In Conclusion

So my very first post on this blog was me explaining who I am. I think for the most part I am the same person, but in my everyday life I have started to think differently after taking sociology. If something comes up I think about it a little more, and have started to over analyze more things which could become good and bad in the future. In my first blog I said I wanted to go to Michigan State. That was my dream school for the longest time, and coming down to it I learned that I liked it mostly because it is a Big Ten and is a typical school that a student from my high school would go to. In a way that is stereotyping, but most of the kids wind up going to the Big Tens, and I wanted to be a part of that until I realized that the programs at ISU are better for what I want to do when I get out of college, but because I had the image of a Big Ten being so great to go to and saying I was going to go to Michigan State, should not be the main reason why I would want to go there. Along with that, most people in the area are upper middle class and can send their kids out-of-state with no problem, but in my case, money was a huge issue in choosing a school, and I realized it wasn't worth paying off student loans when I get out of college just to go to school for its name. Socialization and social class were the biggest units that made me think about college more and helped me come up with the right choice.

The other big topic for me that made me change the way I think is race, especially when we did an activity on the computer with pictures of people and having to try and put them in what race they are just by looking at them. I found this topic interesting because I always thought that someones skin color was their race, but it isn't, and it made me more intrigued in the topic. It made me look at people differently and not just generalize like most Americans do.

I learned a lot from this class and doing these blogs by learning to think differently and then apply things to my own life which makes it even more interesting.

Race

This week we started to learn about race. I think the major thing I learned was that race is not biological, but because of our history we have been brought up to think that way. Race is a social factor, it is not the color of someone's skin or their features. One day we had to look at a group of people and classify them into what group we thought they belonged to. Out of I think 16 people, we only put 4 into their right group. Many people will look at someone and automatically judge what group the belong to. You see someone who is black and they are just black, but that's wrong because they can be half Jewish like Lenny Kravitz as seen in the Dave Chappel video "Racial Draft". This video intrigued me because I am currently dating someone who is black and if you never got to know him you would not know that he is part Portuguese. Race is part of people's culture not what color their skin is, and unfortunatly most people don't think that way because they have been brought up to think people with dark skin are bad and people with white skin are good.

Rags to Riches

The past couple of weeks we have been talking about social class, and this week we were finishing up a movie about the classes in America. They showed the "very wealthy" in the Hamptons of New York who were wealthy because they have old money like money from the Vanderbilt estate, or Rockerfeller estate. There were two ladies who commented about a new house that was built, and that the person that lived in it was "nevo" or new, as in they were not born into the money, they had to work for it. It's the American dream, the rags to riches, which is what most celebrities today are, their "nevo". Everyone wants to be "in" with those in their social class, but the people with money cannot accept the people with new money because as said before, they were not born into it. This goes along with Monopoly- the social class version that we played this week in class. Everyone was a certain class and the idea was to see if we would move up or down. I was the upper class, and I was more interested in seeing if the poorest and the blue collar workers would move up in class as oppose to me moving up in class because I'm use to hearing the "Rags to Riches" story. Social class is a major part of the American society no matter how much we don't want to think about it, it's always around us. At school, especially high school and high school girls, people always judge where you get your clothes or what label they have on them, or if you have higher grades you can afford a tutor for your ACT and get high scores. Your life depends on your social class, because most of the time you will always remain in your social class unless you pursue a dream and go from rags to riches.

Social Classes

Living and growing up a certain way is all part of being classified in a certain social class in America. Being brought up in a highly populated suburb near Chicago the average income is about $90,000. When someone from a trailer home in Alabama thinks about someone who makes $90,000 a year, they have their stereotypes as to what those people are like, as do the people making that much money in Chicago have their stereotypes of those in trailer parks in Alabama. People say you can never change the social class you're in and in a way I think it's true. Watching a video in class on social classes, a middle class woman wanted to try to go out with a wealthy man. With training and a makeover she looked the part, but still looked out of place and awkward at an art gallery, even looking uncomfortable because she had not grown up in that type of atmosphere. I think it's unfair that people are looked at by social class but in reality when you see someone's house or car you automatically say they have money or don't. When you talk to someone for the first time, the first question you ask after their name is "what do you do?" which relates to how important Americans think social class is.

Deviance

Deviance exists in everyone's world. There is positive deviance such as random acts of kindness, and negative acts of deviance such as theft or violence. We read an article called Saints and Roughnecks which was about two different groups of boys in high school and how they are deviant. The Saints were the upper/ middle class boys that would do little pranks and skip class to think they were cool, or stealing little things not worth much. They would never get into that deep of trouble. The Roughnecks were the boys who were more poor and would a t more violent and steal things worth more value. With adolescence, many people think they can get away with things and that it is no big deal to get in trouble, but the way you act as an adolescent will reflect how you are as an adult. Many of the saints went of to college getting degrees, becoming lawyers and business men, while most of the roughnecks wound up becoming druggies or getting caught up in jail. The saints and roughnecks can be found in a lot of schools. There are always the kids that think if they try in school they are wimps or they are peer pressured into doing what the rest of the group is doing to be accepted. If you want to do something deviant, make it positive.

Teenagers

As a society, we all generalize people, but one of the main groups generalized is teenagers. They aren't children, and they aren't adults. They're in the middle which makes people unsure how to deal with them. This week we read an article called "The Teen Mystique". I personally started to get angry reading it as a teenager because it generalized all teens to either be having sex, doing drugs, drinking or being a part of criminal activities. Many people judge teenagers as troublesome kids who don't know how to grow up. The article said that this generation of teenagers will basically ruin our society. Not all of us are that bad...sure we make mistakes, but that is what being a teenager is about. It's learning our mistakes to be able to become good adults when it comes time. Teens are immature, is the general assumption, but there are teens that graduate high school early and go off to college, or kids that don't do bad in school or out of school, are they immature too?

Masculinity

So last week we talked about how society affects women and girls especially in media, but this week we talked about men and how they are genderized. Guys are suppose to be fearless and never back down, be tough and fight when they need to, be tough. If they don't fit that role, they are considered wimpy, and called names that degrade their masculinity. I know a lot of guys that have to keep that "macho" appearance for other guys to respect them, but when they are with girls they will be sensitive and talk more about things they wouldn't even think about talking about with other guys. Some guys get so pressured for not being man enough that they even go crazy and have killed the people who put pressure on them. Most girls have always thought that guys have had it so much easier with appearances when they are pressured as well. When a guy wants a girl they see in the media that is overly beautiful, women want the same thing when they see men in magazines and on tv that are perfect and are attracted to guys like that because of the media. Many people think women are pressured more, when men are just as much pressured to be a man and tough things out. It's wrong, and actually learning more about it opened my eyes especially because I always thought girls have it so much harder with body image and self esteem, when it is the same thing for guys. I give them much more credit because they have to deal with the physical violence of not being man enough as well.