Bringing it all together - The final blog

I almost didn't take soc, I almost took food prep, and I'm happy with the decision I made. Sociology has opened my mind to things that I'd never thought about before: all the influences I have, the existance of a class system in America; the idea of time in other countries. So many things I would have never considered to be an important factor in my life, I learned about in soc. So many things control the way I am today to the smallest detail about which type of bread I like to something broader like what I want to do with my life. So looking back on it, why am I such a calm person? It's easy to say it's just the way I am, but it's more than that. My dad prides himself in his handywork around the house: he installs light switches, wires together entertainment systems, builds our computers, and keeps little things organized. I think a big part of my personality comes from him. I have fond memories of sitting on his lap and playing car racing games on the computer. Whenever he starts a big project around the house, he recruits me to help out and explains everythign. So what if my dad wasn't good with his hands or had no electrical knowledge? Would I be an entirely different person? What if he loved hockey and not baseball? These are the kinds of things that sociology has opened my mind to, and I feel like I look at the world in a higher sense of conciousness.

Crash

Crash is about implicit racism in our diverse country. In the movie there were the Blacks, the Asians, the Whites, the Middle Eastern, and the Hispanics. Each group was profiled and stereotyped in different ways. Sal brought up the point about what we learn about the Asian man at the end of the movie, that he's trafficking people. As a society, we typically view Asians in a positive stereotype. The two Black guys who were stealingcars were even discussing how they were being profiled and that the White woman walked closer to her husband when they got closer. Ironically, the two black men jacked the couple's car. Later in the movie, Terrance Howard's charcter, Cameron, tells Ludacris' charcter (Anthony) that he embarassed both of them. I think what he's trying to say is that Anthony slipped into the black stereotype when he should be trying to stay away from its negative ideas. The best way to reduce racism in our lives is to just be open minded and ignore sterotypes.

Race is socially created

I found it really interesting that in a foreign country, people actually applied to legally change their race. While this doesn't initiallly make sense in America, race is a social construction. We discussed the possibility of someone's race changing on an airplane because different cultures interpret races differently. If skin color is an indication of race than it's certainly hard for people to determine what race I'm part of, especially if you throw my last name in the mix. Some say Hispanic, some say Black, some say Middle Eastern; hardly anyone gets my true origins right and says Russian. While race has never directly affected me, I've witnessed and been a part of stereotyping based on race during track season. We all expect the Black kids to run the fastest and be the best athletes, but why? Is it their race, their heritage, their nationality? None of it really, becase race is a social construction and doesn't determine what kind of person or athlete you are.

I never want to go to jail

Jail is a terrible place to end up; especially more than once. But that's how our prison system usually works. Instead of assisting inmates to turn their life around, our jails are just making more criminals. The implementation of strict drug laws got the ball rolling for overpopulated and underfunded jails. Are these laws really fair? We discussed in class that the laws for crack cocaine are much much stricter than powder cocaine. The answer is obvious; crack is much more deadly that powder. But if you look deeper, crack is cheaper and powder is considered the "rich man's" cocaine. So it turn, the government's laws are putting poor people in jail because they can't afford powder cocaine. The real cynics argue that it's all a conspiracy to put urban minorities in jail. Regardless, jail is a horrible place to be and our system really needs to be fixed up.

Wealth & Social Class

The class system of America isn't fair. Playing Monopoly today in Soc we used a different set of rules. At the beginning of the game, each person rolled a set of dice to determine which class they would be, similar to the randomness when you're born into a class. I rolled into the highest class, old money, and started the game off with the most money and the most properties. As the game went on, I could tell I had a substantial advantage over everyone else because I could buy everything I landed on and was collecting money before anyone had gotten a property. Is the "real world" really like this? It's tough to tell because we don't live in the uber wealthy, but in our upper-middle class society, everyone is on a pretty even playing field and it's tough to see who's wealthy. While playing I observed that it was very hard for the players in the lowest classes to do much of anything besides lose money. Is our society really structured like this? Is it at all fair for it to be easy for the richer to get richer and the poor to get poorer? In the Land of Opportunity, it seems nearly impossible to start from the bottom and really make your way up to the upper classes of society.

