Sunday, December 13, 2009

What sociological factors besides race might be causing the difference in different marriage rates between black and whites in the U.S.A.?
i think that money and is a big factor in marriage because if you don't make enough money to support yourself then i doubt people would be looking to have to take care of another person. also black men seem to have a reputation on not staying with a women especially if the women is pregnant. that's why some black children grow up with out a father figure. there are groups and organizations that try to help these kids for example there is a group in Chicago and i believe it to be nation wide and it is called the "Hundred Black Men" but they noticed that a lot of black men would leave there would be family because they didn't want to commit, but these groups like the hundred black men are located in the inner city areas where there are less wealthy people they are not located in middle class or wealthy areas. pulse the rich know that they have enough money to get married and if they don't like it they also have the money to get divorced. but other than money and race, are there any other factors that would cause a difference in marriage rates between blacks and whits in the U.S.?

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Social Classes

quote from George Bernard Shaw:
'What a man is depends on his character; but what he does, and what
we think of what he does, depends on his circumstances. The characteristics that
ruin a man in one class made him eminent in another.'

what i believe Bernard is saying is character defines who we are. its our character that draws certain people to us or pushes them away. for example people with good character usually draw others who have good character and those with bad character seem to stick around others with the same character. but then Bernard claims that what people do and how others think of their actions all depends on the circumstances of those actions. like if someone with little money donated to the poor that would be considered a very kind and generous act, but if a rich person were to donate money and get a bunch of publicity then people would think that the rich person was doing it as a publicity stunt. though other peoples perspectives can depend highly on class. for example what a poor man might see as a great job an upper class person would see as being way below them. based on the video we watched in class the upper class seem be seclude people and not allow them in to there social circle and they are very judgemental. on the other hand the lower class seemed to have more fun, be layed back, and very accepting of others regardless of money or what family they come from. based on that video if i had to pick between upper class and the lower "redneck" class i would pick the lower class it seemed like a better life style. yes the lower class has to struggle more and work harder and doesn't have as much free time or extra money but they also seem to be more real with each other apposed to the upper class that seemed to only be interested in self gain and appearance

Sunday, November 22, 2009

deviance

because of the assignment in class and from doing acts of deviance it is easy to see that people do not know how to react because it is abnormal. for example if you ever hold the door open for people some will say thank you and walk through then there are other people who will look at you with weird facial expressions and walk through the door very quickly because they feel awkward and then others yet will look way from you to avoid eye contact. i feel like our society is so closed off and we are not willing to help others that any time you do its is looked at as strange. this bothers me cuz why is it when someone does something nice its weird, strange, not normal but when someone does something mean people just say it figures or ignore it and more on. we take the negative and accept it and we avoid the positive. this is why we are a closed off and not a friendly society. we hear on the news about ppl getting arrested or killed but there is rarely new of good deeds or good things done. have you noticed any thing about peoples reactions to positive or negative deeds?

Friday, November 13, 2009

adolescent

there is often an argument between nature and nurture and which one makes us who we are when we are older. when in reality it is not nature OR nurture, but it it nature AND nurture. they both play a huge roll in who we become. like how i was brought up and where i live determines what i wear on a given day. but the sports i play depend on what my society tells me for example i play football and in our society we are told that guys play football apposed to girls so that is part of it and then with nature i have always been a big, strong kid who likes to play contact sports. so in my decision to play football came both nature and nurture.
sociologists say that adolescents focus all there time and energy on social power and they don't no why we care so much about what others think. but the truth is there is nothing else for them to focus on. social power and social status is the only thing that they have power over they have no control over almost any thing in there lives. if "adults" really what to get teens to not pay so much attention to social power then they need to give or allow teens to take responsibility and they need them to take rolls of responsibility.
now a days when kids are growing up they no longer need to make there own fun or be creative with there imagination because they are kept entertained by TV. the kids are not playing with plays as much any more. this is a concern because when they are older they will not be able to innovate or be able to think on there own cuz every thing was given to them when they were young they never had to imagine or solve there own problems. this can be avoided by having kids play together and have them play with toys so it makes them think.
there is a big difference in they way our society treats girls and boys when they are growing up. for example all baby boys toys are blue or trucks or action figures, while girls toys are dolls and pink. when girls are younger it seems they are taught to play house which seems to be a gender based game like playing war or guns as a young boy. i feel that these things make us a lil insensitive when we are older for example we think that that is how it is supposed to be. if a guy were to have pink toys or a girl to have blue toys they might get made fun of so they conform to the group so that they avoid embarrassment

Thursday, October 22, 2009

story of my life...

