Genius Hour Reflection

I was finishing my explanation of cause, and I realized that as I approach the solution; it is entirely meaningless. I am actively working on a solution to a different problem: poor food quality in the US. Instead of pursuing college next year, I am starting a not-for-profit agronomy cooperative, and may be leaving Payton early to begin working. I think I should switch my genius hour topic to that, considering I am making a solution that will actually impact the community. My new question becomes why is American food so unhealthy. Fortunately, my explanation again is related to capitalism, and people's willingness to be selfish and/or wrong, so many of my sources will still be relevant. Moreover modern food represents the institutional decline of food quality.

Genius Hour Reflection

I worked on my explanation of cause. I wrote a paragraph, with multiple sources, explaining the functional purposes of capitalism and it's functions in society. I found and annotated another source for the paragraph explaining the theoretical benefits of capitalism.

Unit 3: Race Socialization Reflection

1. How is race socially constructed, and what effect does this have?  

Biologically racial divisions are illogical, often with more differences within racial categories rather than between them. However, socially, one’s technical race is less important than what others perceive them to be. Race is derived in perception of others, not biological formation. Omi and Winant explained that our individual, often disparate, conceptions of race are based on individual experiences, yet those foundations create a way in which we interpret, categorize, and form expectations about people based on their race or ethnicity.

Race is socially constructed by the agents of socialization: family, media, peers, etc. Although the manifest function of media is entertainment, the latent function is learning carefully crafted representations of race, and therefore developing prejudices. The media illustrates racial stereotypes and uses minority identities for punchlines, or often lacks any representation of racial and ethnic minorities. Jane Elliot demonstrated how one with authority in a group can construct race, by which I mean create a social value in physical characteristics. She utilized her power to verbally harass and degrade the lesser-eyed students by explicitly labeling mistakes as a result of their eye color. This is the key to racial construction: convincing a group that certain characteristics present in a racial group are a result of their race.

The symbolic value of a physical characteristic is a prejudice, which most often leads to bias. While declaring explicit bias and expressing it in overt discrimination has become a faux pas, implicit biases are still prevalent in this generation. Being that predominantly those in power (in government and upper levels of most American industries) are white, and have been taught to have a bias favoring other white people, these biases perpetuate the same racialized power structures that have existed for centuries. Even members of non-white racial or ethnic categories can acquiesce and believe in white superiority. The Doll Test showed how whiteness is taught as superior, even to children of color. Through the lens of the social conflict theory, race is tool to oppress groups.

The existence of bias, often based off characteristics present in the minority of a racial category, leads to discrimination. As a group is perceived socially as inferior or innately worse, however that stereotypes takes its form, and is treated worse, then the looking-glass self is more negatively warped. For example, a Black student in one of the prison-style high schools grows up being treated like a criminal, especially because school’s zero-tolerance policies unfairly target Black and Latino students (Braz & Williams 132). That rejectment from mainstream society makes criminal behavior more enticing, especially if other job offers are hard to find. This perpetuates the cycle of prejudice and discrimination that is institutionally pervasive. We see how race is integrated in the structure, and innate inequality, of the government and the criminal justice system.

2. How has learning about race and the criminal justice system affected the development of your sociological imagination?

We are in the ever-continuing process of writing the racial narrative of mankind. The racial system, as it now stands, is a result of the legacy before us. Being that America’s wealth and prosperity was stolen from the labor of slaves, we are still recovering from that inequality and the mindset it represents. Furthermore the inequality created in wealth would forever perpetuate itself in our economy, because as explained by Thomas Pickety, the rate of return on investment will always be higher than inflation, so inequality perpetuates and worsens itself. Logically Black Americans would hold less wealth than white Americans, with inflation against their side on the journey of social mobility. Moreover that economic status was perpetuated through institutional oppression.

Current racial systems are a shadow of what came before as those in power have learned how to be racist more covertly. The illusion of the drug war is that it opposes drugs as the enemy. (Personally I believe that the war on drugs was conceived for multiple purposes; one of which was eliminating the competition of other drug vendors. There is evidence that the CIA sold crack-cocaine, so the entire war could have been motivated by a potential drug monopoly. However, some might label this as a conspiracy theory that is unrelated to race and consequently grade me poorly, so I will not elaborate further.) The real enemy of the war on drugs is Americans, predominantly people of color. Alexander explains that the war on drugs provided the opportunity to combine military weaponry and fighting tactics with racial biases. Although nothing in the guidelines or legislature behind the war on drugs says to target Black people, they also lack definite limits on police discretion, which creates the opportunity for officers to rely on their biases. As demonstrated by Illinois 2010 prison census, Black people face higher rates of incarceration and over-representation in total prison population. This shows how the cycle of prejudice and discrimination perpetuates itself, because those ex-convicts are less likely to gain legal employment.

A sociological imagination requires the understanding that the drug war is not isolated. It is one of many measures to maintain the same power hierarchies. The collective narrative around race are a collection of these patterns. I can see how individuals, not through their own fault, fall into the roles defined by history through the cycle of prejudice and discrimination. Because of my whiteness, I have been given the option to choose how much I want to be aware of race. But a sociological imagination requires that I understand how my individual role, with my allocated privilege, can play a role in the greater social narrative.

3. How, if at all, can problems dealing with race and racial inequality be solved?

I would advocate for racial-nihilism, but I understand that others can find their race and ethnicity as a valuable, cultural identity. Ideally we could learn how to acknowledge differences without assigning value to them. Nonetheless there would have to be a massive shift in collective consciousness around race. Black Lives Matter promotes that even if they lack a clear direction. Because the problem has become institutional, it has to begin being solved there. Money funding the War on Drugs and over-bloated prisons must be re-allocated to schools in lower-income, non-white neighborhoods. This will help break the cycle of prejudice and discrimination because education can provide the foundation for social mobility.

