Class Participation

How does racism effect minorty groups?

Discrimination and persecution on the grounds of race and ethnicity are clear violations of this principle. Racial discrimination can take many forms from the most brutal and institutional form of racisms – genocide, to more covert forms whereby certain racial and ethnic groups are prevented from enjoying the same civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights as other groups in society. Racial and ethnic discrimination continues to be a major human rights problem in the world today facing both minority and sometimes even majority populations. The effects are self hate, self loathing, self harm issues, and fear of going to school/public places(agoraphobia). Racism also results in segregation. Fear of certain racial stereotypes also force some people to isolate from another group. Isolation can also lead to discrimination. Discrimination could deny people of certain groups opportunities based on race and racial stereotypes alone.

Class Participation

Global Sociological Imagination

Sociological imagination is the settings or framework for examining the social world. We need to look past the surface elements of life as though they have no meaning or causes.  This is what Mills is encouraging.  He wanted people to begin to question their actions, their thoughts and what might be the cause of them. To  understand the changes, we are required to look  beyond  them and the number. The variety of such structural changes increase as  the  institutions within which we live become more embracing and more  intricately  connected with one another. To be aware of the idea of social structure and to  use it with sensibility is  to be capable of tracing such linkages among a great  variety of society. To be  able to do that is to possess the sociological  imagination.

Class Participation

Can we live without ethnocentrism?

Enthnocentrism is the view that ones own culture is better than all the others. It is the way that all people feel about themselves compared to others in society. There is no one in our society who is not ethnocentric to some degree, no matter how liberal and open-minded someone might claim to be. People will always find some aspect of another culture distasteful. This is not something that we should be ashamed of because it is a natural outcome of growing up in any society. People believe that their own values and behaviors are the best: the most natural, beautiful, right, or important, and others are inhuman,  irrational, unnatural, or wrong; because people are growing up with their own culture, ethnocentrism is a natural  attitude inherent in their cultures. I do not think that we can live without ethonocentrism in any way.

Class Participation

Rascism In Canada and America

Racism is a certain kind of  prejudice, based on  faulty reasoning
and inflexible generalizations  toward a specific group. Racism is  an  unmerited fear or dislike of apeople because of their ethnic heritage.  When colour is not a reason, other reasons such as language, religion, nationality, education, sex, or age become the reason of prejudice. Canadians are generally more liberal than Americans. Canada is not a anti-racist sanctuary like many Canadians like to believe. Canada, I think, is the most multi cultural country due to percentage and there is racist people here, but not much.  It is definitely going down, because now all the groups I see of friends, is of more then one race. Now, families are mostly one race for obvious reasons, but friends. I think most people are accepting of other races in Canada. I rarely see it directly but once in a while something happens. A lot of it is indirect or from stereotypes from the entertainment industry common to both Canada and the US. The US is more racist then Canada by far.

Reflective Essay

Social Imagination

Our daily lives are spent among friends and family; at work and at play. We spend many hours watching TV and surfing the Internet.  No way can one person grasp the big picture from their relatively isolated lives. There are thousands of communities, millions of interpersonal interactions, billions of Internet information sources, and countless trends that transpire without many of us even knowing they exist. What do we make of this? Learning from class that sociological imagination is a sociological term coined by American sociologist C.W. Mills in 1959. It suggests that people look at their own personal problems as social issues and, in general, tries to connect their own individual experiences with the workings of society. The sociological imagination enables people to distinguish between personal troubles and public issues. Social imaginations do not just develop right away. It is like a product of collective experiences of al human beings and then, out of the blue, it triggers the birth of the long conceived imagination.

I’ve learned that social imagination, like feminism started probably as an individual battle to gain recognition as a woman who is a big part of the society. Though many women might have felt the same way, it never started as all women shouting for gender equality. It started as a minority voice that in the process gained recognition by opening more eyes to the real flight of the women in the latter part of the century and in the past century. Once other women learned that there really is a hope for gender equality other than being treated as domestic servants of the family, the imagination spread like wildfire. It never took long since the world was captured by the movement because after all it was already all in the imagination of all women, the need for gender equality and recognition and gaining of rights. Feminism now a day is recognized as an ideology all over the civilized world. It has become a global ideological imagination, which leads in the gender revolution. Without this sociological imagination of empowering women, I wonder if many women today are enjoying and living like they are today. To be aware of the idea of social structure and to use it with sensibility is to be capable of tracing such linkages among a great variety of surroundings.