If i had to pick the groups or organizations that most effected me while growing up i would have to say Football and boy scouts. i no in class, we talked about how you need nature and nurture to be a good basketball player, but for me i played football and i was not born with any sort of football talent. that all went to my brother. any way, because i was not as athletic as everyone else out there on the field i had to learn how to work hard. it forced me to learn discipline it definitely helped me develop my out look on life. because in football if I mess up someone else on the team gets hurt and to me that unacceptable.Every team does some thing to get pumped up like a cheer or yell. I was surprised though when my 8th grade coach taught us ours. Our slogan was R.I.P. no its not what your thinking it stood for Respect, Integrity, and Pride. he told us that those were the things we should play with and play for. so i figure that from football i have gained discipline, team work, camaraderie, and hard work. the other big influence in my life would be boy scouts. i have been a scout for 13 years now. and since i joined i have done my best to live my the scout Law which tells a scout to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. pretty much scouts teaches you how to be a good person. and being around good people and seeing good deeds and doing community service since i was little has made it a regular part of my life. for example when i know some one is in need i do what i can to help whether i personally know the person or not. for example a friend of mine, who was running a station at the Partnership walk, (a walk to raise money for under developed countries) asked if i could help him out. of course i said yes and so did many other people. but when they found out it was early the morning after the Home Coming dance most people changed there minds. but because i new that i had a friend in need i told him i would be there. scouts also taught me how to be independent. we go camping all the time and when your back in the woods you have to know what your doing most the time. when I went backpacking for 2 weeks in New Mexico I learn how to take care of myself and the others around me. its funny scouts and football are just some things that i do because i think there fun and i get to do some amazing things through them, but i cant even begin to tell you how different i would be if i didn't do them. i would not be nearly the same person. i guess a lot of my "nurture" came from them.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Main south football game

Our football team went to go watch the Main south vs. GBS game at main south this weekend. it was supposed to be a good game and we play both teams. we decided to cheer for GBS which we had beeten in over time 50-49. so the team and i assumed that we would not be very welcomed if the fans new who we were, so we didnt wear any stevenson cloths. any way we aere sitting in the parent section and we are cheering along with them for about a quarter when one of the players started talking to a man sitting next to him and it slipped out that we played for stevenson. well to our supprise they were not mad but happy that we would come out and support there team. the parents were thrilled and they loved how into the game we all were. i bring this up because before the game we were on the main south side and there fans made it clear that they disliked us. i find this puzzling because we came to watch the game as a neuteral party so why would a team that we didnt play hate us but a team we beat welcome us completely? i thought it could be the fact that we were ranked right below main south but i started to really think about the two schools football programs. GBS is usualy a god team and they are tought to play with pride and integrity. they dont have a flashy stateum, just a grass field with blechers. main south on the otherhand, is always a great team they go to state all the time they have won state like 6 times. they have a big stateum with artificial turff and a big score bored and it has hawks on every thing. pluse they are 22-0 they have not lost in 2 seasons. so i guesss what i am getting at is do you think that main south acts like that to us because they think there better because of the stuff they have and there history? or is it just the way these people are brought up in that town? why is GBS so welcoming? could main south feel threatned? well i feel it is just them showing off and being cocky but what do you think

