My Life in Sociological Terms

Culture:
Its weird to think that where we live determines who we are. We adapt traits and hobbies from the society around us. As Americans we're so different from any other country, as Illinois we're very different from Indiana, as the Stevenson district vs. libertyville, even from my house to my next door neighbor. We can all be so closely related yet so different. What exactly influenced me to be the person I am today? I guess that's something no one can every really answer exactly. Kids blame their parents in many ways for how they turned out. Like "the kid who never got a chance to go out and really party in high school so they party too much in college since they have so much freedom", or "their parents don't care so they're more level-headed". But I don't really think that that's it. My parents could care less about the extra-curriculars i do. They wouldn't even know what clubs i'm in if you asked them, even though i've been in the same ones for all 4 years of high school; so obviously they don't influence that factor in my life. You expect asian families to be really strict, the kids have tostudy a lot, get straight A's, take a lot of APs, but my parents aren't strict, i go out when I want, I don't get straight A's, and I didn't take my first AP until this year. That doesn't mean i'm not a hardworking student though. There are a lot of factors to what makes a person who they are.

Media:
I remember watching Disney movies when I was younger and still today I love them. When it comes to these, i fell right into the hands of the media(which sucks since a lot of times i can be pretty skeptical of society and people) and their "evil" perception on how people should act and look like. I never even realized that i played right into what they created until Sal said something. I have subconsciouly grown up to think that girly girls get all the attention-all the good attention anyway. Or that you have to be skinny and beautiful. There is so much in the media that we subliminally take in and it influences us. Subtle things like watching popular shows like "The Hills" on MTV where a bunch of rich, skinny, pretty, glamorous girls live in California and teens all over just wish they were them. These ideas are fed to us in the most influential system: media. Reality is, is that skinny doesn't mean pretty and in the entire world, not everyone will think you're pretty but a lot out there still will. It sucks to have grown up with all these body conscious/awareness ideas put in my head, but all of that has already been ground into my brain. What I am glad about is that society is aware of these obsurd goals of self image and hopefully the generation my kids are in won't have to believe that being skinny and made up is what makes you pretty.

Gender:
So I work in the children's department at Macy's and i think its there where you can really see the difference between boys and girls and their materialism. The department is split between boys and girls from toddler sizes and up and in the center are infant sizes with boys and girls still split. Needless to say, the infant area is obviously divided in color. Boys with blue outfits and girls with pink. It has become a distinct way to differentiate(sp?) the genders of babies by the color they are wearing. It isn't until they are older can the child themself decide their favorite color. Personally, blue is my favorite color and i actually hate the color pink. There isn't a single pink piece of clothing in my closet. I think my loathe for pink actually comes from the whole baby thing too.

Teens:
There has always been stereotypes for teen. When i was younger i remember watching movies with teens in them and i couldn't wait to be a teenager. I was so excited to be 15, then 16, and now i'm finally 18 its almost surreal to think about. Then older adults look down upon teens as a nuisance, rebellious, troublesome, etc. At the same time society depends on us for the future. I'd say the contradicting prejudices are annoying. I have, for the most part, always been pretty mature for my age. There are huge differences between the kinds of teens right here at stevenson. There are students who don't care about school, students who care too much about school, athletic students, etc. Being an active "school student" i have always had adults trust me or have no reason not to trust me. Now in stevenson when i come across a staff member i don't know and am actually treated like some delinquent, i absolutely hate it. I'm not used to not being trust by adults but i know that it is only because staff members such as security must assume that we'll be trouble. I myself even dread teens i don't know either. that prejudice of troublemaking ass holes gets to me too. I see people my age that i don't know when i'm out and i'm cautious of them too. Its pretty sad. But like any other stereotype, not everyone lives up to it.

Social Class:
Its funny to see the contrast in houses within a school district. we had said in class that the aptakisic area has very different types of house all right next to each other. near me we have duplexes, apartments, and houses just a street apart from each other. i always thought that i had a pretty good sized house but now going to stevenson and meeting new people from other areas, some of their houses make mine seem small. not that i don't like my house or find it small now, the differences in houses within our district is interesting to see.

Race:
Race is what stereotypes are mostly focused on. in my blog about race i said how i hated asian stereotypes because i don't follow them at all. but at the same time its hard not to see stereotypes of other races myself.

each one of these factors have been enground into every one of us and this class, to me, just seems to point out how messed up we are. not that thats a bad thing, at least we see it!

Intertwined Pieces

I think the message the movie Crash wants to give us is that we are limited by the stereotypes and prejudice ideas that we believe. The reality is, is that every person has the potential to be anything they try to be; with opposing stereotypes or not. We've got these ideas inprinted in our brains that we subconsciously live up to and never end up breaking them really.

These racial stereotypes are either good or bad, things we like to live up to or things we want to disprove. Some are funny, but some can be offending or hurtful. Personally, I hate the asian stereotypes. I don't find myself particularly "smart" by the asian standards. I'm not in a bunch of APs or in NHS and I don't get straight A's. I do however care a lot about school and work, which has nothing to do with my asian background. My parents don't push me to be in all the clubs I'm in and do all the other stuff that I'm involved in and I think that just because i'm asian it doesn't mean that that makes things any easier for me as a person. Any white person is fully capable of doing all the same things I do, so would people praise a white person doing the same thing as me, saying "Oh wow you're such a hard worker!" but just tell me "Well, that's very nice you're so involved"?

