Final blog

Who am I?

This blog is dedicated to my Sociology class at a Illinois high school. Whats cool about this is it replaces taking tests. So for the next five months I'll be updating this blog periodicaly.

Whats there to know about me? Well...I run track and cross country, I snowboard, I sing in my schools top choir , and I have a huge love of technology. Also like any high school guy I enjoy my TV and video games. I'm currently a senior at my school and plan on going to a college, I'm just not sure which one yet. During the summer I work three jobs. I life guard, ref soccer, and umpire baseball. I've lived in the same town and house all my life and I wouldn't have it an other way. I love the days where I can hang out with my friends and just do nothing. The biggest influences in my life are definetly my friends and family. In terms of goals all I can reall hope to achieve is be successful and happy. Thats basically me in a nutshell.

Last week in class we discussed the inauguration. Basically we got to here all about my teachers experience at the presidential inauguration. We saw his pictures, videos, and souvenirs. It was actually my first day in the class becuase I had just been transferd in and it was a cool way to start it off."

That was my very first blog. Know the wuestion is how would I change it after learning what I have about sociology. The only thing that really sticks out that I would change is my stereotyping. I said that like any high scholl guy I wnjoy video games and TV. I now realize that that was really dumb of me to say. I know girl that play video games and just because the gamming population is mainly high school guys doesn't meen I should just lump it all together.

Looking back I can see how my culture has realy affected me. For instance I said I was in the top choir. While this may be true, my culture has trained me so much that you need to prove that you are better than someone else to be accepted. If you are in the low choir your immediatly viewed as just terrible.

I also feel like social class comes into play here. I work 3 jobs and its partly to do with my social class. I cant have mommy and daddy pay for everything because of my social class. So I need to wrok and earn my own money to use.

After taking this class. Ive started to make connections to every little things I do. Like the only reason spit is gross is because were conditoned to think that. I really enjoyed the class and hope to continue taking socilogy classes in college

Make up blog from May 8: Race what is it?

Everyone may think that race is part of you. Its something your born with. When really its something your named. Your not born blakc, your just called it. There is no biological part of our DNA that says you are white. In class we started talking about how race is a society factor not biological. Probbly the most enlightening thing we did with this was a match the face to the race activity. We got 4 right as the entire class. Alot of it seemed to be becuase the people we were identifying were such a samll percentage of that race, but the minorities always win. Take Obama for instance. He is viewed as our first black president even though he;s only half black. The minority wins.

This isn't something that really bugged me at first, but I hade never really though of the origin of race. Its just something that our society created hundreds of years ago before true scientific evidence. It really is kind of annoying that we are classified into these categories. were all the same species of human theres not one thing that make us different biologically than another human. I feel that race is a strong factor in our society to this day. I only hope that race eventually disapears and were left with one thing and that is human.

Crash

This week in calss we watched the movie "Crash". The movie is great. It really demonstrates the race sterotypes that our cultures make. The movie is about a group of people that are all some how interconected and how racisim affects them in one way or another. 

This movie really works well for waht we are learning in class. We have learned that there really is no such thing as race. Theres nothing in our DNA that says your white or your asian. Race is just what society says it is. The movie shops how sterotypes are based on the way people look. In the begging of the movie you first notice it when the female cop goes and yells at the asian woman for her driving. Asian driving is a huge racist sterotype. You also can see how black in the movies are viewed as just all around bad people. They have to be theifs or poorly educated. They couldn't just be a nice guy. And if a black man is shot by a white man it is a hate crime.

The truth is the movie really demonstrates how society works. People are racist to some degree in my opinion no matter what. I feel that yes we have made improvements, but there are always going to be these stereotpyes. I here it all the time at school. It could be some remark about how asians are just naturally smart, how only mexicans work in the fast food industries, and so on. Its really a fair assumption to say all people are racist to some degree. I see it getting better, but we have hundreds of years of society brainwashing to reverse.

30 days minimum wage is hard work

This week in class we watched another episode of 30 days. The episode was about living on minimum wage. This showed how difficult the life of the working poor can be. The most shcoking and apalling thing about this whole thing was how the medical system worked against them. At the end of the 30 days they ebded up owing the hospital $1,200.  The working poor has to do what ever they can to stay alive in the world. Being able to actually use money to buy something for relaxation or necessities, such as furniture, are imposible to buy. They had to go to a good will store to get dishes. The place they were living in had a crack house being run in it at one point.

We also played monopley, but not normal monopoly. We all started off with different amounts of money to represent different socail classes. The game proved that its nearly imposible to actualy move up in the social ladder. While the rich get richer, the poor gets poorer. This is a true statement. I was able to keep myself at upper middle class and could afford all the fees I had to pay and still make money. Our minimum wage system is obviously messed up. Hopefully the goverment realizes this so people can make a good living.

The big house

Prison is a punishment that is extremely cruel. This week we watched 30 days and saw what prison life was like for 30 days. These people are so cut off from the outside world that there lifestyle is anything but normal. They are denied so much of the normal things from the outside world. Their entertainment is typically reading or talking. Sometimes they get lucky and can work in the cafeteria for a few hours.
Our criminal system is harsh. So much so that we make huge assumptions about people before they are even convicted. The article courtroom 302 showed that. People are guilty before innocent. Then even if these people do get out of jail they have no support ring. They have to depend on themselves. Our law sysytem needs some work, prisons are becoming overpopulated with multiple offenders. With all luck our system will get a much needed change.

Saints and roughnecks

We always here " don't judge a book by its cover", but frankly no one does it. The first thing that you do when you meet someone is look at them and try to size them up using stereotypes. The article we read in class only emphasized how this is done. There are the rich, well dressed, straight a students who seem like saint, but really aren't. They do things like drink and steel or do stupid things in their cars. Then if they get caught doing any of them they are let off with warnings at most. The adults size them up and think of them as decent kids. Then there was the rough necks who also do stupid things, but dont have the same background as the saints. They are poorer and dont dress as nice. If they get caught they recieve instant punishment.
I see this all the time today. You see people who get sized up and misjudged just becuase of how they look. If you look at things like death sentences a majority of the people sentenced are black. Our world is guilty of stereotyping people and not giving them a fair shot at showing who they really are.

Be a Man

This week in class we went over male and female expectations. On the female side we talked on how media has manipulated the way girls grow up and whats expected of them. They grow up with this idea that they have to dress a certain way, need to be a certain height, need to be so thin or so tall. They set these imposibly high standards that no one ever acualy looks like. This was really shown in the Dove videos we watched. A women went through a full photo shoot, but by the end result, its not really her on the bilboard. Its some photo shoped imposter.

Then there is the guy side of things. We wathced a video about how guys have to put on a guise. They need to show that they are a tuff guy and won't stand for any crap. They need to be muscular, accel in sports, not show any signs of weakness. This is shown countless times in mass media. The movie frequently made references to movies such as "Rambo" or "Terminator". The actors in those movies are muscular and are have some heavy artilery to really that they are in charge. As a result there are gun crimes, murders, and rapes all done by males for the most part. Media needs to make drastic changes to show that its okay for men to show signs of weakness. Its not something men should be ashamed of to help break this social norms for men.