Final post

This year in sociology we had to do our first blog post about our selves. I thought I knew who I was and I knew everything there was to know. This year has changed my way of thinking. I am now more sociologically mindful, I see things and people in a way that I have never viewed things as. I feel I am more understanding about people and where they come from and who they are. I've learned that you need to have an open mind to things to fully understand. The community service part of the class also helped me understand a world that I was not familiar with. It thought that volunteering was boring and frankly a waste of my time but its opened my eyes to see that giving back is very rewarding. This class has thought me more life skills that I will actually use than any other class I've taken at school.

Crash

This week in class we watched the film Crash. It's about different people of different races and how their lives interact with one another. This film shows how race can be intentional and unintentional, for example in the film two black people get pulled over by a white male and the police officer sexually harasses the black women when she is being searched. Later on the women gets into a car accident and the man who touched her ended up being the on who saves her life after she refuses him to touch her. It is ironic because he knows what he did was wrong and he was the one who saved her. Another example in the movie of unintentional racism is when the off duty cop is give the black guy on the street a ride and then they start arguing and the black man says that he doesn't wana see what he has in his pocket implying it was a gun when really the man had nothing dangerous at all. The off duty officer ended up shooting him and it killed him, eventhough the black man seemed dangerous it was really the white man who was a threat. So eventhough people try and avoid racism it is always there in the back of everyone's mind.

Race

This week in sociology we talked about race and how it really doesn't exsit. Our society has made up race in our minds to make sense of things, like catagories. If you were to walk slowly from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere you would be able to see the gradual change of skin color. Biologically there is no race, no way to determine if someone is white, black, purple or green. This separate our society and creates racism,  which is a battle the country is still facing today in 2013.

social class and poverty

This week in class we learned about social class and poverty. We learned about old money and new money and demonstrated that through an activity by playing monopoly. I was the one in my group who had the old money and through out the game I kept getting more wealthy. The girl in my group who started out with little or who would be in the lower class ended up loosing all her money and had nothing to her name at the end of the game. This is how it works in real life. The people who have a lot of money tend to be able to take risks and have a greater chance at success because in the game when I landed on someones lot I was able to pay my way out but the other girl in my group just kept loosing her money faster and faster because she wasn't making as much as she was spending in the game. In real life rich people are able to take chances because they have money to fall back on. If someone in the lower class tried to start a business they would be putting most of the money they have toward that, as for someone in the upper class they would fail over and over again and nothing bad would really happen to them. Even though it should be easier to move to higher social classes it is really hard in the real world.

volunteering

I volunteered at Claremont in Buffalo Grove, it is a rehab and living center for the elderly. When I got there I went and signed in and then went to the third floor where the mentally unstable elders were. I did many different activities the times I went, I helped pass out food and take trays away for them, I played games with them such as bingo, we did exercises in chairs (most are wheelchair bound), I painted nails and gave hand massages to the women. It was a completely different experience than I thought it was going to be. They had trouble doing many regular daily activities, such as walking or being able to feed them selves. It was an eye opening experience because I am not around many elderly people most of the time and it was interesting to listen to their stories because they lived in a completely different world than we do now. Sometimes it was hard to do what I was doing because it is so sad to see people living the rest of their lives in a wheelchair or not even being able to leave the top floor. They even had a passcode so none of the people living their could go up or down the elevators. It was a completely new and different experience for me and I'm glad I had the opportunity to do it.

Unfortunately they didn't like cell phones so I wasn't able to take a picture but I got my hours written up.

social class

This week in class we have been learning about social class. Our society defines people on many different things such as, income, wealth, education and how much your house costs. The wealthiest people are in the highest class and the poorest people are in the lower class. Almost fifty percent of Americans are on the poverty line, and only one percent of people are in upper class. The majority of the people who live around us are in the middle class. After learning about that, we learned that social stereotypes are what keeps us from going up or down in social levels. This tends to limit people because they think that they are bound by their social class. The area where we live in social class does not seem to affect us as much as it would if we were in a more diverse area.