Crash

I just wanted to start out by saying I'm obsessed with this movie, it was definitely on the intense side, but it was so good and really made me think. Anyways. There were a lot of examples of both implicit and explicit racism in the movie. The Sandra Bullock character clearly demonstrates both. She later admit that she felt afraid when she saw the two black men approaching her, but she didn't want to act upon that fear because then she would be a racist. But because she later felt like she should have done something, she is explicitly racist towards the man who was redoing her locks and she was sure he must be a gang member because he was Mexican. The Iranian man also assumes the same man cheated him probably also because he was Mexican. However, the gun shop owner is explicitly racist towards the Iranian man and basically calls him a terrorist.Another example of implicit racism is when the cop Tommy picks up the black hitch-hiker. It's obvious that Tommy is trying so hard not to be racist, but deep down we know he was scared because he assumed the black man had a gun and ended up shooting him. I could go on and on with examples from the movie, but I think you get the point. Although I think explicit racism is always worse than implicit because the overtness of it just hurts feelings of others, implicit can sometimes be just as bad. Like I said before, Tommy wasn't explicitly racist, but his implicit racism caused him to shoot the man. I think all of us have some implicit racism and it's not really something we can control. Our society taught us that white people are "good". I was really surprised to watch on Oprah that a black woman even felt safer with white people. I hate to say it, but I know a part of me implicitly racist even though I wish it weren't true.

Race

This week in class we talked about how racism isn't biological, it's more of a social construction. I never really thought about this way, but it's definitley true. People can not all fit into neat categories, just like it was impossible to group the different balls into three categories when Sal started to add more- it simply didn't work. Many people, especially in America are not just simply black or white or asian - we're a mixture of races. Although my family is completely European-American on both sides, it's still hard for me to classify myself because my family's mixture of religions - which I consider a component of race. I was raised Jewish, but only my mom is Jewish and my dad is not. Everybody is so shocked to hear that I'm Jewish because I don't have a Jewish last name and I resemble my dad so I don't have the stereotypical Jewish traits. I always explain by saying I'm half Jewish, but that's not really true, it's the only religion I've ever practiced. These things have altered society's perception for what I "should" be. Just like race, religion is not biological and we should not categorize people by simply looking at them.

Monopoly & Minimum Wage

When we played Monopoly in class yesterday, I was unlucky and was put in the lower-middle class. I know this game is not a perfect representation of society, but if it's anywhere close- being poor sucks! It seemd that roll after roll I was just owing the the richer people money. It was even worse for the lower class person. She ended up over $700 in debt. She didn't buy a lot of property or anything, but she just seemed to lose hundreds of dollars each turn. The worst part of  this was the high class person kept getting richer and richer - it was crazy and totally unfair. It was like the rich have so much control and the poor have none and we just had to sit there helplessly while we lost more money. In addition to this, the 30 days episode on living on minumum wage was also an eye-opener. I can't imagine living on only that money. I make a little over minimum wage as a lifeguard and I certainly could not survive on only that. The part that really stuck out to me was when Morgan said there were so many times he was hungry and he couldn't afford to buy anything. I'm so used to just buying food if I'm hungry- or even if I'm really not. I don't even think about it, it usually costs less than $5 but I guess that adds up. If they can't even afford fast food, what can they afford?

