Last post!

Hey I'm Megan. Just after this summer I will be a student at University of Iowa! I am so excited to make new friends, start a new chapter of my life, and get involved in activities to help other people. I like to think I am a giver because through giving, you get so many intangible rewards. My family is everything to me they are going to be there for me forever. I hop am to have such a wonderful woman raise me. I know that I truly am lucky to have grown up in the community I have. I still love hanging with my friends all the time and can't wait to spend this summer with them. It is going to be hard leaving my life of seeing them everyday, but exciting to start fresh at the same time. The biggest influence in my life is my mom because she is so kind and happy which is exactly what I want the rest of my life to be like.I feel like everyone I meet influences me because I can see what qualities I like about them or dislike and know who I want to be. My goal in life is just to be happy and make enough money to enable me to travel. I've come to realize that happiness is more important than any career, so that is what I want to be when I grow up. I still agree with everything in my first post except living in the south because I don't think I can stay away from my family for that long. I guess I'll just have to wait to see where I wind up. All I know is I'm excited for the journey I get to take in finding out who I am. I feel before it frustrated me not knowing what was going to happen next in my life but sociology has taught me that there is no such thing as failure so I'm not scared about the future anymore.

Saints and Roughnecks

Saints and Roughnecks is primarily a story about labeling and the affects of labeling. This story shows how people focus more on how to label a person (whether it be financially, ethnically, or socially), rather than the people themselves. With labeling being so crucial in society people act in ways just to fit a label rather than just being who they are. A lot of what we do, as well as the saints and roughnecks, is based on the paths already laid out for us to take. For example, what kids at wealthy high schools do after high school is different from people in lower class high schools. This is not only because of money, but also because of what society teaches this kids what they should be doing with their lives. I do see this a lot of labeling in my own high school. Not only between students, but also teachers judgments on students. There are a few students who achieve very high grades in school and are involved in different things in school that make them appear to be role models. However, they a lot of the times are doing worse things than a lot of other students I know. Since they dress nice to school and put on a alternate personality in school they don't get accused of cheating on tests or doing other troublesome things. However, people who dress not as nice or don't use proper grammar are immediately written off and are a lot more likely to get in trouble. It is frustrating at times to see this happen, so we have to just keep trying to break these social assumptions.

Stereotypes

One stereotype that failed to hold true was that Asians are good law abiding citizens. However, the "China Man" was the character who was found to be smuggling Thai people into the United States to sell. Another example of a character who did not hold a stereotype was Daniel, a Mexican locksmith. When he was fixing Jeans locks after she had gotten mugged, she makes comments about him being a gang-banger and that he is going to sell the keys to his "homies". However, Daniel is actually a shy man whose main priority is his little girl. The Persian shopkeeper had the same opinion on Daniel. The shopkeeper felt that since Daniel was Mexican he was trying to rip him off. Daniel tried to tell him that the door was the problem, but because of the shopkeeper's racist attitude, he refused to listen and consequently his shop was broken into. Another type of racism going on was the mix up of what people where calling each other. For example, the Asian woman in the beginning who got in an accident with Ria, a Hispanic detective, and the Asian woman calls Ria Mexican when she is not. Also, when the Persian shopkeeper goes to buy a gun, the clerk makes a lot of racist comments about him being a terrorist and associating him with Arabs which once again is grouping someone based on looks into a sterotype. John Ryan, the white police officer, has some stereotypes on himself too. While we focus little on how John is stereotyped because of how much he stereotypes, he himself is also stereotyped by other characters and the audience. We assume that such racist people come from racist back grounds, but we find out that John's father is not racist. We find out that why he is racist is because affirmative action caused his father not to get the amount of money and health care John believes he deserves. This consequently causes John to have to deal with his father's medical problems and not be able to help him because he doesn't have the money, so he blames all black people for affirmative action. I have found myself stereotyping people who dress scrub-like with baggy pants and giant t-shirts, not so much by skin color but by clothing. I know that a lot of times I'm wrong about people who wear clothes like this, but I know that I was socially constructed this way. At the same time I've been judged right back by the same people. I went to a friend's house in wheeling once and when I walked in a girl walks past and says for me to hear, "who is this white girl". The thing that suprised me the most is that I thought she was white too. From that I realized that if situations were flipped I probably would have wondered what a wheeling girl was doing with Stevenson people. What I've come to realize through sociology is that we all need to stop judging each other. Yes, sometimes we may be right, but most of the time we can miss out on getting to know really great people because of false judgements.