Thursday, October 15, 2009

swimming in the water

So i think that its funny that smith wants us to blog about things in our society that we don't realize are there and things we don't see cuz we are submerged in them. just throwing this out there but if we are not supposed to realize them and stuff how can we blog about them. well i will try my best i guess, here we go..... ok so some thing that might be considered water in our culture would be entertainment. like sports, clubs, games, computers, phones, ipods, any thing that is used or all about keeping us occupied while we are "bored". we are such a rich nation that most people don't even think twice about seeing a movie, watching sports on TV, or listening to music and sitting around. but there are people in under developed countries that cant even afford food and they work so hard and so long that they only have free time to go home and sleep. i am not saying that we don't work hard but we do have a lot more free time than most people and apposed to using money and resources on survival we can spend it on entertainment. i feel like we don't even think about all the things that we do or things that we have that are not essential to survival that other cultures don't have and cant get. we don't realize how lucky we are as a culture. if we had to worry about survival every day and wonder if we will live tomorrow that would change how we live and how we think completely.
One thing that a lot of people have a hard time doing is navigating through the virtually invisible "water" of there culture. i think that the only way to do this successfully is to step back and look at other cultures. it would help even more to talk with people from other places. because if you cant see what is different then how do you no what you have to work with you need to compare in order to fully understand your surroundings. like the example of you cant see the good with out the bad. so you need to be able to compare our culture to another one. i think that we adjust to our culture pressures all the time it might be a slow adjustment but we do. we used to be just like any under developed nation and had to worry about survival but slowly we shifter out of that and we would not have noticed that we did if we couldn't see under developed nations today.
there are a lot of values that Americans have, but there are a few that i would slightly alter to fit me better. one of the Values of America is to be successful. this usually means that your rich and have every thing you want. i just want to be well off i want to not have to worry but i don't want to be caught up in working all the time i want to be able to get out and enjoy life. another one is one thing that i value that has gone out the window from what i can see is community. i don't no any one that lives around me. when i went to visit a friend who lives in a small town in Iowa every one new every one and it was amazing. now I'm not saying that it has to be that extreme but we need to stop being such a closed off and privet society we need to venture out and meet people form more relationships with people. this will not only make us more friendly people and more excepting but it will help us to live healthier lives. so i hope that we can get a sense of community. but thats just what i see and how i feel about it

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Infatilization

infatilization is when adults or teens digress and act like little children because of the way they are talked to or treated. you can see this happening every where especially at Stevenson. Stevenson tells us that they are prepairing us for the real world and getting us ready for college but they baby us and force some students to act like little children. one way they do this is by always having us watched or supervised at all times. for example they do not allow students to sit outside because they feel that students have to be monitored and watched every second. i feel like this makes the students act childish because they are babied. another thing that goes on that can make students act a little bit child like is teachers seem to always have to be nice they extend assignments and just tell there students that is ok and they take late work. this just reinforces the beliefe that we are little children adults should have to deal with the consicuenses that fallow there choices wether it is good or bad. on the other hand i feel that putting stickers or smilie faces on tests when students do well is wrong. students shuold be expected to study and do well it shouldnt be a giant party though. in the real world there wont be a pat on the back when you do things that are expected of you. I feel that these examples and more make the students act very childish and even shelter us to the point that some of us are not prepared for the "real world". what do you think do these things help or hurt us? and what exampls have you seen from ether school or in our larger society?

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

A Bronx Tale

the main character of the movie is a boy names Callogero or as he becomes known as "C". he grows up on the streets of the Bronx. there are many social groups that C belongs to. just by living in the Bronx he is apart of that grouping. he is an Italian, this places him into the group of the neighbor hood. there was a lot of racism where he was living, but C is white and he is a male. he also is young and doesnt know to much so that places him into the irrational or ignorent group. he is appart of his friends group and is deffinetly in a group with sonny though i do not believe he is in sonnys crew. C and sonny had a special relationship they were like father and son that is why they make up a group but C is not in sonnys crew because C doesnt really interact with the other members of the crew he only really interacts with sonny. So some of the groups that C is in are: Lives in the Bronx,Italian, neaighbor hood, white, male, young, irrational, ignorent, group with his friends, and in a group with Sonny. through out the movie thought some of these groups change. All his friends die which takes that group away, and heat the end of the movie he has grown and matured so he does not seem ignorent or irrational. The Master group or the group that C is most related to is Being Italian. this is becasue every one around him is Italian and that is how he grew up thats what has influenced him his entire life. the life style of the Italians seemed to be that of a mofia system. there was a power in the neightbore hood that every on looked up to and respected. i feel like by the end of the movie C grew up and realized that was a bad way to live. i would infer that he would change his life style and this would mean his master group would change. to what i am not sure, most likely he would follow his father and become a working man so i would say that the master group would have changed for C at the very end from the Italian way of life to the life of the working man. this is becasue C finaly sees that the easy way and the gangster way was dangerous and ultomitly not worth losing your life and all of his fathers lessions finally set in that the worst thing is wasted tallent. Were there any other groups that C was apart of? if there are i cant think of any. and what would you say was his master group? was it being white cuz of the racism or some thing else? randome but who do you think that C looked up to more Sonny or his father and why?

