week 10 - Black Middle-Class Suburbia

      The issue that Lacy describes in this article is black and white middle class community. If we look at history, blacks are slaves of whites, after Abolition Movement, blacks get independence, freedom and getting to involve in whites community. However, racism and social inequality exist in our society, in many parts, whites and blacks cannot be equal. As Lacy said, "According to the prevailing view, blacks have undergone cultural assimilation or acculturation, but racism impedes their structural assimilation, that is, integration into mainstream "social cliques, clubs and institutions ... at the primary group lever" (Gordon 1964, p80)." (Alder, p214). We can see how blacks have difficulties in assimilation by Lacy's example.

      Socialization play a very important role in society, it teach people how to act. In the discussion of education part, blacks trying to send their children to whites school, because they think that's a real world even their children have no interest on it. More and more blacks compel their children to whites school, I think that's the effect of socialization. 

      The alienation affects blacks life as well, blacks and whites has been separate. some people grow up around blacks, and stay in their racially-distinct place. As lacy describes, people didn't grow up around other black people would act and behave different, because they missing experience of interact with other race people. Those people are immersed in a mostly black environment and learn black culture. I think black people might want to use this kind of life to avoid interact with other races, and protect themselves.

Week 8 -- Human Freedom

 In my point of view, freedom is limited and it depends on what you think about freedom. Based on Charon stated in chapter 5, "it is critical to recognize that a great deal of what we call freedom involves thinking." Actually, it's very important on how and what people are thinking. As we are born, we aren't able to determine what country we are in, what kind of family we have, what kind of culture we would be in, and so on. We were basically under the control of the social group as we grew up, and that could be applied for anyone's life, including mine. My life was very simple like everyone had, I was controlled by my parents until  now because of Chinese traditions. Before I immigrated here, in China, we had to enroll in 9 years of education, but in America, we have to finish 12 years of education. No matter where we are, people are controlled by socialization and social structure. However, we had freedom, but limited.
 I learned from the story of Henry David form Charon's textbook, Henry was in jail but he still thought he was free. All in all, freedom was limited, because people want freedom, and they also want to be protected. We don't want to see people commit crimes and still be free. To be more fair, we have laws to control our actions. Someone says if you can't change the world, then change your attitude or thinking. We don't have the abilities to change this world, then we should follow the laws, social structures, or socialization then we would find freedom. 

As we discussed class structure in previous chapters, we have working, middle and high classes in our society. However, nowadays inequality is getting worse and rich people getting richer, and poor people are getting poorer. The middle class is becoming less and less stable which results in closely turning into the working class level. Inequality effects people's life and even more economically. It keeps rich people on the top, and poor people at the low social structure. 

Chapter 4

         Charon had state “The answer is the development of social structure within every organization: society, community, formal organizations, groups, and most relationships. The process of social structure is inevitable, and the structure is almost always inequality,” (pg 69) This states no matter what inequality, it will always exist, because if there is no structure, our personal traits raises competition against ourselves. There will always be someone that is going to be smarter, faster, and better looking. These traits give people in higher position the right to divide labor based on their opinion of who is better working. 

          Inequality exist everywhere in society in different ways, for me, I am  Asian, and I always lived in New York, so there are so many other races in here. I think there is inequality during races. For example, people would divide by their location, mostly Asians lives in Chinatown, or 8^th Ave in Brooklyn, and people would also divide by their job, most of Asian work in restaurant and salon.

          The United States is an immigrant country, there are too many different kinds of ethnicity, and therefore, racial is a big part of inequality in the United States. Such as income inequality, education, or crime rate, etc. For example, sociologists will always statistically create the percentage of what kind of ethnicity are involved in crimes annually.  One more example of the graph below:

Sociologist would always statistically show how inequality of a certain thing, based on these graph, we can see white people has more wealth than Hispanic and Black, and there is a big difference on it.

         

Chapter 3

I learned power in the street in the 19th century society, it was violence of the community, especially in the black urban cultural. In that certain period, Kubrin stated, "one way to acquire respect is be developing a reputation to being violent, by creating a self-image based on "juice"(Anderson 1999;32)."( pg 4) that showed in that culture, violence was everywhere and became inured to the unusual. 