I like the fact that i disprove the asian stereotype. I don't spend all my time at the library or go to all the "asian hang outs". I don't know all the asians in our school and i am actually BAD at MATH. I may be one of the very few asians in my math class, but i'm proud to say i'm also one of the only asians in Patriot singers. Sorry I just like to sing more than doing math problems!

we're all subconsciously racist?

So we recently are learning about how most people in America "prefer" white people over black. That white people are considered "pure" and if any trace of another race is in their blood, they're "tainted" in a way, or even "bad". When it comes to the terms of good and bad, growing up, i guess i was subconsciously taught that dark things are bad and light things are good. For example, heaven; we all see the typical image of light and white clouds and overall bright. Hell we imagine as dark and scary. Can this unwritten lesson be considered racist?

I remember when i started taking piano lessons and my teacher asked me what was the difference between the keys on the right side of the piano and the left. I played the notes on the left and then i played the ones on the right. I said that the lower notes on the left were darker sounding while the higher notes on the right were light. I had associated the low notes with darkness and bad and the high notes with light and good. Is this a subconscious way of being racist? I don't think that its something that anyonce can ever figure out so though i do agree that society emphasis that light = good, i don't know if it is particularly racist thing.

Tax, Bills, Rent, Fees

I have played monopoly tons of times in my life but never have I ever actually learned something about actual life from it. In the game all players start off with the same amount of money. From there luck is what you play on. You use the money you have to buy property or train stations and hope that others will land on it to get the money you used back. You roll high numbers to get around the board quck and pass GO to collect $200.

I started off the game with a decent amount of money. As the game started i would land on property that already belonged to the rich. Therefore i couldn't buy the property but in fact had to pay a fee. I tried my best to catch up money wise to the richer player by buying decent properties around the board. Ones with good fees if people landed on them but didn't cost me too much to buy. But my plan didn't work out the way I hoped. Not many landed on my properties. I didn't have enough to buy the whole set or any houses either. By the end of the game my risk taking led me to be even more poor than i was when i had started.

In actuality, it is such a risk to earn such profits. It takes so much money and chance to go for your goal and all you can do is hope that in the end it'll pay off. My dad used to own a restaurant, which for a while did very well but eventually it closed down. More recently, like in the past 4 or so years, my mom has been wanting to open another restaurant. The idea of one is great and has a lot of potential in success and money, the problem is the money to actually start it. Its too much of a risk to get loans and such to open a place because there is no gauruntee that this place will be a hit or not. So our family income doesn't change because its too risky and its not a risk we're willing to take at this point.

Only You Can Change Yourself

In the movie that we're watching, we learned about a family who literally lives in a trailor in a rural area. This family lives several miles away from any public place and are in the middle of no where. The mother of this family says that her oldest son tries to dress "preppy" and acts "like he's better" than his family. She and her son constantly fight about cleaning up their act and fixing their place. I was a bit bothered by the mother's words about her son. No doubt no one wants to live the way they do and I don't think it is her fault that they are in the financial status that they are. It is obvious that she works hard to keep a nice living for her family. But as a mother, I found it terrible for her to talk down to her son the way she did. He wants to work for a better future for himself and dresses the way he wants to dress. He puts himself in the right mindset to get him where he wants to go in life. Its wrong for any mother to discourage their child of that kind of ambition. I do realize that what he says to her may be harsh for her and rub her the wrong way, but how can he be expected to stay hopeful when his own family is putting him down. Life is what you make it and he's trying to make it the best he can.

Once Poor, Always Poor.

What I learned from the penny game we played is that once you've failed to make something of yourself, you never will. Sadly, I lost the first round of the game, and for the rest of the class period i sat around talking to my friends. I did nothing productive when i should've or could've been winning some pennies. This idea goes with the idea that the incarcerated stay in prison because they can't change themselves. It gives me the mentality that once you're down, you're always down. Of course, with the exception of a good handful.

In Sal's blog about this topic, he noted that hispanics are more over the poverty line than whites, which brought me to the point that it is so unfortunate that foreigners have such a harder time earning money. It really sucks to have the disadvantage of a job because you aren't from this country. My parents are immigrants and my siblings and I are the first generation in my family ever to be born in America. My parents have worked so hard to keep up with supporting three kids, owning a house, currently owning three cars, and on top of that owning lots of pets(my sister and I are suckers for animals). None of that ever adds up to cheap. And both of my parents have struggled with jobs due to their accents. They've been limited because of it. So if America's "ways" tend to be that once you've reached the top, you stay at the top, how will immigrants every reach the top? (again, with the exception of a good amount still)

Prisoner for Life

After beginning to read the story/article "Courtroom 302", I've begun to realize that its no wonder why most of the people that go to jail end up going back and are never able to turn their lives around. What do we think mostly leads people to commit crimes? Drugs are a way out, a sense of relief, a temporary solution that gets the user caught up in bigger and deeper messes. If not drugs, common things are rape, murder, and theft. Do happy people commit these acts? Sometimes yes, but many of the times, no. Its the people that feel low of themselves. They're angry with something and are driven to commit such felonies, leaving them in a deeper mess and possibly, hopefully, thinking to themselves "what have i done?" and realize they regret their mistake. But what's done is done, and they've landed themself in jail. As if life wasn't low enough at that point, the guards in jails and prisons don't exactly give a positive contributions. They yell and treat the prisoners like the shit they believe they are, if not worse. So after being thoroughly convinced that their lives are meaningless and feeling terrible about themselves, these guards confirm it and with that, what insentive would any person have to change their lives? I think they believe "hey my life sucks, F*** it." and go on living the rebellious way they've always been.