Response 8

Response 8

The aspect of functionalist perspective that makes sense to me is that male and female do have different gender roles with in the family that complement each other to make the family work. Society sees females as supporters of the family emotionally and males as being the provider for the family. This is still true for some families today. This guy I know said in his house his dad worked and his mom stayed home cooking and cleaning. He said that how it’s going to be when he starts his family. In a way it is beneficial to the family because the man being at work frees him from thinking about what needs to be done at home. That would leave him to focus all his attention on work. The female being at home will take on the responsibilities at home, and she wouldn’t have to worry about work.  I can relate this view to how a watch works. If you open up the back of the watch there a lot of parts in there from gears to springs to a battery all working together to make the watch work. That’s mainly the point of the functionalist that the male does his part and the female does her part all together to make the family work. You have to have the right parts or people in order for this to work. There are some household that the females work and the male stays at home which goes agents the functionalist view.       

The aspect of the conflict perspective that makes sense to me is that one gender is being suppressed by the other. Society puts the males as the suppressor and the female as the suppressed. The conflict perspective believes that since there is an unbalance in power between males and females that it affects society in a negative way. In every culture and sub culture the biggest, strongest and smartest male is always look at as a leader someone that the people go to for answers, guidance, protection or they would be fearful of them. I can relate this to how slavery worked back in the day. The white males were superior over all people not only black people. The conflict theorists believe that we all should be equal no matter male or female or color. This would work out great within the family structure. Everything the male can do the female can do it too. It also takes off sum of the burden put on one person. For instance in some household the male works and the female works and when either is not working they take care of the house such as bill, kids, and grocery. Now a day’s its really uncommon to not be able to balance two or more things at once like work and school or work, school, and home.

Gender stratification takes a toll on the males in society weather they are aware of it or not. I have felt the impact of gender stratification thought out my life, in my house my dad has been making all the rules and no one can contest his rules or else we would be disobedient not even my mom. It like a dictatorship in my house whatever he says goes. As I child if I want to do anything my mom would tell me to go ask my dad first. When letters from school and report cards came home my mom would leave it until my dad came and opened it. A professional experience was when I was working overnight at Wal-Mart in Neptune. The supervisors a man and a woman wanted all the males to do all the heavy work while the women fold clothes and straighten up shelves. One cold night they told all the males to go outside and bring some carts inside. They only wanted the men because they thought we can handle cold better than the women. A personal experience I have is when I have a girlfriend they always expect me to do all things that men are supposed to do in relationships. Like pick her up, pay for food, open car door. I believe that we are all equal and whatever I can do you can do. There’s no need for me to open doors and pay for things.  A religious experience with gender stratification is every time we pray the males are always in front and the females in the back. The only reasoning for this is because if we were to mix it would be difficult for some men to focus their attention on praying to God. From the outside looking in it would seem like we are being suppressive towards females.

Response 7

Response 7

We live in a world today where people base their opinions form stereotypes and other preconceive notions they have. I am guilty of this myself. Being a young African American and an African in this day and age I deal with stereotypes every day. minor things like every time I enter an establishment I get watched a little closer than the other customers or they come up to me one after another asking me if I need help. I can tell the difference between when some is doing their job and when their keeping a close eye on someone. Major things like racial profiling by the cops and getting pulled over because I’m in the wrong neighborhood. A cop really asked me why am I in his town I said I’m taking a shortcut he says is there no other roads to make a shortcut that’s when I stop talking. It also doesn’t help that most African American youth are looked at as criminals by society. Most stereotypes of Africans are that we are dirty, live in huts, wear no clothes and chase animals.   
A most recent experience that I encountered dealing with race was a couple of weeks ago when I went to occupy Wall Street. It was me and three other guys we were all African American. We were sitting on the train ready to get off on the next stop when a big Italian family walked on the train. It was twelve of them a father, a mother, four adult girls with their husbands, and a two babies. I was sitting down not paying them any mind and the mother decided to sit next to me with her husband standing in front of her. Time goes by and the husband leans over to the wife and mumbles to her is he bothering you and she says no I'm fine. It’s pretty sad that people are still prejudice in 2011. I immediately realized why he asked her that I didn't take it personal because he doesn't know me. I just accepted it because that's what I would have done in the same situation. Things like this happen on a daily basis to a lot of people which usually causes a negative reaction out of them.  I’m not going to lie if a group of African American kids would have came on the train I would have been very nervous based on the fact that it Newark kids. With the knowledge I obtained in this class I think the guy asked his wife that question because he is probably in a higher social class than me and he doesn’t associate with people like me on a daily basis. The fact that most African Americans male young and old are in prison and the young ones in the streets are getting into crime he probably assumed that I was among them.