Rap lyric was best to describe how was the community cultural and how people think of violence. According to  this article, Kubrin said, Applying this perspective to the current study, I argue that both the street code and rap lyrics are constitutive elements of contemporary black urban culture,"(pg 7) people used lyrics to presented their situation, environment, and cultural. It could be connect to my life, to nowadays people, we always used lyrics of music to present what we think, where we are, and what are we doing, even more about the society, cultural, and religion. However, music could be a best way to describe people's mind or feeling, because people are nature of social, it's important to know how people feeling of their society.

In short, we live in a complex world, every society has problems, we actually need something to solve problems. Therefore, we have social institution to help people to solve problems. For example, in this article, we can see in the 19th century, people were out of control, and slavery was a big problem at that time, people used to brought guns everywhere to protected themselves. As a result, government found out there must be some regulations in the society to protect people. Social institution is very important to us, so that every member of society have to obey in order to protect ourselves.

Street code, Rap music

chapter 2

The entire chapter is taking about human being, why we are different species in this world. Human is animal too, they have a lot commons as human. They have mind, we just use mind to describe human, they have their character, we just don’t use personality to describe it, they have their social and life, and we just don’t live with them. In a word, human is an upper level animal, which has a different way to live in this society and also controls animal’s environment.

Everyone belong to the society according to this chapter, “A being who is social in nature, who survives through a dependence on others, who learns how to survive from others, who develops both human qualities and individual qualities through socialization, and who lives a life embedded in society; and 2. A being who is cultural in nature, who interprets the world according to what he or she learns in society, and therefore a being whose nature is not fixed by biology but is tremendously diverse.”(pg40) I agree with this point, because form an infant born, they need to be feed to grow up, then they need to learn a lot of live skills in the social. Everyone lives in society will effect by social events, no matter you stay at home, waking in the street, or working somewhere.

Women and men does same work, even they have difference in some parts. In fact, everyone is equal, god is fair to everybody. “By the 1990s, an acceptance of the idea that women can do almost anything traditionally reserved for men had clearly evolved, even though opportunities remained limited,”(pg29) the evidence proved women is able to do almost anything that men can do. Nowadays, women and men is equal almost in everybody’s mind, sometimes, women do a better job than men.

chapter 1

        Mill's article described everyone was under control of government which caused a social problem. I agree with his point, middle or low class people seems like they have right for vote or something else under the law, actually they just usually doing things under the law or under what government says. They don't have enough time or power to argue about social problems what people involves. Therefore, everyone has a social problem but also under control. 
       From the beginning of this chapter, author mentioned, "sociology is an academic discipline, and attempt to seek knowledge and understanding through painstaking and critical investigation,"(pg3) I totally agree with that, because even in our personal life, we seek knowledge by research and forward investigation to get a conclusion. Everyone in the society is human being, especially in the United State, everyone has their own lifestyle, culture, and religion, etc. As a result, people will think differently to a same question, it's difficult to figure truth or false. According to the book, "the truth and falsehood of any idea must be measured against a neutral standard, some acceptable measuring stick that prevents people from simply believing something because it "feels good" or it agrees with what they already believe,"(pg7) that's why we have rational and empirical proof; in fact, in my point of view, I always rather believe what I already believe even I was wrong. Society is interesting, everyone belong to it and have different points of view for a same question, and some people make survey on it to get a statistic proof, even so people still rather to believe what they already believe.
        In this chapter, author gave us a lot of examples of how statistic is important in society in our life. For example, sociologist always give the suicide, divorce or obesity rate of in a certain year to warn or make a concept in people's mind in society. In conclusion, I get to know sociology is useful to my life, it give me a lot of information from the society, and it 's good to me for study.

 

"Class in America"

     This article wasn't a surprise to me, because I recently  started working for three years and I know how to work with people and how to deal with relationships. I never thought about the class level, and I know I belong to working class level. According to the article, "Factories in China and elsewhere churn out picture-taking cellphones and other luxuries that are now affordable to almost everyone," in fact, a working class person can afford to have luxuries as long as they are working hard. 

      Actually, everyone has a different definition of class, because of their different culture, taste, and lifestyle. In my view, education level and income or wealth can define a person's class levels. Everyone wants a better life, but not everyone will think about their class level. This article described a lot details about class in our lifestyle in America. The actual life is not about class; it depends on how we are satisfied with our life. In China, we always say once you are satisfied with your life, you will be happy. I don't care about class, I just want an ordinary life like everyone else. I don't need to be a star or Obama, me just being me. I have my own life and I am satisfied with my life. However, I will still work hard to get a better life.