Gender and Sexuality

                Gender and Sex is a major concern in our world today. Sex is the biological distinction between females and males. In contrast, Gender refers to the socially constructed cultural expectations associated with women and men.  The distinctions between sex and gender are not always so clear cut. In the article Sexuality and Society, scientists researched heterosexual and homosexual balance. They imply that from the time of birth one is fated to be one thing or the other, and there is little chance for one to change his/her patters in the course of a lifetime. In my opinion, who really cares on homosexuality? If someone chooses to love their same gender and sex, it’s really their choice and dedication to take on the critics. I mean men should like women not other men but that’s how we were though in society and life. Many people believe that preferences for sexual partners of a particular sex are merely secondary magnifications of something that lies much deeper in someone’s personality.  Intersexual people are individuals born with ambiguous reproductive or sexual anatomy. Having this in a man can usually result in homosexuality. In research, there have been many attempts to show that the homosexual male has a considerable crop of hair and less often becomes bald. Their characteristics are often shaped like women. For example, they have broader pelvis, larger genitalia, and a tendency towards fat.  What researches say about homosexual men are not all true. They say that they are not that athletic, and are more often interested in music and the arts. I can’t agree with this, but I know a couple homosexual males who are top athletes in their school and are not interested in music as much. Also they say that homosexual males often find jobs as bookkeeping, dress designs, window displays, hairdressing, acting, radio work, nursing, religious service, and social work. This is true but all males and females do these things because it’s what interests them. 

Race & Ethnicity

                    Throughout the world, race plays a big role. Research shows that the main thing that is needed to be changed is a change in moral behavior of poor black urban dwellers. This includes poor black men, who say that they want to stay married and support their children and also stop committing crimes. This is very true, but not all black Americans commit crimes. There are other races out there that do worse things than blacks. In my opinion and what I see through my eyes is that blacks commit crimes just to survive in this world. The skin color of blacks affects their job opportunities and usually results in low-pay work. Ethnicity plays a big role here because a shared cultural heritage often deriving from a common ancestry and homeland are not seen in most people eyes. One of the common denominators of the views on race is that each race still sees blacks as the “problem”. This is such a stereotype because not all blacks are the problem. And the thing that’s gets to me is that everyone seems to pick on blacks. Is it because of their skin color!? Or is it because of their background!? According Cornel West, “Conservatives blame the “Problems” on blacks, and thereby render black social misery invisible or unworthy of public attention”. The word Race is a category of people that are widely perceived as sharing socially significant physical characteristics such as skin color. What liberals are trying to do is plain old stupid and unfair. Why put all blacks into one society, and separate them from the other societies? The Rodney case opened many eyes in the world. It showed that whites have often failed to acknowledge the widespread mistreatment of black people. Especially black males, by law enforcement agencies. Personally I see this happen many times. I’m the type of person who doesn’t only befriend my own race but befriend many other races. I have many black friends and hanging out with them can bring a lot of heat from cops. This past weekend I was walking down the street with five of my friends. Of course they were black and out of nowhere cops came up to us guns drawn and told up to get on the floor. In my mind I was just hoping someone getting this on camera because the cops were harassing us. They came up to us one by one checking our ids and arresting us. When they got to me, they checked my id and asked me if I was black. Right away I was like what the hell why does that matter u already arrested us. But then the next thing I realize the cops let me go because I was not black in skin color. This was an act of Racism where the belief that one race is inherently superior to another. And that is what happened. All the cops were white and had something against blacks. But gladly the owner of the building we were in front of came out can gave me the tape that caught the whole ordeal we went to. Now the 8 cops who arrested my friends for no reason has no job because of their act of racism on blacks. According to p.255 in the book “Experience Sociology”, the graph shown shows us that the majority of whites live in the norther hemisphere when all the money is and the blacks live in the southern hemisphere where there is barely any money. Blacks fall in the minority group, which are a collection of people who suffer disadvantages and have less power. And the whites fall in the majority group who enjoy privileges and have more access to power because of cultural characteristics.

                                      Race: The Power of Illusion

          To understand why the idea of race is a biological myth requires a major paradime shift and an absolute paradime shift to shift the perspective in life. Infamy is like seeing what it must have been like in the past years in the world. Race is not based on biology but is ascribed to biology. Many people believe that blacks are more athletic than others. A genetic base of environment training can hold an advantage in different races in sports. There are 4 classes of race in society. And people are described by skin color, hair shape, body shape, eye shape. Some believe that you can identify people race just by looking at them. Others believe that some races have an advantage over others. For example, athletic ability, musicals knowledge, and education. But there’s no advantage it’s just the way you are brought up or what type of training you have. 