Tammy

There were many parts of the video that were sad, surprising and even shocking, but it was the story of Tammy and her family that I found myself thinking about days after watching. I mean I knew people lived like that, but I guess I really hadn't ever met someone living in poverty. Getting to know her family in the video made me appreciate my life more and more. First of all, Tammy has 21 siblings! That's crazy, but no wonder her parents didn't have enough to go around. This resulted in Tammy rasing her own family in the lower-class because that it the class she was born into. Our society tends to think down upon people of the lower-class because we think they're lazy and don't find a way to go to school and get a decent job. But the truth is they can't go to school because that takes away from time they could put towards earning money - something they desperately need. And Tammy works very very hard. Her job as a janitor at the local Burger King might not be the hardest job on the planet, but the fact that she walks 10 miles each way to get there and back is remarkable and shows the effort she is putting in to provide for her family. While I was watching this, I kept thinking that her life could never possibly happen to me. First of all, I am lucky enough to have the opportunity to go to college and this will hopefully get me a good job. But even if it doesn't and I end up with no money, my parents will always be there to help me - a luxury Tammy doesn't have. I hope that Tammy's son Matt defies the odds and ends up going to college and getting a better life for himself.

Jail and Drugs

This week we have studied both drugs as well as prisons. These may seem like two separate subjects, but I have come to realize that they are very much related. In both the article, Court 302, and Morgan Spurlock's experience in jail in an episode of 30 Days, it is evident that the majority of crimes are drug-related. However, the interesting thing is that most of the people locked up for drug-related crimes are minorities and are poor. We all know that plenty of white rich people do some hard-core drugs but it doesn't appear that they really are punished for it. This goes back to the Sanits and Roughnecks, rich white people aren't punished because they are perceived to be upstanding citizens and if they do mess up, they aren't trouble makers, they just "made a mistake". And if they do by chance get caught, it's a totally different story. Take Lindsay Lohan for example, I can't even count the number of times she has been arrested for drug or alcohol related crimes and somehow she always gets away with miniscule sentences and she gets to go to rehab centers that are probably more like luxury resorts. These people in prison; however, need rehab the most because it's impossible for them to break the cycle without it. Often times, inmates just end up back in jail after they are released. They need help, but our country isn't willing to pay for that.

Saints and Roughnecks

I thought the Saints and Roughnecks article was very interesting and I have to admit I was kind of shocked by it. I couldn't believe all these things the Saints were doing while still maintaining good grades and the role of leaders in their school, some of them even won very prestigious awards! I don't think we really have Roughnecks at our school, but we definitely have some Saints. However, I think there are some differences. First of all since our school and community is so big, not everyone has a certain perception of everyone else. I don't think there's really a group of kids that every teacher would just regard as good students because its likely they have no idea who the kid is. Same goes for the police. But they're are definitely people at school who take difficult classes, are involved in extra curricular activities, but get into some bad things outside of school. But again I see another difference. At our school I don't think there's any way someone who is regarded as "a smart kid" could skip half his classes and still get good grades. If they're known as smart, they're probably taking a lot of accelerated and AP classes and it's just not possible to miss that much school and not do homework and still do well. I don't know, maybe I'm just ignorant to what really goes on, but that's how I see it.

Onward House

It's been kind of difficult for me to find community service opportunities because I had my heart set on working at Habitat for Humanity but with the contract problems that fell through. I was really in need of hours so I decided to try out Onward House yesterday. It's not that I didn't want to volunteer there, I just wasn't particulary excited. Once I got there, a little girl went up to the teacher who was in charge of the room I was working in, whispered in her ear and pointed at me. The teacher informed me that the little girl wanted me to help her with her homework. So we were off to a good start, someone actually wanted me to help her. As we worked on her homework, I got to know her a little better. She had a sense of humor way beyond her age which was hilarious. I loved working with her but I was amazed to see the difficulty she had with very simple tasks. It made me realize that they really do need us there and the one on one attention is particulary beneficial. I'm definitely planning on returning and I hope I can get the same little girl again :)

School Violence

I was really surprised to learn in both the Kimmel article and the Tough Guise video that all the recent random school shootings have been carried out by white suburban boys that felt less manly because of the way their classmates treated them. When you think of violence in schools, you would probably first guess that most acts are done in inter-city schools. It's easier to think this way - atleast for me because I go to a upper-middle class suburban school filled with white boys. I would like to think that violence could never happen at my school and at first glance you wouldn't think it could happen. But the truth is, I hear boys being put down all the time. No, I don't think it's to the extent that the boys that become shooters had to endure, but it's still present. The media has a lot to do with boys not feeling like "real men". It sucks but it's reality and the best thing we can do to prevent violence in our school is to not call people offensive names and instead include them.