To be able to do that is to process the sociological imagination. I understand that it has benefits as well as disadvantages. On the bright side, it can help someone deal with social problems such as poverty and unemployment by relating it to the giant scheme of things. Although one area may seem poverty stricken, in the whole city or country it may only be a minute percentage. On the downside, it sometimes may absolve one of any responsibility towards entrepreneurial drive as well as diminish their hope of controlling their own life. If one simply looks at themselves as part of a collective being where there life is perpetually being pushed around and affected by those around them, it may lead them to abandon the possibility of turning their life around or getting out of a rut.

I think that having sociological imagination is critical for individual people and societies at large to understand. Also it is important that people are able to relate the situations in which they live their daily lives to the local, national, and global societal issues that affect them. Without the ability to make these relations, people are unable to see societal issues that affect them and are unable to determine if these issues require change to better their everyday lives.

Social Justice Event

On November 10th I attended the Ghana Field School Students Colloquium event at KPU. They talked about the opportunities for participants to understand, through a first-hand study, the social cultural and environmental factors that impinge upon sustainable development in Ghana and their implications for community education and development. Where in that the field study would provide opportunities for studying physical and social environmental issues such as loss of wild lands, deforestation, bush-fires, land degradation, desertification, pollution, damage due to mining activities, social policies and culture. Exposing participants to, poverty situations, social and cultural life styles, historical facts and notable ecological and historical monuments of Ghana.

Despite national and international guarantees of gender equality and the right to education, girls still face more obstacles to attending school, and being safe once there, than do their male counterparts. While many students in Ghana don’t have money to pursue an education, girls here must contend with the assumption that they don’t merit one. From an early age, girls realize that education holds the promise of a new life. The girls who do finally make it to school have to contend with new peers that would be avoidable if their right to education was prioritized or even properly recognized by society.

There were 4 Ghanaian girls that came to share their personal stories of how the got treated in school and the differences between girls and boys. One of the girls said that growing up in poverty is very hard, they had no food and lost her dad. Having four other siblings their mother could not afford to support them, saying that “Somedays we didn’t have food for days”. It was even harder because her mother was not educated. Another girl had five other siblings, her brothers would go to school, and she wanted to go as well but couldn’t because she would be married off into another family. Doing so she would be “in the house getting fire wood, taking care of the house”, therefore it would be a waste if her family sent her to school but her parents did send her. The girls explained that in Ghana each child is worth $200 for high school which is very expensive. Before when they’re moms were girls, they would be locked up in rooms so they were not allowed to leave the house and go to school.  They want people to help them support younger generations to be successful and to become something especially girls. Girls are being shut down from the boys, it is not fair. It is discrimination, injustice to girls and they need to speak out.

In my opinion, I think that Gender socialization is the overarching cause of the gender gap in primary and secondary education. Girls are affected by sexual and gender based violence, early marriages, and child and domestic labour at a disproportionately higher rate than boys, thereby falling further behind their peers and subjected to additional discriminatory practices within the classroom. Sexual and gender based violence continues to be a significant obstacle to girls education, particularly for mature girls attempting to pursue secondary education. Parallel to the issue of sexual harassment by male teachers and classmates, it forces girls to withdraw or even avoid further educational opportunities. When girls are not forced to marry at an early age, gender socialization ensures that families invest the financial expense of education in sons rather than daughters, based on the idea that education for the girl child is a waste with eventual marriage inevitable. In addition for this problem to end would be to increasing the number of female teachers because female teachers provide crucial role models for girls, particularly when images of women in school curricula reinforce traditional gender roles. Girls look up to female teachers as figures of inspiration and emotional support, in addition to providing guidance for their education and future.

At the end of the event I learned that we need to appreciate the need for people to live at peace with nature by undertaking conservative measures to protect the environment, understand the need for environmental education as a key to the achievement of sustainable development in Ghanaian communities and be able to recognize varying social and cultural life styles of the people and how they relate to sustainable development and poverty issues.

Social Construction (Video)

Social Construction

Paraphrastic Reading

In this video, social construction is said to be one of the key concepts of sociology. It refers to one of the ways we create meaning through social interactions with others. Through six factors, social construction is generated. Starting with language, which is described as a system of sounds, sometimes figures to which we collectively attach meaning. It can be a set of symbols. That leads to the next factor of which is symbols, an object that stands in for another meaning. A great example would be the American flag. The third factor is color and is socially constructed when certain colors are associated with certain ideas, things or groups of people as that of blue stands for boys and pink stands for girls. Food we socially construct what types of foods should be eaten when like eggs for breakfast instead of dinner. Many bodily gestures are socially constructed as well; giving someone the thumbs up showing them they have done a good job. The last factor of social construction would be people. In socially constructing people, we create categories and ideas about what people in those categories are like. A well known example would be American Indians; people think they are more connected to nature than others. So why does social construction matter? Because they’re only collectively held beliefs, nothing more and nothing less. Concluded with why it is important to understand the process of social construction is they are very powerful and that they are contested in our world.

