Crash

This week in sociology, we watched a movie called Crash. It's a movie that follows different people and different races and how racism affects their daily lives. I've seen this movie before, but not with a sociological mind like I did in class. This movie really showed our class that race is a sociological construction and is engraved into everybody's heads. An example from the movie that shows this is when the detective classified his friend as white. She got offended and replied that her background is not white, but Puerto Rican and Salvadorian. This showed how much people judge others on the way their skin looks. This movie also showed our class how racism affects society. An example is when the mexican locksmith was accused of breaking into a store and trashing everything, but really it was not him. I feel like this movie opened everyone's eyes in how terrible and cruel explicit and implicit racism really is. An example of implicit racism is when the lady grabbed her husband to "protect" her from two black men. She did not know this would offend them, but it did.

Different Races

This week in Sociology, we learned about the concept of race. In sociology terms, race is not biological, but rather sociological. Society engraves in our heads how we categorize people and what groups they belong to just by looking at them. Race is a term used to associate people into certain groups based on their skin color. We learned in class that race is not that simple by comparing it to a metaphor. The metaphor was that my teacher brought in many different sports balls; soccer balls, basketballs, footballs, little balls, medium balls, and even plush balls. He then told us to categorize them into groups. My class put them according to color, type of ball, and size. Then my teacher started to add different kinds of sports balls from around the world. They did not fit in any of the categories completely, so we just stuck them into one they looked like they would fit into. This metaphor showed us that society categorizes races into different groups, but the reality is that if gather more and more races, it gets hard to categorize each person into a group due to their genetic makeup. This metaphor also showed us that we all learned in our head how we categorize races based on how they look and we group them all together, even if someone doesn't completely look like a race, we force them into it. Sociology has taught me to open my eyes about race because I used to categorize different looking people into creation groups of race without knowing what they actually are, but only based on their looks. But truly, based on everyones biological genetic makeup, we are all the same. Our skin color should not be judged on by society because they are "different"; skin color is all based on where their ancestry is from and how much UV rays are in that area, so it would be easier to adapt to that weather. In different societies, they treat different groups based on what that society thinks of that group. That group may be a minority there, or a "higher" authority. We read an article that explained how peoples race can change in a different area. Race is not a constant and based on where you are and how society there perceives your skin color, then that is how your race is going to be determined.

It's all about money.

Everyone wants to be rich. Who wouldn't want to be? The cars, the houses, the education, the clothes. What a life. But only a very small percent of Americans experience this lifestyle while the others suffer from poverty. They're not able to feed their children, or even themselves, or get a good paying job to provide the absolute necessities while the rich experience an abundant of materialistic things. Many people in lower classes (working class or blue collar) actually do hard labor each day to receive low pay and hopefully achieve a move up in social class. many parents also work hard to get money and provide a stable and healthy lifestyle for their children. So they do so much with hope that they'll succeed in moving up. Moving up is no doubt hard, and maybe even impossible to do for some. They can run into obstacles that slow them down; student loans, bankruptcy, education, family status and much more. But luckily for me, my mother worked hard to earn what we have today and I'm really thankful for that. She was an immigrant from Europe coming to America hoping to achieve the American dream. When she came here, she didn't have much. She worked a day job and at night she would go to school to learn English to get by. As she continued getting used to the living here, she started making more and succeeding and surprisingly today she is up in the middle class living a stable life. I believe people could move up with luck and determination, but it's very unlikely due to difficult obstacles.

Wealth in America

This week in Sociology, we learned about the tremendous gap of distributed wealth in America. We also did an activity where my teacher gave every student in the class 3 pennies and it was a gambling game where everyone gave a portion of their pennies and called heads or tails to see who wins. It seemed at first that it was a fair game because it was 50:50. But soon enough, the majority of the class had zero pennies and only a couple people had more than six. This activity shows that everyone has a chance to move up, but it's all about luck. It's luck if you're born into a wealthy family or a poor family and have less opportunities to rise. People in wealthy families will want to live up to their parents expectations. Since they have worked hard (or not) to earn the money they have and give their children a good future, the they automatically expect to see them graduate high school and go to college. Since I was born into a family of upper class, I know that my parents had high. Expectations of me since they raised me at a good school, etc. I feel that where you were born and the family that raises you have a large impact on your future because they determine where you go to school and show you how to live. America is so diverse in wealth among the people that we even have a social class. America has the biggest gap between the income of the poorest compared to the income of the richest. Americans don't want to believe that we have social classes, but the cold truth is that we do. In the social ladder, there is the lower class, middle class, and the upper class. 