People Like Us and Media Magic

                       Media Magic: Making Class Invisible

          In today’s world, the mass media is arguably the most influential in molding public consciousness. Media is highly concentrated, and the different corporations are getting smaller because of ownership and control related issues. But because the companies are shrinking the control of the industry is expanding. In my opinion media plays a big role in our cultural lives, helping us understand society, and know what is going on in the world.

          The U.S is the most highly stratified society in the industrialized world. But if we are the most industrialized society in the world, why are there so many poor people. Many people in the world don’t know what’s going on in the poverty society because the media chooses to provide its users with meager coverage of the poor, which is usually misleading information. Many people believe that the media ignores the poor. And I completely agree with this because in my 19 years of watching the news I rarely see or hear anything about the poor. What people in society should know is that the rate of poverty is increasing twice as fast as the population growth. My question is, why do we have a government? The government is supposed to help their citizens, but recently their more focused on abroad affairs. All you see on the television is war related stuff, and other stuff about crimes. Yes those stuff are important, but we need to know more about the economy and financial related stuff to have a chance to survive as a working class family and become poor. When people hear poor, they roughly think about living on streets and being a disturbance to the world. That’s their opinion, but honestly people need to think if that was them what they would feel like. The Middle class and Upper class can be cold hearted sometimes to people lower than them.

          When the media talks about everyone else, they say we are divided between the”Underclass” and everyone else. In my eyes I really don’t understand what they mean about this, but this message is often contradictory. Much of the information provided to us from the media focuses its attention on the concerns of the wealthy and privileged class of people. This is completely true. For example, recently all you see on the new is celebrities, wealthy people and the president. I say who cares about them; all they do is flash/ show off their money especially the celebrities. Another example I see mostly on the news is the sports in school. All you see is Private schools games on the news. What happened to the other schools that win constantly and win division championships? You rarely see them on the news because it’s most likely public school.

          This article was an eye opener for me. Many of my views towards the media are answered. Only the rich and wealthy prosper on media not the underclass people. The poor and working class people work twice as hard as rich people but get payed so low just because this concept of social structure. Many believe that whichever social classes you are born into you stay in that class. But no that is not true. People can go to school and get an education to better their lives. But the media shuts that down for most of the people; tell the world about misleading information and untrue stuff. The media need to pick up on the poverty issue which is growing dangerously fast.

                       People like Us: Social Classes in America

          This video is about the different class people fall in. It is basically against the American principle to belong to a class but it does exist. The Americans have trouble talking about class because they don’t want to admit that it exists, or let people have a thought of what class they are in. It is based on popularity, money, housing, and where your parents worked or where you work. Social Climbers are people who are very anxious to gain a higher social status.  Upper class people say that they won’t ever drive a Volvo because it is typically a middle-class to lower class car. But then again they say they won’t even drive a ford because it gets stolen a lot. One thing clouds my mind is the fact that they won’t drive a ford which are a middle class car but will drive an upper class car like a McLaren or BMW which tend to get stolen more often. What I see often and do as well is act very tough when an upper-class person comes up to you. Mostly in business middle to lower class people who get approached by upper class-men in suits tell them to take off the jacket and tie. Why? Because they won’t let them look down on them and disrespect them because they have money and power.

          One thing that’s very disturbing is children in schools are being segregated because of this so called class. For school kids, class does matter because other students judge you all kinds of ways. Mostly in fashion because who ever dress to impress tells the others that they are a higher class. This video showed me many things. But that disturbs me is that most of the upper class people in the video are white and tend to shut down other classes especially blacks. For example, one upper class guy tell the viewers that some parent don’t want their kids in public schools because of the blacks. To me that is totally racists. Another thing that is explained in the video is that America is divided by class by which neighborhood you live in, your education, or the way you dress. There are many Inequalities that cannot be explained about class, but class does exist in the world, its just people don’t like to talk about it.

                                                Extra Credit

                        Ted Talk Conference on Education

          Studies show that every 1 in 5 kids drop out of high school. That is almost 1 million students a years. Poverty and negative peer influence plays a big role in student’s lives and education. If a student is in poverty, they usually have messed up clothing which affects them because others kids make fun of them. This can lead to kids dropping out. When kids follow a bad crowd they are forced to do things they don’t want to do, but do it anyways because of peer pressure. One of the most looked at thing in education today is human connection and relationships between the teacher and their students. Without good relationships the student won’t listen to their teachers and won’t learn anything. But is the teachers show the kids that they care then that would help everything. Rita Pierson tells us that if a teacher says sorry to a student because he/she made a mistake in class, that can affect the student by letting them know you care for them. If a teacher just teaches and don’t explain the kids won’t lie them. And studies show that kids don’t learn from people they don’t like.

