The coin flip

On day in class we gambled. It was a simple game, you just decided how many coins you want to gamble, flipped the coin, and called what you think it would land on. Once one of you between you or your partner ended up with all the coins, that person moved on to play another person with coins. Eventually one person in the class ended up with all the coins. This shows there's this really small percentage of people at the top with all the money. The more coins you had the more you could afford to gamble, while the less coins you had, the less you could lose. It's much harder than Americans would like to think to acquire money and move up but really the people who end up at the bottom, the majority, stay at the bottom, while the people with all the money, a small percentage, stay at the top. There are a few exceptions of people who can climb all the up the money ladder, but for the most part if your doing any moving up or down at all its just a couple steps. My dad, for example, grew up on the poorer side of Chicago but decided to go to college and get a good job and now he is part of an upper-middle class family. Its interesting to see my family compared to his siblings families because he was the only of of his siblings to go to college so while he moved up, everyone else stayed the same.

Race

The new unit we started is about race. Race is just a socially constructed thing, there is not biological differences between races.  There isn't just black or white and your either one or the other, there is a whole spectrum of skin color. Society defines which race you fall into, and the divisions are just arbitrarily made. People look at others and try to put them into a race category whether it is white, black, Asian, Indian, etc. by looking at someone like Mariah Carey people would never see her as black because she doesn't look like it, and on the other hand people see Barack Obama as only black because of how he looks. I was always confused about race my whole like because I didn't, and still don't, know where I fit in. People ask me all the time what race are you and I'm not offended I just don't even know myself. A lot of people consider me Asian, even though I'm only a quarter. Others ask if I'm Mexican or Hawaiian haha I get everything.

Social Class

It's sometimes hard to accept that in the United States we still have a social class system, because as Americans we like to think that everyone is equal. Our class system isn't written, and not as set in stone as other countries, but that doesn't mean it's easy to climb the social class ladder in America. The social classes are divided based on more than just money. You can have all the money in the world and still not have high class or status. At my high school the division between social classes is not as apparent because everyone pretty much belongs to the same class, but at my middle school it was a small portion of kids from upper middle class families, and a majority of poorer minorities. The division was easily seen. The white, wealthier families dressed in Hollister and A&F, talked differently, cared about school, and school related activities while the poorer, mostly Hispanic kids dressed in cheaper clothes, and didn't care about school. The two different groups rarely interacted with each other. While in middle school, you just think you don't talk to the other group because they're different, but now looking back it's not only because they're different, but they come from a different social class.

drugs and deviance

The activity we did in class today where we were given a page about a certain drug and had to rate it if we thought it was legal or illegal on a scale of 1 to 4 really showed an unbiased opinion the different groups had about that certain type of drug. Legal drugs like alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine most times got ratings of 3 or 4, when in our society those are the least regulated kinds of drugs, whereas marijuana got ratings of 1 or 2 and that is a drug that is punished harshly by the law if you are caught in possession of it. If I would of known what the drugs were before rating them, I would have given alcohol a 1, caffeine a 1, nicotine a 1, and marijuana a 3 or 4. The drugs I deem socially acceptable to use that I don't think are deviant come from society and the laws. Since marijuana is illegal and harshly punished I've always had a more negative view of it than when I did for the in-class activity. My view of marijuana is changing just because I think I'm becoming more aware of it. Four years ago as a freshman if I found out someone smoked weed they would have a social stigma to me, and now as a senior I see the prevalence, and don't see it as super deviant, but still illegal.

Deviance

Deviance is violating a social norm, and normally when I think people are violating a social norm it is a bad thing. I think the word has a negative connotation, but today in class I realized that violating a norm can be positive too. It can be a random act of kindness, and just something that isn't normally expected. One example is buying someone coffee. At, first I found that somewhat creepy. If someone did that for I would think what's up with this person? Why would they feel they need to buy coffee for me? What do they want from me? But, I started thinking just simply buying a random stranger coffee who looked really wore down and tired would be a really nice thing that doesn't normally happen. I think what constitutes deviance varies from person to person. When I wanted to get a second ear piercing, and a cartilage piercing my dad was really against. He thought that it would look bad, and unacceptable, but I think that piercings have become more acceptable and not considered very deviant. Although I think it would be deviant if I got like 50 piercings all over my face.So, deviance varies by person and changes over time.

Messages from the media

This week was all about gender roles, and what messages the media sends to everyone about how to be a man or women. The media teaches boys to be violent, tough, and unemotional. In ads men and even little boys are depicted as strong and independent while women and little girls are depicted as weak, and as objects. From as early as we can remember we are bombarded with these messages, and although it seems like we can ignore them these messages get ingrained in our heads.  Ads everywhere picture women beautiful, perfect, and skinny. Girls need to strive for perfection, but it isn't possible. I just got a magazine in the mail today, it's called Glamour. After watching Killing Us Softly 4 I couldn't help but notice all the ads in Glamour when I was looking through it. Before I would try to skip over and ignore them, but now I can't. And, I realize now that I could never fully ignore the messages of the ads. When me and my friends would go through magazines together we would always look at all the pictures of the models and say I wish I had that body, or I wish I was that pretty. When we were finished with the magazines we were just left feeling badly about ourselves. But, it's impossible to strive for this kind of perfection. The models and people in the magazines don't even look like that because their pictures are photoshoped and altered.

Consumers for life

There are many different agents of socialization that shape us in our lives and we don't even realize. In sociology this week we talked about all the different groups like family, school, day care, religion, sports, and the media. I was most surprised at how big of an impact the media has on everyone even when we're just little kids, especially advertisements. Advertisements are specifically targeting kids because kids have so much impact on what a family spends their money on, and also to make the kids consumers for life. Thinking back in my own childhood I agree with this. The TV brain washes you into thinking you absolutely need this, and it could be from a commercial or more indirectly and sneaky through product placement in shows and movies. When I was little I also wanted something else, the next doll, the newer Barbie, or the bigger play castle. But, now with technology like computers and cell phones kids are targeted in even more ways than just the TV. I was babysitting my neighbors and the little girl, Emma, wanted to show me her Club Penguin animal or something. I had never heard of it. She explained it was a stuffed animal you get and then you can have some kind of internet account. Both her siblings had one too. The media's impact on everyone is inevitable. We live in a consumer culture, but knowing  what kind of an impact the media and advertising has on our lives can help us be less brainwashed and help us make more informed choices about things.