Crash

Last week in soc we watched the movie crash. 

This wasn't my first time watching it but it was the first time watching it with a sociological mindset.

The one thing we were told to watch for is race and the explicit and Implicit biases involved with it. 

The big thing I noticed throughout the movie was all the different implicit biases we go though everyday in our interactions with people. The fact that we formulate these negative ideas about people just based on their looks is natural to us. It's how we react to those thoughts is what shows who we really are. I guess the term sociological mindfulness comes to mind here as the movie showed how people who are not mindful of their implicit biases and either reacted harshly or rashly. If we just take the time to think about our actions and don't act on pure instinct some explicit racism could be avoided 

Race

A few weeks ago I soc we learned about Race and how really it's not a true term it's just a word we use to describe someone. 

What surprised me was that race really isn't a true term and that it's just made up. That fact that we had to crate a word to describe someone by their features is amazing. In a perfect society the term race wouldn't be used at all.

What question me is if the word race never existed what would we use to deacripe people. Dark skinned? Light skinned?  But isn't that almost the same i as calling someone black or white? Can we classify someone without it being racial? I guess for me that's the million dollar question.

Community service

For my community service I volunteered at the special Olympics  bocci ball tournament.

I was there from 7:30 to 4:30 plus the hour for training so this covered all 10 hours. And Sal was my supervisor/leader for the event.

What I did was be the judge of the matches that took place through out the day. I really didn't know what to expect going into the day and was really surprised at how good the athletes were at the game. The whole day was a blast and really fun. Every person there was having a good time and having fun whether they win or lost which in the end is always the best to see. 

Post 14: Social Class/ New Money

In class we learned about term called new money. This is the name given to people in the upper class who have recently received and earned their money. This includes people like sports stars and new big company owners like bill gates, etc.
 When i look at the people who are considered the new money i can view then as the role models of the united states and I feel like that't not a good thing. These are the people we strive to be as they are the ultimate vision of success in our eyes. Our own culture has money and power as two of the top signs of social status. Yet to achieve that ultimate success of becoming new money is near impossible. To achieve that these people have done takes a great deal of work skill and luck which is why few make it to this rank. Yet, with so few able to achieve this ultimate success we all strive for it and ultimately end up in failure.  It like the whole population of the U.S going for 2 job openings at the top company. 2 people will be happy but the rest will be left behind depressed and in envy and awe of the people on top. Instead of valuing what we have and being happy with that we see what we could have and what we could be doing and it makes us feel inferior. What we need to do is be able value what we have instead of others even though major success if always shoved in our faces while we are less successful. Just because you don't have millions shouldn't meant you aren't successful in the U.S  


  

Post 15: Poverty

This week in soc we watched a movie showing how hard it is living on minimal wage and about how life is like in poverty and how hard it is to get by living on minimum wage. 

It's hard to think how that life is like that since we arnt the ones who have to live in poverty. To us minimum wage is just the payment we get for some extra spending money. And what we don't realize and what we saw in the movie is that this number is people living money. For only about 8 dollars an hour people work day in and day out working just to make maybe $50 and this their money to buy food, pay bills and do everything that's necessary for daily life. After seeing something like that  it makes me value what I have a lot more and look at those people who work these low wage jobs a lot heigher.  

Post 13 Deviance.

 A few weeks ago we learned about deviance through an activity in which we were supposed to go out and cause a good deviance whether it was doing the dishes for once or paying for somebody behind you. I guess the point of the assignment was to see the impact of what doing something different does.
In my own experience doing it i noticed being deviant is basically frowned upon in this society. What is did was try to pay for the meal for the person behind me at a fast food restaurant and when i handed the cashier the extra money they looked at me funny offering me the money back and almost getting in an argument with me as i tried to explain i was just doing a nice thing.
It's funny to see how in the country that's supposed to be the place where you can do anything you want that everyone what we chose to do is be like others. We are much more of  a conformist nation than one of deviance. We grow up learning to be like your neighbor and that being different is frowned upon, yet we are always getting told to be our-selves but if our selves isn't like the rest then we get yelled at. Most of us live our whole live growing up living basically to be someone else. To fit in. And if anyone strays away from that typical style they aren't looked at as unique and outgoing but as weird and a freak. These differences can be anything from the clothes we wear to how we talk and even how we pay for our meals. And we go to great lengths to fix these deviance's. Using medication and therapy is we have too much energy and spending way to much money to keep everything the same as your peers. The term "keeping up with the Jones's" comes to mined when i look t how our society is. Instead of valuing what we have for ourselves we always are looking at others and if its not the same as them then we are behind and different and that not a good thing.
What gets me is who sets these standards that we all conform too. The media? The Government? Or is it just something that happens naturally?        

Post 12 "Tough" guise

Back in the day in sociology we watched the film "tough" guise. This fils talked about how men are shaped through the media to perform a certain social expectation of being tough and mean and "being like a man". If men don't confirm to these social expectation they are made fun of and called a wimp and other names.

We learn at too early of an age of the "true" image of what a man is and we are constantly reminded every second of how we need to act, look, and behave to be considered "Normal" in today's society.

What doesn't make sense to me is that since we are always reminded of what the true man is then why don't we see more of us acting that way. There are those certain traits that we see here and there that we show but most guys aren't striving For that true man image. I feel that the "tough" guise isn't this complete mask that covers up our true selves but is more of a blanket that only covers up somethings but not everything