          According to Dr. Ramsey, teachers should know that student’s questions are very important. Answering the student questions can help them understand better and will show them that you care. He also argues that student should be curious of what there are being teached so that they can have a better understanding of it. He goes on telling the viewers that’s there is a big difference between knowledge and learning. And teachers need to see this in kids to help them better understand what is being thought. 

Deviance

   What is deviance? Deviance describes actions or behaviors that violate the social norms of the society.  In your everyday life you see many deviant things that are out of the norms.  One of the most deviance things I've seen every day, and experienced is when you are on the train (for men and women), and a guy comes and presses his body on you for no reason. It is completely out of the norm to do that, and it makes you very uncomfortable.  Another thing that is usually out of the norm is people picking their nose in public. When someone does this people around that person look at them very unusually, because it’s not in the norms of the public. Referring to Chapter 8, to what Durkheim says about Collective Conscience, the shared norms, beliefs, and values in a community is well known to everyone and violating this makes you somewhat of an outcast in the eyes on the community. Over the weekend I went to this party with my cousin, and what I saw was very deviance. I saw parents encouraging the teenagers there to drink and smoke. It was completely out of the norm and I had to leave.  Another thing I've experienced in life that is deviance is girls drinking uncontrollably. It is out of the norm for girls to drink like that, when people look at drunken girls they give them that dirty look and tell them there low lives. When people are labeled to a certain name or a certain way they tend to follow that label. This is an example of the Labeling Theory. This argues that deviance is the result of how others interpret a behavior and that individual who are labeled deviant often internalize this judgment as part of their self-identity. Some people who are labeled as deviant must deal with stigma or shame. This shame can cause a person to isolate themselves from society or even lead to suicide. Stigma refers to the shame that is attached to a behavior or status that is considered socially unacceptable and discrediting. Living around the projects isn't really a good quite neighborhood. Every day you see young kids roaming the streets with their pant hanging down their butts. This is not the norm of the society. These kids should be in school being educated and thought respect and manners. But the major problem is that the parents allow their kids to do what they want, and sometimes that leads up to kids in trouble with the law or even dead on the streets. In my high school days i was very calm but very tough as well. No body messed with me or talk trash about me, and people considered me deviant. I use to cut school a lot, but also never pay attention in class. But the thing that made my teachers stand by my side was my ambition to strive for better education. Many of the gang members in my high school labeled me as a two face jerk, but never stood up to me. Not because i was a big kid, it was because i was very close with the school educators and police staff. Going into college i have change dramatically, but I still strive for that education i believe i am  not getting. The norm for me was to get a better education, and I didn't care for the education i was getting at the time. But in reality the norm was take what you get, and work towards your goals to get a better education. Another example of a deviant act was back in my senior year of high school. I got addicted to online games, mostly first person shooting and mmorpg. I never wanted to hang outwith my friends or even my family, I considered my friends on the game were more important. But as the school year went by, I noticed myself drifting away from the crowd I once use to follow. The norm for me was to play the game and advance past others, but in reality the norm was to not be so addicted and have a life outside of the house or away from the computer. 

    In the reading Positive Functions of the Undeserving Poor: Uses of the Underclass in America, it talks about poverty and about the different functions of undeserving poor.  One of the most concerned thing to both populations (poor or not poor), is the street crime activity. The criminal or disapproved behavior that is ascribed to these two populations resorts to it often classified as unworthy and undeserving. Once the poor are judged to be undeserving, they are then no longer thought to be deserving of the public aid that is financially sufficient and secure enough to help them escape poverty. These judgments of the poor as undeserving are not based on evidence, but derive from a stereotype. This is an example of the Labeling Theory.  Some functions that are described in this article are the Economic functions. Economic banishment and the reserve army of labor describes that people that have been labeled as undeserving can be banished from the formal labor market. An example that is given is school kids who are labeled as school dropouts often lead up to believing it and are thought to lack the need for work experience, and might not be offered jobs. Another example of the undeserving poor to support themselves economically is supplying drugs. This is a major issue that is present around the world. These undeserving poor people are banished from other jobs remain eligible for work on the streets and sale of illegal good, including drugs.