Sunday, September 13, 2009

BLACK LIGHT PARTY

ok so i know some of you were at my house on saterday night when i had, well, a few people over. but i dont know if you saw what i saw. when we are at school there are clearly clics or groups of people that seem very closed off. i no in my experiance that there are some people who dont even acknowledg me in school, but once they were at my house and there was music going it no longer matterd what group you were from. evey one mixed into a very larg group. ya there was a little bit of a group here or there but it never lasted they would spread back into the bigger crowed. it didnt matter any more who you were freinds with or who you knew every one in the basement became friends. i had a friend of mine say "ya i dont think i have ever talked to beth, but she came up to me grabbed both of my shoulders said it was nice to see me again and then gave me a big hug" she went on to say thay they talked like they were old friends. so it seems that everyone was willing to leave there comfert zone and meet new people. what i got out of this is that the environment in which we interact with others can drasticly change how we view or react to people. the people i saw at my house i have seen at school for going on 4 years now, but i only met some of them at my house. these people and i may have never met if the environment and circumstances had not changed. why do you think this is, that people act so different deppending on where they are? what makes people change so much from in school to out of school?

Friday, September 11, 2009

Man Over Board

First off if any one has any questions about PARTNERSHIP WALK, the community service opportunity that Rehan talked about in class let me know and i can help you out. but wow the boat activity in class was a lot of fun. though i do question some of the decisions made. like why the fat millionaire was thrown off first. i mean i feel like he should have been saved. thats right i got your back jeff. but really he had a very active and larg role in the lives of thousands of people. even if you didnt like him think of the people that would not have jobs with out him. he plays a big role in the economy. and ok fine so it was a survival situation and there was nothing that he could do out there to help them. that is so not true if there were high waves then you need more weight in the boat to keep it down and to avoid flying around and capsizing. if there is some thing we as a class can learn from this is that we as U.S. teenagers dont really think through all of our desisions and base some of our choices off of things we feel are not normal we assumed he was fat he cant help but turns out he might have been the most useful one there. do you think that there was someone who got kicked off who shouldnt have?

Friday, September 4, 2009

New group classification????

we watched a TV show called freaks and geeks. and those apparently were 2 pretty recognisable groups in high school life. but what about today. could we really classify ppl into groups such as these. i feel that in todays society people don't have one set group they move among several. i also believe there is no hierarchy or "food chain" to the groups that do exist. some of the groups may attempt to establish domonince but no group ever seemes to. all this is true, i believe among the kids. i no that the adults will give special privliges to certain groups. one group would most definetly be football players. there have been several times where a security guard would tell a student that they couldnt open a locker room or that they couldnt bring food down the hall and when the football player would ask for the locker room to be opend there was no hesitation and they will usually let us bring food. but i only no this from being a football player other wise i could not tell who who or what group has any power or if there are ever such deffined groups as there used to be in high schools

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Me, Myself, and I

a lil about me. i love to play football and run track. i play running back and safety for my team. i run the 110 high hurdles and the 300 intermediate hurdles. another thing that i really love and i have been in since i was very young is Scouting. i am an eagle scout and have been on lots of cool trips. i have been backapacking in new mexico 2 different times for 2 weeks each time i have been camping in the winter on the canadian border and have been to London with 45000 other scouts from 158 different countries. so camping and sports is really what i do with me time. thats it for now peace

Friday, August 21, 2009

how it begins...

wow, the first day of sociology...... what can I say. it was a lot different than expected that is for sure. it started like any other class. looking to see who is in the room and who you will be with for the rest of the summester, but once class started we all assumed the same thing. that the teacher would describe the class and tell us a little bit about themselves. this was not the case however. insted Mr. Smith just sat there and watched us while sipping on water. needless to say we as a class didnt really no what to do. finaly after 10 min. he described how he was attempting to break the norm. of the first day of classes. Mr.Smith sure did i now look forwered to sociology every day even though it has only been 2 days.