Consuming Children - It's not about Cannibalism

I was completely shocked when we watched the movie Consuming Children earlier this week. I mean I always knew the media was a big part of our society but I didn't realize it was to this extent. I couldn't believe marketers would go as far as going after tiny children in order to "get them for life". The research methods that they use are crazy! MRIs, blinking tests, and even observing children in the shower! I get that children are a huge source of revenue but the marketers' studies makes it seem like they're curing cancer or atleast something so important that it will atleast benefit us. There was something else in the video that struck me: the use of brands on products like bed sheets, snacks, etc. The day we watched the movie I happened to have Scooby Doo fruit snacks in my back pack. No I don't watch Scooby Doo now, but I have loved these snacks since I was 5 or 6. This made me realize that this was probably the media at work; I never realized it before. As a child I'm sure I chose these snacks from the dozens of other fruit snacks because it contained the Scooby Doo brand. Who wants the fruit snacks shaped like fruit anyway? These were much cooler! Not only did the media persuade me to buy these particular snacks, they also got me from the cradle to (maybe) the grave or at least to my teens.

Love vs. Genetics

Watching the case of Danielle on Oprah this week was both heart-breaking and fascinating at the same time. I couldn't believe that extreme neglect could cause such a huge physical impact on a person. I had always thought that a person would be able to develop fairly normally as long as he wasn't born with a condition like autism or down syndrome. Sure, I expected Danielle to be depressed and lacking social skills but I could never have imagined her development would be lacking to this degree. I used to volunteer at a summer camp where volunteers were paired  one-on-one with a child that had some sort of mental disability. One day I was assigned to a little girl named Julia, who like Danielle, was around 8 or 9 years old but behaved like an infant. She couldn't walk upright, she couldn't feed herself, she couldn't speak and on the play ground she had to be pushed in a baby swing. Let me just say this was one of the hardest days of my life. Julia's severe mental handicap was the reason she could not function like a normal child, but if you didn't know, it would hard to tell the difference between Julia's condition and Danielle's condition. I found it very interesting that the lack of love, attention and social interaction that Danielle received could be as costing to her brain development as the genetics in Julia.

Are Americans Afraid of Death?

Yes! We can't even seem to say it. We use phrases like "she passed away", "he's passed on" or "she's in a better place now". People never say "Oh she died" because that's considered morbid which is unacceptable to discuss in American culture. Oddly enough, some of my friends and I were talking about funerals and people that we know that have died today at lunch. All the sudden someone realized what we were talking about and said, "Okay let's stop, this is too depressing" and everyone agreed and the conversation immediately ended. I don't think the subject is taboo, but it definitely makes us uncomfortable. I think this is the case because our American values, such as valuing youth. We all want to be young and even if you are not young, there's plastic surgery, botox, skin treatments, hair dye, etc. to make us look younger. The elderly on the other hand are more of a burden according to our culture. Many of don't take of our parents or grandparents when they can no longer take care of themselves, we put them in nursing homes for others to deal with. Aging, of course, is associated with dying and for this reason we look at death as an off-limits subject. Our material culture also probably plays a part in this. We are so obsessed with material things which obviously won't trenscend after death so we worry what will be left of us after we die. No one will remember us for the things we owned and that scares us because some people don't have anything else to show for their lives.

"What's it like to live in America?"