Five Phrase Segment:

Social constructions do change all the time. Groups may actively try to renegotiate meanings. Social movements can be understood in part as collective efforts to change socially constructed ideas about the world.

I think this segment is important because it explains that people hold beliefs that are not true and some rights are made based on those beliefs. As the civil rights and feminist movements, these groups of people were changing a small part of social construct, with the change of it they had to face many challenges doing so. Men are trying to renegotiate the way pink has been worn, showing they are no different from a women wearing pink. It is the change and deeper understanding the people need to realize.

Canadian Culture (Video)

Canadian Culture

Dialectic Reading

What question did the text/chapter raise?	How did the text answer this question?	How does the answer match your own ideas and experiences?
Is there a unique Canadian culture?	There is no unique Canadian culture but instead there is a great amount of multiculturalism.	The video has the same ideas as how I view it. Canadian culture is very open to accept other people of different ethnicities and backgrounds.
What is Canadian culture?	The acceptance of different cultures, values, and backgrounds. Taking society as a group or a whole, instead of categorizing people though each culture. The view of Canada is described as peaceful and happy country.	Again it has the same concept of what I had in mind. The values and belief in equality and fairness, the importance of accommodation and tolerance and the commitment to freedom, peace and non-violent change is the way that Canadians think.

Social Structures and Processes

The Phantom Of The Race: The Myth of Race And The Reality of Racism

By: Charles Quist-Adade

Dialectic Reading

What question did the text/chapter raise?	How did the text answer the question?	How does the answer match our own ideas and experiences?
Are race and racism different?	Race and racism are absurdly different things. Race does not exist and it is a creation of the collective imagination. Racism is a powerful reality and it manifests itself in a belligerently powerful way. They both feed off each other.	I thought that race and racism were alike but instead they feed off each other. I understand the concept of racism but not totally the concept of race and how they both feed off each other.
When both present, what does race and racism construct?	It basically poisons human relationships, maiming, killing, and destroying people everywhere in both hidden and open ways.	Racism brings out the worst in people and does discriminate other groups. Breaking down many human relations and bonds. People think that power is everything in a society but being racist doesn’t help, it’s just absurd.
What is race?	It is a grouping of human population characterized by socially selected physical traits; social construct (society’s invention); race is neither natural nor biological and it is not genetically predetermined or divinely created.	To me I think that race is any of the traditional divisions of humankind. A group of people that are partially isolated and in that group the members share a degree of similarities within a religion instead of physical traits.
What is racism?	There are many different definitions of racism. It is a set of ideas and ideals (ideology) that implies the superiority of one social group over another on the basis of biological or cultural characteristics; it is structural that is tied to social structures and institutions in our society.	It is true that one social group implies to be more superior to another and among the differences human races determine culture and the individual, a hatred and intolerance of the other.
How do people make the systems of social injustice and inequality happen?	Like sexism, racism and privileges, people adopt ‘paths of least resistance’- silence. To perpetuate a system we do not have to do something consciously to support it, instead our silence is crucial enough to ensure its future.	Clearly no system can continue without most people choosing to be silent about it.
What is the effect of racism?	Sometimes deliberately and inadvertently can insult and upset people. It can also be used to attack against someone and lower self-esteem.	In everyday situations I see people intentionally and unintentionally acting upon others and the end results aren’t that great, leading to disappointment, embarrassment and lack of self-esteem.

Social Structures and Processes

Who Will Liberate Liberia?

By: Charles Quist-Adade

Dialectic Reading

What question did the text/chapter raise?	How did the text answer this question?	How does the answer match our own ideas and experiences?
Why does the US let Liberia liberate themselves and not Iraq?	The US involved themselves in Iraq, since Iraq is rich in oils whereas Liberia is not. There is no benefit for the US to involve them in Liberia; therefore they leave Liberians to deal with everything on their own.	I do not think that this controversy is really over the oil, I think it is who need and wants the power and to be superior to the other.
Is there no justice in society?	The US funds wars even though that money can be used to help many people in need for food and water.	There should be equality in everyone because everyone is the same and shouldn’t be treated differently.
How much did the Bush Administration spend on the Iraq war?	Estimated about $200 billion dollars	That money could have been spent on the necessities of others in need around the world in many developing countries.