Race and personal identity

One question continues to circulate in my head. Why do we need to chose a race to be "not as good" as us. As we have been learning, in the United States, many different nationalities were not accepted into society such as the Irish, Italians, Greeks, and so on. Now we consider them white. While I understand that some people are socially constructed have racist thoughts, I don't know how they are ignorant enough to believe it. I watch the Tyra Bank Show from time to time and there was one episode dealing with race, specifically biracial people. It was crazy how some of the guests though biracial would claim to be only one of the races because they were embarrassed about the other half they possessed. For example, one half-black and half-white woman said she was only black because whites are snobs and one man who also had this back ground claimed to be all white because he hate how blacks are so "ghetto". So I ask, how do we let racism become so big that people hate their own identities? Racism is a very important issue to me while I haven't had to deal with much. However, I'm not sure what can I do about it.

Social Mobility

The myth that people chose poverty is something that a year ago I would have believed that some people do. However, through my community service with the homeless and our recent studies on poverty, I think that statement is absolutely ridiculous. With parents who work at minimum wage and say that you need to get a job too in order to get food on the table. With not only school, but also work, it is very challenging to do both everyday and be successful in school. In addition, many people living in poverty have many children, so it is challenging to make money when they need to buy daycare. Also, it is hard to get a job and keep one with no car. If you have every tried getting a job, you will know that you need to apply a lot of different places in order to get one. In addition, the job you do get might be a whiles away which is a long walk if you don't have a car. In one article we read, we learned how many people living on minimum wage are forced to live in hotels because they can't afford the down payment of an apartment or house. In the end it costs even more because the rent is way more expensive. Many people living in poverty are stuck in almost a cycle because once you are in poverty it is very hard to get out. Poverty is not a choice it is a problem that should be paid more attention to.

Drug Use is a Medical Problem, Not Criminal

I can't believe a workers in the courthouse jail in Courtroom 302 are allowed to treat those convicted of a crime. I understand that the people in this jail may have done some pretty bad things, but they are human and who knows what caused them to become bad. When I read that a man died in this jail because of neglect when he needed medical help and the workers got off without any punishments I was appalled. He had a history of medical problems which probably a main reason of his drug use and instead of helping him, they tell him to shut up. What kind of country is this? In addition, as Sal stated, drug use is a medical problem, but is treated as a criminal problem. Just as alcoholics need help, so do drug users. In an in class experiment where the uses, effects...and so on were stated without the name of the drug, cigarettes and alcohol were seen as more harmful than marijuana which can land people in jail. So instead of locking up drug users with muderers we should give them the medical help they need.

Age of Maturity

One thing that stood out in the article What is the Age of Responsibility? was that many states allow women to marry before men. While I know the fact that women go through puberty and mature sooner than boys physically, who is to say that men are not ready to marry at the same age women are. In many societies I have learned about in past social studies classes men were actually the ones to gain more responsibility first. I think that separating maturity by sex is even more silly than separating maturity by age can be at times. In addition, the article said in the past, "As soon as someone’s feet could reach the pedals, he or she was free to drive." I think that the age 16 makes since for the fact that at 16 you can get a job and parents don't always have time to drive because they have jobs of their own. However, at the same time I know many of my friends weren't mature enough to drive at age 16. For example, one of my friends got her license at 16 simply because everyone else was. When she got her lisence she had never driven on a highway with her parents before to help her with advise and apparently had never driven in a construction zone. The first time she had entered a construction zone she was alone she freaked out and hit a cone and knocked off her mirror. I think that many 16 year olds just get their lisence at 16 just because everyone else is while they know they aren't ready and I think that is a very dangerous thing. Another problem with driving laws is the age at which cell phone use is okay. When I was in seventh grade my brother got hit by a car while in a crosswalk because the man driving was paying more attention to his cell phone then on driving. The worst part of it all was that since my brother didn't press the cross walk button even though it said it was okay to walk, it was "his fault". So the man driving who hit my brother go absolutly no consequences for hitting a person! Studies have shown time and time again that cell phone use majorly decreases peoples' ability to drive. In fact it is more likely to get in an accident while texting than while drunk. Because people under 18 can't vote, legislation is put against them easily. As soon as "adults" hear their rights are trying to be taken away they immediately shut it down. I think the problem with the laws does not have to do so much with the government as the voting people. Voters only want to agree with laws for more regulations on other people, not on themselves, even if it is better for the country as a whole.