This week we talked not only about other cultures, but what it means to be an American as well. This was a difficult question for many of us because we are immersed in American culture everyday and we feel like everything we do is "normal" and the other cultures do weird things. I was asked this question once before and I struggled to answer it then too. About 5 years ago I was in Israel and I met these Australian.twins at one of our hotels we were staying at. When they found out I was American, they immediately said "You are sooo lucky!". I didn't really understand. I mean I liked my country and all, but I didn't think it was anything to be jealous of, I thought Australia sounded pretty cool. They proceeded to ask me questions like, "What is it like to live in America?". At this point  I really didn't know what to say. I think my response was something like "I don't know, it's normal I guess". They were so fascinated with my culture, but I didn't have any cultural information to give them. In class this week, I discovered why I couldn't answer their questions. It's very easy to see the differences in other cultures, such as the squating toilets in Japan and leaving your baby outside cafes in Denmark. But when we think about our own culture, it is very hard to see the little nuances because we experience them everyday.

Fish Bowl or Toilet Bowl?

This week we talked a lot about how we react when we come in contact with other cultures. Many times we find the norms in other cultures funny or weird because its not something we are not used to. Sal shared a story with us about discovering the Japanese style toilet, which he first thought was weird, but then realized there was a lot of practicality in it. I, too, have a toilet story. Last summer I went on vacation to Tanzania, Africa. As you can imagine, there are many things that are different about Tanzanian culture, but for me, it was their bathrooms. They were western-style at the airports and hotels, so at first I thought I was safe. But I was wrong. On our first safari trip, we made a bathroom stop in an African National Park. I opened the door to the stall and saw nothing. I couldn't figure out what they had done with the toilet until I looked down. In the middle of the awful-smelling room there was a hole in the ground surrounded by 2 spaces to put your feet. You had to go to the bathroom standing up! I certainly had never done that before and I was not too pleased about the idea. During my ten days there, I encountered several of these and I got somewhat used to them except I didn't particulary like the lack of toilet paper. But when I thought about it, I realized this was not gross, uncomfortable or weird to the Africans. They come from a culture where they don't have a lot and something so basic as a toilet is a big deal to them, even if its not designed like ours.

The Many Groups of C

In the movie, A Bronx Tale, the main character Collogero is a part of many different groups. The largest group is Italian-Americans. This is a big part of his identity, everyone who knows him, knows he is Italian. First, there is his clearly Italian name and until Jane comes along, almost every person he knows is also Italian. We also see how he favors this ingroup because when his dad asks him why Joe DiMaggio is the best baseball player, C replies"Because he's Italian?". Then there is his neighborhood, a huge part of his life. He spends a large majority of his time there, he's friends with his neighbors and he understand the dynamics of his neighborhood. Then we move on to his family, his friends and Sonny's group. I do consider C to be part of Sonny's group because he spends a lot of time with them and he is clearly accepted there. At the beginning of the movie, I think his master status was son because his relationship with his dad was the most important thing to him. He would love to ride on the bus with him and he just wanted his father's approval. But I think his master status definitely changes after he lies and says Sonny is innocent.  Once Sonny "adopts" him as "his boy", that becomes the most important thing to him and that continues through his teenage years.

Quantitative vs. Qualitative Data

The excerpt we read from the book Gang Leader For a Day was author Sudhir Venkatesh's account of his sociological study of how life was to be black and poor. Vanketesh, who had never really had an experience with impoverished blacks, naively started asking gang members multiple choice questions from generic surveys. But he was just laughed at when he asked the question "How does it feel to be young and black" with answer choices of very good, very bad, etc. After being forced to stay overnight with junior members of the gang, Vanketesh learned from their leader, J.T., that if he wanted to know anything about them he needed to just hang out. He went back for years to hang out and learn more about these people's lives. It is obvious that he learned a lot through his method because he went on to publish Gang Leader as well as other books concerning this topic.