Response 6

Response 6

 As a child you are oblivious to the world around you. Growing up is when you start to take notice of things like social classes. For example I used what type of car my parents and my friend’s parents were driving to figure out what social class I fit into. I came to a conclusion that my friend parents had a better car than my parents because their parents were educated and mine, sad to say, were not. I think education plays a major role in determining your social class. It seems as if the higher your education is the more money you will make. The more money you make the higher you move up in the social class. It just so happens that most regular people that live in poverty have little education which makes them limited to succeeding in society, and most regular people that have a good income have masters which puts them ahead of society. You don’t have to have education to have good income. For example the people on reality shows like jersey shore and basketball wives just to name a few. I don’t think any of the cast members on jersey shore have their masters but they all have more money than me same for the basketball wives.When I was in elementary school it hit me what type of social class I was in. It was the end of fifth grade and I was about to be a sixth grader. When you were in sixth grade you ran the whole school. All the kids in the lower grades looked up to you and thought you were the coolest thing ever. So with that being said I said to myself I am going to be the most popular sixth grader ever. I made a pledge that I was going to get the coolest and hottest gear, not sure if the word gear is still in use to describe clothes, and I was going to get hottest shoes better than the other kids. Being that I was in fifth grade going to sixth I had no money or no job to support my dream. So I had to run this by my mom and she put me in my place. She said what about your old clothes wear that and I was like mom this is sixth grade we’re talking about here. She said well I can’t afford to buy you all those things you’re just going to have to wear your old clothes. Then she sat me down and showed me all the bills she had to pay plus she had to help out my dad with rent. That’s when reality hit me twice that I wasn’t in the social class that I thought I was, and that I wasn’t going to be the most popular sixth grader ever. Eventually I got over it. I understood that since my parents are not fortunate to have degrees and masters they can only provide us with the necessary things like food, shelter, and clothes.The social classes are determined by the people in society. Basically it is whoever has the most money or if their family has money. The only reason me and Lebron James are not in the same social class is because he makes more money than I will ever see in my lifetime, even though me and him are in the same age group. This and other reasons is why the occupy movement came about. I went there on Sunday because I had no idea what the movement was about. I learned that the lower class people are tired of living their life check to check, while the rich people are living their lives with no worries and getting richer. If you think about it logically it would make more sense if the rich people shared their wealth so we all can live on an even playing field. Then again if that were to happen some people would want more than the next guy and the current social class system would start all over again. I think the idea of social classes is the reason why crimes like robberies are committed so commonly. People see other people with nice things they want and they get jealous and take it. The things people steal range from cars, jewelry, clothes, and electronics.                                                                                                         

Response 5

Response 5
            We don’t realize that our lives and the way we do things are characterized by formal and informal social control. Informal social control is the way we treat each other or certain groups. For example bulling is a form of informal social control. Bulling has always been a norm for kids in elementary through high school. Before the term bulling meet to be physical with someone now you don’t have to be physical you can bully with words. I use to bully with word back in elementary school it was all fun and games, I didn’t mean any harm by it. It only becomes an issue when the bulling goes too far. Formal social control is the way we conduct ourselves in public for example handicap spots, you know you can’t park in a handicap spot if you don’t have a handicap tag even if it’s the only spot left in the parking lot. If you do decide to park in the handicap spot you will get punished.

            Formal and informal social control are evident at my job also I do security for AT&T. Informal social control that I have noticed is this other guard lies a lot to the supervisor about things that happen on her shift and the supervisor knows that she is lying. One day he asked her what happened but he already knew he just wanted her to tell him the truth, but she didn’t and she was fired. If she finds another job and wants to keep it eventually she would stop lying to her supervisors. Another example is lady that works for AT&T like to gossip to me about things happing in the building. Every time she starts to gossip I just ignore her or fake being busy. Eventually she stopped gossiping to me and now she talks about things but no more gossip. Since I was ignoring her every time she gossiped she figured that I wasn’t interested in her gossip. A form of formal social control at my job is entrance into the building. Every AT&T and security employee knows they have to swipe their id badge to gain access into the building to be accounted for encase of an emergency. If they don’t swipe and something happens in the building while they are in it like a fire or death their family won’t be compensated because the record would show that weren’t in the building at the time.

The more effective of the two social controls will be formal social control because all of the employees would want their family to be compensated if something did happen to them. Not only at my job, formal social control is the better of the two in the real world. Back to the example of the of the handicap spot nobody want to get a fine or be the reason a real handicap person can’t find a place to park. Formal social control gives us a guideline to follow in everyday life if you choose not to follow the guidelines you will be punished by the authorities.

We have all been deviance at one point knowingly or unknowingly. Examples are talking on the cell phone while driving you know you’re not suppose to but you still do it until you see a cop; when you call out of work sick and you’re not sick; keeping the truth from someone because you know that the truth will hurt their feelings; not having the latest cell phone or not being with the best cell phone company. Deviance is not a characteristic of the individual because we all are born with common sense some more than others. When we were growing we learned the difference between rights and wrongs. When we are able to make decision for ourselves the social system plays a roll on what choices we make. For example the people that decide to sell drugs because they can’t find a job they are fully aware of the consequences by doing that. Same goes for the people that choose to smoke cigarettes. They know the consequences from smoking cigarettes but the punishment for smoking cigarettes is internal.    

