Final Blog

at the beginning of the year i thought the question "who are you" had a very straight forward answer. it had the physical attributes and maybe your history too. but after taking sociology i realized that that question goes so much deeper then just that. that question could include anything from culture to socialization to social deviance and class. before taking sociology i didn't even know what most of these meant. now however i know what they all mean and know how they apply to me. for example my culture includes being an American. my socialization comes from being a human, male, and attracted to females. finally is deviance and social class which i am deviant in several ways. from having longer hair which is abnormal for boys, to not always doing my homework. and my social class would be middle class American. finally is my race which i am white. these are all different ways of identifying and classifying my self.

Crash of racism

this week in sociology we watched the movie crash. this movie was a really great movie that put the whole racism issue out in the open. it really took the major issues into plain view. in the movie there were several different plots going on at once. but the message was very clear. and when you look at all the characters history's their motives seem almost justified. for example the store owners that wouldn't pay the man that fixed his lock because he didn't understand that the door needed to be fixed and so he refused to pay the man. but from the lock fixers point of view he did his job and never got payed. so it is understandable that both parties were not happy. and a big factor in their misunderstandings was because of the conflict in races. i can try to understand whee they are coming from in my own life. even while living in a save neighborhood were crime rates are very low i feel i am not so sheltered to not ever have encountered racism. for example when i went to the church to do community service i was wearing my Jewish star that i always wear around my neck. usually it is tucked in behind my shirt out of sight but when i arrived at the church it was unusually out in the open. the church goers were still nice to me but they seemed a bit more reserved then the first time i had gone. i felt almost out of place this time as apposed to last time when my star was hidden. i realized it was untucked and put it away but i feel like the message was already out. this wasn't the first time i had been discriminated against for wearing my Jewish star. but this was the first time people treated me differently after already knew me. i was almost appaled. i did not think that anyone was doing it on purpose but it was in their subconscious like we had learned in class. it was a very eye opening experience.

Racism

Racism is everywhere in our world, it is simply unavoidable. even in today's day and age there are still large amount of hate groups still alive today. you would think that through time people would learn that race is nothing more then a few different strands of DNA. today in class we talked about how it is not an issue of race, but of economic standing. while some people say that most black people are poor, you should actually be arguing that poor people are mostly black. while this may seem to not have much of a difference you could think of it in another way. you could argue that there are actually more white people in poverty then black people. but because of society's backwards thinking nobody thinks of White men as being poor. i also think that the problem might lie in the fact that race is such an easy factor when actually looking at a person. it is so much more easy to see an individual and see that they are black or white rather then poor or rich.

Affirmative action

the past week in political thought we have been learning about affirmative action and having an in class debate about it. affirmative action is when minorities are given special treatment to "level the playing field". while debating the topic discovered that this idea is very related to the class system here in America. as it is basically helping the lower class people have a chance of going to a collage with higher class kids. this concept of inner city kids not having the same resources as the more privileged children that go to a great school like Stevenson was difficult to understand. so i put it in a different perspective. i thought about it as upper class children going to private schools get a better education then the middle class kids going to private school as Stevenson. and when i put it that way it didn't seem so fair. but you have to realize that that is the social state that this country is in right now. while it may seem unfair or even mean to say that lower class children should not even have a chance to go to collage, it is the truth. but it is not always the case. even low class kids can have dreams of a better life. they an always have the hope of reaching that next rung on the ladder. and eventually through generation to generation they may finally become middle or even high class. while the system seems unfair this is the reality. and it works.

Monopoly

playing monopoly in class was a lot of fun for me, as i was the highest class and had the most money. it really gave me a different perspective on everything. having so much money i didnt have to wonder if i could buy a property or not. or if i had the money to buy houses on properties. while the other players in lower classes got had to think if it was within their "budget" to buy a relatively cheap property.this relates to the real world in a lot of ways. like if i want to go out with my friends on the weekend to see a movie i ca go without thinking about it to much. i can drive a car there, see the movie, buy popcorn, and go out to dinner after, then drive home. and not even think about the money side of it. while kids from poorer city's would have to take a bus to a cheap theater to see a movie. it makes me very thankful to be in the social class that i am in.

profiting off crime?

after watching and hearing the statistics about jail one has to wonder if the us government if incarcerating so many us citizens because there doing bad things or if its just good for the economy. after hearing that 1% of the populations is in jail and that that is much more then any other country in the world i was appalled. to think that the home of the free was such of a constraining society. and those people in jails are not murders rapists and thief's, but mostly of the people in jails are either drug related or psychologically insane. i feel that this is directly related to the amount of money that a large jail system brings. everyone seems to make more money the more people that are in jail. and because we all know money is what makes the world go 'round the system will continue making silly sentences on penny crimes. and until the average us citizen stands up for this injustice then nothing will change.

Family Matters

you never realize just how important family can be until you don't have any left. through class this week i learned the importance of nature and nurture. seeing all those feral children really makes someone think about what they have. i thought it was really interesting how just how powerful it is to have a strong connection to somebody early on in life is.like the experiment with those little kids in the orphanage who didn't receive any attention verses those that did. it was really depressing to see that those deprived kids over age 13 will probably never reach the mental capacity of anything higher then a 3 year old.