This excerpt demonstrates the two types of data sociologists use in their studies. The first type, quantitative, can be found using surveys that one can compile to create statstics. The other type is called qualitative which comes from talking to people and observing situations. When I moved to this area, we decided we would pick our house depending on which school I chose to go to. So, my mom researched all the quantitative data she could find on the high schools in the north suburban area. She created a list of about ten schools with the best ACT scores, amount of advanced classes and activities I could get involved in. But once we had this list, it was impossible to choose a school just from that; we needed more information - qualitative data. So I came up to Chicago and for each school I shadowed a student from throughout her school day. I was able to experience the classes, talk to the people and really feel like I was a student at each school. Ultimately, this qualitative data helped me choose which school I would go to.

What do saliva and weddings have in common?

When Mr. Salituro asked for a volunteer today and everyone pretty much just sat there, I thought "what the heck I'll take one for the team". What I didn't expect was to be asked to spit in a little dixie cup. Would I be known the rest of the year as the gross girl who spit during sociology class? I was even a little disgusted when he started offering it to other students in the class and then pouring it out into a trash can, and it was my own spit! But why? We all have saliva  so why is it unacceptable for it to leave our mouths? Because the social construction of reality tells us this. Everything we do or feel is unconsciously based off of social norms in our own cultures.

For example, 5 years ago I was at a cousin's wedding in Israel. Before the ceremony started, there was a spread of food and drinks in the general area that the ceremony would be held. People were talking, eating and having a good time. It all seemed pretty normal. But then the ceremony started and the guests continued to socialize, eat and not even turn their heads toward the bride proceeding down the aisle! I was shocked. My first thought was these guests are totally rude and have no respect for the bride and groom. I looked around and no one else seemed alarmed. The families of the couple were smiling and happy. I didn't get this, could this possibly be normal? In turns out the answer is yes. The social contruction of reality has taught us as Americans that this is disrespectful, but doing the same thing in Israel is completely normal.

The Problems With Individualist Societies

In the Sociological Mindfulness article by Schwalbe, we learn there are various reasons why people aren't particulary aware of how the social world operates. One reason being American individualism. Our culture teaches us to be independent and only look at for ourselves. So basically we should do what we want, when we want if it benefits us and we should not really worry about others. But there's one problem with that. As sociology teaches us, we are all interconnected and each of our indivual actions affect one another, even if it's unintentional. So as it happens, we discussed the differences in behavior in collectivist vs. individualist societies in my AP Psychology class the same day we discussed this article. I learned that the invidividualist societies tend to make the Fundamental Attribution Error far more frequently than people in collectivist societies. This means individualists attribute someone's behavior to their personality rather than considering their circumstances. For example, I come to school late, forget my homework and don't really seem to make an effort that day. Most people in the class will write me off as a lazy person and don't even think that maybe I was up all night dealing with a family emergency and then my car wouldn't start this morning or something like that. In collectivist culture, it's not this way. I thought this could easily relate to the topic of sociological mindfulness because this is just another example of how we are not mindful of why the people around us behave like they do, we just assume the worst. But this comparison did leave me wondering. If the Fundamental Attribution Error is not made as much in collectivist societies does that mean other cultures are more sociologically mindful?

About Me

Hi, I'm Allison. I'm 17 years old and a senior in high school. I was born in Wichita, Kansas, but I moved to Dallas, TX when I was 10 months old and I finally ended up here in Long Grove when I was 15. My main extracurricular activity is swimming and I'm on the team at school. I'm also a manager for the boys' swim team and I lifeguard in the summer. So yeah I really like water! Other than that, I'm a member of National Honor Society and play a few intramural sports, not well I might add. As you can see by my blog title and picture, I really love cats. I have 3 - Maverick, Star and Buster. The rest of my family consists of my parents, Marcia and Tim and my 22-year old brother, David who just graduated from The University of Maryland and now is living in Austin, TX. My family is probably one of the biggest influences in my life because I spend a lot of time with them and I really respect their opinions and ideas. After high school, I plan to go to college next fall. I don't know where yet, but I know I definitely want it to be somewhere warm. I want to study Biology and eventually become a genetic counselor. Well that's pretty much me!