Year of Sociology

It's pretty funny that I never expected to use sociology in my life. But if I had a dollar for every time I told myself "Hey I learned that in sociology" I'd have a solid four dollars. 

Just the other day someone was calling Mexicans a race. I immediately claimed that it's not a race, it's an ethnicity! Sociology is cool and all, but my biggest takeaway from the class was to be open-minded and see social settings in a bigger picture.

Anyway, this is my last blog post :o( it's been a fun time writing this blog even though I'm up at 2AM on prom night. I hope you guys liked reading everything and hopefully I interested you guys into taking a sociology class! You never know!

Later gators!

Crime and Race

I've been watching a video about a specific crime.

The crime involves a man and his wife minding their own business when an African American man comes up, demands a purse, and shoots the wife. That's pretty messed up.

But you know what's more messed up is that the police pulled random dark skinned men off the street to be questioned. How is that fair at all? You're a suspect for a crime just for being black.

There's much more to the story, but I want to know how often this actually happens. There's not a doubt in my mind that this creates frustration within the African American race.

What do you guys think? Is this fair? Is it OK to pull random innocent people off of the street because of their skin color?

Race and Ethnicity

How many people have heard the phrase "Hey that's racist!"

Probably most of you guys. But what does it really mean?

We apply stereotypes to different races and ethnicities like Asians and African Americans.

As an Asian American, people always think that I'm smart, good at math, or that I eat dogs. Obviously, none are true to me. We apply stereotypes to everyone labeled as Asian American based off of few in that category. 

So tell me, what kinds of things do people say to you that are incredibly untrue?

Intergenerational Mobility

Intergenerational mobility is a neat thing for us high schoolers, imagine how hard our parents work for us to get the great education we have today. I know my parents came from an incredible tough background working as farmers for a majority of their youth, to working menial jobs at food joints. Now they both own their own restaurant and have more opportunities than they could dream about. My parents provided me the opportunity to move upward in social class. One day (hopefully), I will make my parents proud and go up in social class.

So what kind of social background do you guys come from? You don't have to say anything personal, but you could give a shoutout to your parents like me!

Poverty

Poverty is a little strange, it's so hard to determine whether someone is actually in poverty. but the important part is that we make stereotypes for people in poverty.

I read a couple of articles and watched a few videos on the people in poverty.
One of the most notable things I noticed from the articles were the people who were homeless. The government attempts to do a homeless census called a PIT count and tries to identify the number of homeless people. However, the reason why this is so inaccurate is because some people look homeless, but are not actually homeless. Another reason is that some homeless people like to hide from the public. How can we create a proper poverty line if we can't even account for the homeless population?

I also saw a video about a street in St. Louis.

In this video, Delmar Boulevard separates two incredibly different lives. One side lives with a high median income while the other side is basically poverty stricken. The problem is that 98% of the poverty stricken community is African-American. This paints a face onto poverty. It is not healthy for these stereotypes to be created because it will hurt our community.

What do you guys think about the poverty line? I think it's such a poor system, what do you think could be done about these problems?

Random Acts of Kindness

As an act of positive deviance, I decided to bring three roses to school and share them with a select few people.

When I gave away the first rose, I was in a small group of people. I gave her the rose and she loved it, although she was incredibly embarrassed for a while. She was very excited to be getting a rose and she gave me a big ole' hug while other people in the group kept asking "But wheres my rose?".

The second rose was to one of the sweetest teachers at my school. I hadn't talked to her in over a few months. I came into her class and gave the rose to her and she was so happy. She responded with "Aww, Victor this is so sweet and cute! Thank you!" and her class looked at me like I was very strange and weird for giving a teacher a flower.

On the third and final rose, I came into a friend's choir class, she had not yet been in the classroom so I was asking around for her. Once she got into her class I ran up and gave her the rose. Of course, she responded with the normal "Is this for me?" and was slightly surprised (because I told her she wouldn't get a rose from me ever). Her class responded with a resounding "Aww!" and clapped.

I think random acts of positive deviance are nice. Doing a simple gesture like bringing someone a flower can make their day. But it not only makes their day, but you know that you are a better person on the inside when you do a nice thing.

So I encourage you, TO GO OUT AND MAKE SOME PEOPLE HAPPY

Prison, Convicts, and THE FLASH

It's crazy, the United States spend so much money on our prison system, yet they fail to reform most inmates back into a functioning society.
This article from CNN ( http://money.cnn.com/infographic/economy/education-vs-prison-costs/ ) graphs how much states spend towards education versus the cost of housing an inmate.

Although you all might tell me, "Schools don't need to house kids!", I agree with that, but it is still incredible to compare how much money the U.S. spends on a penitentiary.
Prisons should focus more toward reforming these inmates and trying to send the best ones back into society rather than housing prisoners for years.

It reminds me of The Flash, not really any spoilers here (unless you've never heard of The Flash comics at all), but The Flash's dad, Henry Allen is in prison for life for being framed for a murder. In the comics, he never makes it out of prison, he continues with a life sentence and does not receive parole.
In the comics, the guards even say that Henry Allen is one of the kindest and well behaved inmates, but he never gets to be released from prison.
Even though it's just a comic, it has some applications to today's institutions, where we aren't giving convicts a chance to get back to society.

This gets me thinking about the labeling theory, where people attach labels to people. In this case, a label is attached to Henry Allen and people think he's a bad guy, even though he is a great man.