Final Blog

First semester is ending, so no more sociology with Sal. :/  This class has made me look at the world in a different perspective. After learning about culture, deviance, race, social class, etc., I look at things differently. We talked about nature (our genes) & nurture (our social environment) and how these two things make up who we are. We have our appearances and the people that surround us every day.  We also talked about how race is a social construction and not a biological fact.  For a long time, and still today, people judge others based on their looks, thinking they are a certain race when really they could be a different race. Not only that, but some people judge others based on what others are doing that are deviant to them, like what color their skin is, what color eyes they have, the way a person may dress, the way people talk to one another, and many more examples. Junior year I dated a guy that was half black and half white. When friends and people from school saw pictures of what he looked like, right off the bat I got different responses like, "He's Hispanic isn't he?", or "You're dating a black guy...why?"  People started judging before they knew who he really was. I've learned that all these things we talked about fit together to make up what sociology is all about.
  When I decided to take this class, I had no idea that we had to do community service instead of taking a final exam. In the beginning I thought it was awesome because we just had to get a certain amount of hours in and that was it.  Through this experience it wasn't like that at all.  I learned that we could find ourselves by going out and taking our time to help others.  This class is in our everyday lives, and I like how I know how to look at the world differently knowing more than I did before.

Crash

 The movie, Crash, I believe is an interesting movie. It shows how society judges people before knowing who they really are. For example, Sandra Bullock's character, a white high class wife who wanted her locks changed at home, because she just got home from having a gun pointed to her face approached by two black men that stole her & her husband's car. The guy that fixed her locks was Hispanic. She started yelling at her husband because she wanted her locks changed a second time just because the guy fixing them was Hispanic.She told him that he is a "gang banger" and that him & his "homies" will break into their house and take over. Even though she had a gun pointed at her by two black men, doesn't mean she has the right to accuse a man changing her locks based on his race. Later in the movie, we all find out that he was not what Sandra's character believed he was. He was not involved in a gang, & had a wife and daughter that he loved very much & worked hard to support his family. From this movie & from sociology class, I learned that we should all stop saying things about people before we know anything about them.

Why Is There Racism?

Wouldn't it be nice to not have a thing called race? And just to be called "people"? Our society tends to classify people of different races before knowing what their true race is. For example, I may walk into the grocery store with my mom, and I'll see someone with dark colored skin. I would probably think in my mind that the person I saw would be black, but what if they were really Latino? We don't know anything. We generally tend to judge someone by their outside appearance.

Living off of minimum wage??

 In class we watched an episode of 30 Days where Morgan & his fiance live off of minimum wage. While watching this episode, I thought to myself, "Wow...How can anybody live like this everyday for the rest of their lives?" I tell myself that I am lucky to be where I am right now, and to understand that there are people that live like this everyday just to keep themselves to survive. Low-middle class, middle class, middle-upper class, & upper class even struggle through life, but thinking about how others are living off of minimum wage...I am thankful for where I stand today.

Tammy's Story- Poverty

We watched a documentary on a woman named Tammy that lives in the middle of nowhere & lives in poverty. She supports her and her family by walking to work everyday 10 miles to Burger King and back home, only earning minimum wage. Tammy does this to keep her & her family to survive. In each class, (High Class, Middle Class, & Low Class), struggle with problems all the time. But if you look back at Tammy's way of life, you want to be thankful everyday that you don't live that way. That you are lucky to be where you are today. And to keep fighting those struggles throughout life, because someone else has it way worse than you do.

JAIL isn't helping

In class, we watched an episode of 30 Days with Morgan Spurlock and how he experienced these days in jail.  From watching his experience, the prisoners that he would talk with more than half were in jail because of a drug related crime. A guy named Travis was in jail because he was addiceted to cocaine, heroin, and marajuana. He had goals for himself, like getting a job when he would get released. And once he was released, he ended up committing two other crimes about 2 months later from his release date. From him being in jail for a long period of time, then already 2 months later he's committing crimes again shows that jail isn't helping these prisoners. What they really need is counseling and other programs that would       support them by becoming drug free. To come clean, and not go back to prison because apparently jail isn't helping.

Deviance

What is deviance? It's an act out of the norm. What you may think is not normal to you, may be normal to others. An example would be carrying a basket of food on your head. To me, this is deviant, but that's because in America you don't see people walking out of the grocery store carrying their food by placing it on their head. We carry our groceries with bags using our hands. Another example of deviance would be walking barefoot into stores. Someone in the store would look at you thinking, "Why the heck aren't they wearing any shoes...?" Whenever we go to stores you see everyone wearing something on their feet. So we define this as deviant.  There are many other examples of deviance. It all depends on who thinks what is normal and what is not normal to them.