Final Blog

Throughout this class, I have learned that much more defines me than I thought. Not only the people and things I come in contact with, but my race, my class, and my culture. I have discoverd through class and through my service experiences that the way we define race is important. When I went to Onward House, almost all of the kids were hispanic, and this was in waht seemed to be a more impovershed but not horribly impoverished part of Chicago. In our school, there is not nearly as high of a percentage of hispanic people, many are white and our school is a more upper class school. This shows that race does have an impact on where you live. Class also has made me who I am. Being born into an relatively upper middle class family, I go to a good high school, am supposed to go to a good college, and should get a good job. This is a direct result of class. Someon who is born into a lower social class is influenced by that and does not have the opportunities that a high class has the privealge to have. Also culture has been a huge influence for me. It tells me what to like and what not to like, what is cool and what is not, and how I should talk and act. Culture may be perhaps the biggest influence on me. Thakin this class has really helped me to understant myself and others.

Crash

The racism in the movie is shocking. I have never seen this kind of racism either in person or in a movie and I was appalled. However, this is a sad fact of our society. Racism exists. Race exists. Race is not even real. People only have different color skin because of where they come from in the world. How much sun they get is a big determinant. Race is used as a skapegoat. I have seen racist and prejudice acts before such as racist jokes or jewish jokes or christian jokes but never have i seen racism to this extent. The fact that there are entire groups organized across multiple continents that endorse a raceal view is amazing. Race as a part of our social construction is inherent in us. Now that we are consious of the implicit racism we must try to change it.

Are We Nauturally Racist??

The ovious answer to this question is NO. We have moved on from the days of the Civil War and race riots and everyone is now and equal citizen. But this may not be as straighforward as we think it is. After seeing one of our classmates take and implicit racism test, we see that even in our world, people are inherintely racist without intending to be. We have been socially constructed to believe that WASPs are the most inherintly good and it goes downhill from there, ending in ethinic and darker skinned people. The doll test reaffirmed this implicit racism, showhing that no matter what race you are, you are taught from a very young age that white is good. This is a problem because every reace has good and bad traits. Therefore all races should be respected equally.

Monopoly

Playing monopoly with the amended rules according to the U.S. class system really did open my eyes to a better understanding of the class structure in the U.S. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer. And although this may be sad, it is, on some levels, true. What we see is the rich getting more benefits and opportunities, which in turn allows them to become even richer, while the poor barely have any opportunities or help, therefore becoming even poorer. This is the unavoidable lack of manuverability in the class system of the United States. We see this in many statistics of real places such as big cities. Those who live in poverty, or are close to it, either stay in poverty or probably become a part of it. Those that have the money to get into a good pre school, then grade school, then high school, then college, make plenty of money because they started out with it. Sadly but truly, this is the inescapable class system of the United States.

Social Class

Social class can be beneficial, but also a very limiting factor. In the moive that we watched this week we learned how being born into a low social class can result in one being stuck in that social class for their whole life. On the other hand, being born into a high social class may lead to a lot of good opportunities and other benefits. The lady in the movie who worked at burger king has been stuck in that class for her entire life. And the guy who was a WASP has been socially constructed to believe that he is better than everyone. We can see this in statistics such as a higher percentage of minorities beeing jailed than whites, and a greater percentage of minorities being in poverty than whites. Social class is a limiting factor and is very hard to change and we must recognize that social class is not always decided by the individual.

A Flawed System

The criminal justice system in the United States is like a bee trap. Once you get in, you can get out. It is a revolving door, but the exit is nearly impossible to squeeze through. The way we currently treat criminals does nothing to help them and make them become better citizens. We simply get them off the streets. But once they return, most of them go back to doing exactly what they were doing before they were locked up. Then they get arrested again, and repeat the entire process, with each reoccurence resulting in a harsher, yet just as unproductive sentence. We have been socially constructed to think that criminals, even convicted of minor crimes, are bad people and should be put in jail. This leads to the kind of bee trap system we have. As we saw in the movie, 30 days in jail, the two criminals we saw released were both arrested within two months of attaining their freedom. In part, this is due to the expectations they are put forth for them. I have seen the same in school. Some students that are expected to be trouble makers live up to these expectations. I think because of these expectations, it makes is more normal for these specific kids to do what they do. It is not out of the ordinary because it is expected. We must try to lift these expectations in general and try to fix these bee trap models that we are stuck in.

Saints and Roughnecks

This study was an incredibly interesting one. It reveals something that many people know but do not talk about. That is that rich kids that play the game right can get away with almost anything because authority often just looks the other way. Poorer kids on the other hand have it opposite the rich kids and actually get in trouble for stuff that maybe they shouldnt be. Authority is more strict when it comes to poorer kids. This happens in Stevenson exactly the way it happened in the study, at least for the saints. Roughnecks are less prevelant, but saints are known and everyone just looks the other way, mostly, becasue people are afraid of their power. Saints have power to do a lot and exposing them would just end up bad for the person that ruined their act. This shows that deviance is relative. Deviant acts, in the case of the study both negative, are ignored in one case and exagerated in the other, depending on social standing. This may be unfair but it is kind of the way we have been socially constructed. The saints and roughnecks are very relevent to many places and are a great example of a basic social structure.