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.