Jamie Foxx ft. Drake - Fall For Your Type

[Jamie Foxx - Verse 1:]

Can I, can I save you from you

cause you know there’s something missing

and that champagne you’ve been sippin’s

not supposed to make you different all the time

it’s starting to feel like the wrong thing to do girl

cause with all that recognition it gets hard for you to listen

to the things that I must say to make you mine

But live girl, have some fun girl, we’ll be fine

trying to convince myself I’ve found one

making the mistake I never learned from

I swear I always fall for your type, yeah (for your type)

tell me why I always fall for your type (for your type)

I just can’t explain this shit at all (fall for your type)

I just can’t explain this shit at all (fall for your type)

(I believe in people like you)

[Jamie Foxx - Verse 2:]

So who am I to judge you on the past, girl

I bet there’s a reason for it all

you say that you’re nothing like the last girl

I just pray that you don’t let me down right now

it’s too late, I’m already yours

you just gotta promise me, hearts won’t break

and end up like before

I swear I always fall for your type, yeah (for your type)

tell me why I always fall for your type (for your type)

[Drake:]

Look, dress hanging off your shoulder, barely sober

telling me how you moving away and starting over

girl, quit playing you just drunk, you just saying shit

oh you dance, dance like how, like ballet and shit

oh, wait, no, I get it girl, I’m with it

I’ve been down this road before and yeah I skidded but forget it

damn, yeah, I wonder why I never learned my lesson

it’s feeling like the second chance and it's the first impression

and I heard it’s nothing new except for someone new

but how you supposed to find the one when anyone will come with you

talking to myself but I never listen,

cuz man it’s been a while, and I swear that this ones different

that’s why I’mma take you anywhere you wanna go

let you meet my friends so they can lecture me again about

how reckless I have been

and I’m slowly running out of all the time that I invest in

making all the same mistakes

and I’m just trying to correct it and I fall...

[Jamie Foxx:]

I swear I always fall for your type, for your type

tell me why I always fall for your type, for your type

I just can’t explain this shit at all (fall for your type)

I just can’t explain this shit at all (fall for your type)

(I believe in people like you)

Kick Rocks!!!

I found myself kicking rocks today literally... it not as bad as people make it out to be, next time someone tells me to kick rocks i'll tell em, i'll love to.

Response 3

Response 3

My view of mass media is that they are there to inform and entertain us. I watched TV and used the internet as a normal America not thinking of what I was being exposed to. For two days I kept a record of the mass media I used and how its effect me and society. Football, boxing, reality shows, music, text messages and oh yeah a lot of commercials, were some of the things I was exposed to. During these two days I tried to stay away from the news because the news is just depressing and they only tell you all the bad things going on in the world. Makes me perceive the world as a terrible place and that it’s full with killers. The major news corporations are run by the government and they say what will be reported to the people. A typical news broadcast goes like this. Good evening and welcome to tonight’s news in the news today murder murder murder and in other news death, and now sports and weather. Even on the newspapers typically the most scandalous things make the front page. People in our society are more interested in all the negative things in life. Thinking as a sociologist I realized that the media has us under their control, by using subliminal messages in TV, internet ads. The subliminals I came across in commercials and ads was that the companies that were selling the product want us to say to ourselves, I need this product to survive and this product is better than those other products out there. For example there are many companies that sell the same water they each say that there water is the best tasting, we’re not really buying the water we’re just buying the brand. That goes for all products companies are selling to us. I would rather buy a pair of Jordan’s than buy a pair of payless shoes just because of the brand. Some of the norms I saw when I watched football and boxing was that people are fascinated with violence. Football is a very violent sport my dad still doesn’t understand why they play it. People cheer at football games when someone receives a hard hit from an opposing player. The way people were gathering around for the Mayweather Ortiz fight was kind of barbaric. People wanted to see someone get beat up not thinking what if one of them get hit so hard they die right in the ring, that would defiantly make the front page news. On worldstarhiphop.com people post their homemade videos of street fights in the back ground you can hear people saying get em, hit him in his head, and cheering when someone get knocked out once again not thinking what if this person dies because of this fight. Another norm I noticed in the media is the use of females and minorities in ads. They use females to push their products on men. For example the axe commercials they use females lightly dressed chasing after a male because he used the body spray. Saying to the males if you use this product you will get females to chase after you too. Minorities are rarely used in ads if so it’s balanced out. Most ads on TV are white males and white females. Which make me think that when the companies design their product they didn’t have they didn’t design it for minorities to use. Another norm that I noticed was that we don’t communicate face to face or voice to voice anymore. I can have a full conversation with my friend that lives two blocks down and continue on with my day. The only thing with texting is that it’s not instant the person could take forever to reply back to you, which always happens to me, and the conversation doesn’t flow like it should. The value that I picked up on is that the football players and other professional athletic sports get paid more than a person that graduated with their doctorates. This says that education in America is not that important no matter how much they say it is. If you have an athletic talent you don’t need four years of college, kids want to grow up to be ball players and not doctors and lawyers anymore. That’s why in previous years NBA players were coming out of high school into the NBA making millions at the age of eighteen or nineteen. Now they changed it you have to have at least two years of college before entering the draft. The effect of mass media on our society is felt every day, from the values of professional sports and not education, to the norms of companies’ views on women and minorities when it comes to their product, and the subliminal messages in their ads.