Americans, …
Rape is a pervasive and serious social problem, brought to greater attention with the second-wave women’s movement of the 1960-70s. The connection between rape and gender inequality is one of control. Rape, and the fear it produces, is a mechanism of social control that men in a patriarchal …
Acquaintance rape, commonly known as “date rape,” is a form of sexual violence. Acquaintance rape is nonconsensual sexual intercourse where penetration is achieved with the use of or threatened use of force, occurring between individuals known to one another, such as a current or former friend, acquaintance, spouse, …
Marital rape (also called “wife rape” or “spousal rape”) is forced, nonconsensual sex in which the perpetrator is the victim’s spouse. Marital rape was criminalized in all U.S. states by 1993 with the deletion of the “spousal exemption” that had defined rape as forced intercourse without the consent …
Statutory rape refers to sexual relationships occurring between two individuals when at least one of the individuals cannot legally consent to sex. While common belief holds that a uniform age separates an adult from a minor in regard to making decisions about one’s sexual behavior, several factors determine …
Rational choice theory (RCT) is a social-scientific approach that explains social phenomena in terms of deliberate decisions that self-interested individuals make. One of the key assumptions of RCT is the notion of the purposeful actor. Rational choice theorists portray social actors as distinct entities with knowledge of alternative …
Social problems can arise from many sources; one of the most interesting of those sources is the official manifest structure of social control, the legal system. In U.S. law, with its foundations primarily in English “common law” traditions, the use of reasonable suspicion to justify governmental interference with …
Recidivism refers to the repetition of behaviors that society sanctions, particularly those related to criminal offenses and substance abuse. In criminology, recidivism refers specifically to the rate at which people who have been released from prison are rearrested, reconvicted, or returned to prison (with or without a new …
Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution calls for representation to the House of Representatives to be apportioned among the states according to the respective number of individuals residing in each state. The initial apportionment, or assigning of seats to individual states, gave 10 districts to Virginia, …
The term school redistricting refers to the redrawing of school district boundaries, typically with the intent to increase student diversity. As such, it is one of several methods for reallocating students and resources within the educational system of a geographic area. In recent years, redistricting typically sought to …
Redlining primarily refers to an illegal discriminatory practice by real estate lenders or insurance companies who decide that certain areas are high-risk investments. Despite strong credit qualifications of would-be borrowers, lenders refuse to give mortgages to buyers wanting to purchase properties in those designated areas or to give …