Deviance

Deviance can be basically definied as do something that is against society's norms. While this is usually negative, deviance can be positive like buying a stranger a cup of coffee or thanking your teacher after class. But if you focus on negative deviance, what seperates the "Saints" from the "Roughnecks" is society's perception of their actions. The Roughnecks were poor minorities whose negative actions were often visible to everyone since they didn't have many options. The Saints were able to drive to the city or drive far away from campus so as not to be caught by people who knew them. And even if they weren't caught, their deviance would be seen as a mistake, a one time screw up, while the Roughnecks were typically thought of as having no future.
I think that while this sterotyping of people who commit deviant behavior is wrong, it comes down to are you willing to play the game. A student can "forget" to do their homework but apologize to the teacher and turn it in the next day and possibly not lose credit. This student knows how to play the game even though he might hate the class and have no desire to work.
Just something to think about... Is downloading media illegally really deviant behavior? Sure there are consequences, but is it that against social customs that you're looked down upon?

Nature v Nurture

We learned that as humans, we aren't able to become a "normal" part of society with only our nature. It's necesary to be nutured and learn from experiences and other humans in order to develop. These two qualities, nature and nurture, aren't mutually exclusive; they actually work together to shape who we are. In fact, our experiences, like always being stressed, can actaully be passed down from generation to generation.
We also talked about feral children and that their lack of nurture doesn't allowe them to fully develop. I think that I've been shaped by my parents a lot. I've noticed simple things that I do that some of my friends don't, that I think my parents taught me to do and has now just become habit. Like turning off the TV or the lights when I leave a room. The TV is always on at my girlfriend's house even if no one is watching or in the room. I think qualities like modesty and honesty are also taught by our parents, those aren't things ingrained in our genes.

Adulthood and Independence

It's tough to pinpoint one time when we become adults in our culture. The Somoans believe it's a continuous journey and everyone goes at their old pace. Nature says it's the time of puberty. We learned today that the average age that people are financially independent is around 27. We become legal adults at 18 and are legally responsible for our actions, but are we realyl adults? Could we really make it in the world? I guess if at 18 you had a full-time job, you could be independent. But that's not very realistic.
Tomorrow I'm visiting U of I, where I'll be going next year and will be expected to make my own decisions and balance my time. But am I an "adult"? Well my parents are paying for my education and odds are I'll be moving back in after gradutaion. True adulthood seems like a daunting idea, being truly independent, honestly, it's pretty scary. But I think that as time goes on we all learn enough to make it and be okay in our lives.

Women

With a title like the title of this post, anything can be said. But this week in class we talked about how genders are shaped. Even as little kids boys and girls are distinguished simply by their clothing but also in ways less obvious like which toys they play with. We had our own little show and tell and we observed that the girls' toys were typically soft and cuddly with warm colors while the boys' toys were about action and were typically bright colors. We looked at a kids' toy catalog and we saw that girls were typically seen playing indoors, a subliminal message about gender roles. Boys, on the other hand, were seen playing outdoors.
I see these gender gaps everyday. Even in our class, Jeff mentioned that guys don't go home and look in the mirror and degrade their body image while girls do. We learned about the images that magazines put out and how fake they are but that we still strive to be like that. I lift weights and have track practice everyday, while I love running, I know that because I work out, I'll have more of an athletic build. Before going on spring break, I worked on my abs more knowing that I would be swimming a lot and that it's important to look good, but these ideas are shaped by our society and thr idea that men should be muscular. I think it's important to be comfortable and happy with who we are and how we look.

Shaped by Society

Family is the biggest influence on the people we are. Not just the environment we grow up in, but the way our parents treat us. We learned that something as simple as the type of job our parents have can determine what mindset we have - conforming or being inovative. Whie family is obviously not the only thing that shapes us, it is one of the biggest components to who we are and how we act.
Personally, I've seen that sports teams impact my life in a positive way. Joining cross country not only forced me to push myself harder than ever before, but it opened my eyes to what a team is. These guys pushed EACHOTHER. The key to a good cross country team is having a strong top 5 runners that motivate eachother to drive through hard practices and succeed in meets. I think this environemt taught me about teamwork and how important the encouragement of others is.