Community Service - Bocce Ball

On Sunday April 22nd, Me and my boyfriend offered to volunteer at the Bocce Ball Special Olympics tournament. I wanted to do this experience because I have never really surrounded myself around special-needs people and knew that it would be something different. I realized how grateful I am to have what I have, and to offer my assistance to others showed that people could really make an impact in someone else's life. Within my 9 hours there, I was able to meet many new people. Within our different groups, I was able to communicate with different people also. While assisting our elderly group, I met a woman named Debbie and me and her talked about many different topics that I knew meant a lot to her. She was very happy to just communicate to someone and her happiness made me joyful to know that just talking to her can make her day. After their game finished, I helped her to go get her lunch in her wheelchair and she constantly thanked me for a great day. After my Bocce Ball experience, I know I will become more active in my community because impacting someone else's life in a positive way, makes me sparklingly delighted.

America the Free...by locking people up!

This week in Sociology, we learned about life in prison and how deviant "authorities" are to criminals. We read a story called "Courtroom 302" which follows the guidelines of the Cook County Jailhouse, and this story particularly interested me because I have heard a lot of stories about the atrocious prison but never really looked deeply into it. It talks about the ways life is in there and how the prisoners get treated inside. They treat the prisoners like pests and not human beings. They constantly yell at them and torture them, as if they weren't deprived of their whole selves completely. America deals with criminals so poorly, that thinking if they throw them all into jail will solve the problem. It's as if they're throwing all their junk in a small closet and then when they open it, it just flies at them and they don't know what to do. They confine them into a small area, deprive necessary nutrients, ignore their medical needs, and take away all of their self-dignity. They claim that it's what they'll "need" to heal; that they'll learn their lesson. Truth is, it's the complete opposite of that. Prisoners that go into jail and get out, are most likely to head back into there. Another big issue with the prisons in America, is how overcrowded they get and reach the capacity level. In California, they have the second largest federal system in the U.S., they hold over 200% their designated capacity and 75% of the prisoners come back after they get bailed. In a film that we saw in class, "30 Days in Jail," it shows how some prisoners have to sleep on the floors with just a small mat that's looks like a piece of cloth. They treat these prisoners like caged animals.

Ew You're Picking Your Nose!

What? No I didn't! I was just scratching the side of my nose! On an episode of Seinfield, they showed an example of defiance. The main character was driving his car and his girlfriend at the time was driving her car next to his. At a red light, he scratched the right side of his nose, and to the girl, it looked as if he was picking his nose. Deviance is all dependent on time, place and perception. It's also different depending on each person or culture. Someone might think that theft is going against norms and some people might find it acceptable or normal. Deviance is any behavior that violates social norms. Deviance can be criminal or non-criminal. An assignment that we had to do in class related to doing an act of positive deviance to society. I wrote a letter to my English as my random act of kindness. It was against norms of society because no one really expects a student to show such appreciation to their teacher. I was being deviant when I dis this. Doing these acts of kindness shows that just something little could make someone smile all day. Also in class, we read a sorry called "Saints and Roughnecks." It shows how society is deviant towards people by their appearance and not what they do. The Saints are. Group of boys that are from upper-middle class families and do really good in school by having a B average and are on the schools "good" side. The Roughnecks are a group of boys that are from a lower class and constantly get in trouble at school and do not have a good reputation with society. The Saints are involved in almost the same activities as the Roughnecks after school, such as drinking alcohol and stealing and destroying public property. But society for not perceive the Saints as those kind of "bad" people because of their social status and reputation. "In seeking happiness for others, you find it for yourself." Anonymous