The solution also requires massive social changes, which can begin in media. More TV series and movies need to represent people of color as full, complex characters who represent more than a joke or a stereotype. By showing people -- and allowing them to connect with and relate to -- different races and ethnicities equally, the next generation will be socialized to see that way and form less division along racialized lines. Smaller social movements are just as relevant as larger ones. Activities like Jane Elliot’s can be employed through various industries, so that teachers, officers of the law, and others in positions of authority can understand race as a social construct and therefore they take a role in perpetuating it or not.

Unfortunately, all efforts to end racial inequality are by victims of that oppression. Like in the Zimbardo prison experiment, a group in power will seek to continue that power. We saw this with a form of race in Elliot’s experiments with the favored-eyes groups. Racism has become more covert as a result of people of color speaking out, but it lingers because of the desire to maintain the existing power structure and its privileges.

Genius Hour Reflection

I watched Thomas Pickety's TED talk before last week's genius hour, and annotated it in my bibliography. He discussed the implications of his equation r > g which means rate of return on investment is always higher than inflation. The difference perpetuates and worsens wealth inequality. I didn't fully understand how he came to this equation from the video, so I revisited Capital to read a longer explanation. I am more convinced since I have seen his evidence, but to be fair it takes very little to convince me that capitalism perpetuates inequality.

Genius Hour Reflection

I was working on a the outline of the report on what causes my issue. While writing it, I hope to determine my gaps in sources. As such I started reading Capital by Thomas Pickety. There is a section that dealt with the role or Central Banks. Pickety believes it to be preventing financial collapse by creating out loans to socially-significant enough institutions. I am going to watch his TED talk as my documentary and annotate it for my bibliography for next class.

Genius Hour Reflection

I began reading The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve. I was reading about how the federal reserve formed in the same way a trust or cartel would form. The competing industry leaders -- predominantly the representatives of Morgan and Rockefeller -- formed a state-sponsored monopoly. It demonstrates that the manifest function of Federal Reserve was to stabilize the economy and promote business. However, the latent functions were to stop growing competition of new banks, obtain method to create money for lending, control all bank reserves, and have the american people deal with the inevitable burden through bailouts.

Gender Socialization Blog Post

How is gender socially constructed and what effect does this have?
Gender does not exist innately in individuals. It is a learned behavior that is taught through the agents of socialization: media, family, peers, education, religion, etc. These people and groups raise a child and teach them proper social behavior. Without this education, humans can appear oddly inhumane, as seen in Genie's case. Socialization helped her develop. Unfortunately these agents are teaching an unnecessary, oppressive, social paradigm: gender.
As discussed by West and Zimmerman, gender is an active choice in every mannerism. These social patterns exist in every expression of self, including minor details like speech patterns and appearance and major details like activities and careers. The crucial element of the definition of "Doing Gender" is the risk of judgement for fitting one's gender role at any time. These roles are enforced by social accountability. Individuals who defy these norms will be rejected.
The problem with society doing gender is that it is inherently oppressive to women. Missrepresentation demonstrated the display of women as predominantly sex objects. The media socializes young women to view their bodies and its status as a sexual object as their value. Men are represented as the objectifies, and women the objects.  As seen in Fiji's increase in eating disorders from the integration of technology, strict beauty standards and strong focus on women's beauty as their value damage women and girls livelihoods. Media is one of the most powerful forces of socialization because it removes the I, and only appeals to the Me. The viewer is only able to passively absorb social interactions and the lessons about the values of different symbols in those interactions. This power is extremely undeserved by the media because of their willingness to misrepresent and unfairly socialize individuals with prejudices.
Women were socialized to be sex objects because the agents of socialization wanted them to be usable to attain masculinity. Kimmel describes women as "currency" in male interactions. This social interaction approach uses women as a symbol for power. Masculinity is defined by Kimmel is a constant search to earn manhood from male peers, which causes a constant push down on others to validate one's own ranking. It is the result of socializing males to highly value the looking glass self, so much so that their is a constant fear of embarrassment.
This objectification of women for the sake of masculinity disenfranchises each woman's autonomy and is a result of the inherent dominance in masculinity. That is why the patriarchy (the social system created to perpetuate the power of white, straight, and cisgendered males) disenfranchised any possible threat to themselves: racial and ethnic groups and women as discussed by Kimmel. Masculinity is a force a dominance. In socialization of gender, power is a prevailing theme. I have learned in this unit that gender is the result of teaching one segment of the population that they are powerful and another segment that they are not. Subsequently those in power will perpetuate their own power as seen in the social conflict approach.

How has learning about socialization and gender effected the development of your own sociological imagination?
I can recognize that the way I formulate my looking glass self is through the gender that I was socialized. In myself, I notice more female patterns of thought: trying to appear kind, assuming guilt, and other thoughts routed in low self confidence. Someone who is male would have been socialized to formulate their looking glass self in the context of masculinity which is shown to be more confident by "The Confidence Gap." I can see how my individual narrative, in patterns of thought and behavior, was defined by the collective narrative of gender. I came out as non-binary because I saw that any femininity in me is the result of history and that I was then socialized based on this history. I didn't feel comfortable letting my biography be defined by a random circumstance that our collective history places significant value upon. To accept my gender as a result of my sex organs is to lack the sociological imagination to see the dependency of my biography on history.
Mills says that in analyzing an society in the context of the sociological imagination, one must ask "what is the meaning of any particular feature for its continuance and for its change?" Gender is a crucial feature in our society. I believe it has been continued by the dominant nature of masculinity. Gender has been enforced by men to grant them innate but undeserved power. Kimmel fundamentally described masculinity as fear of powerlessness in society. Capitalism perpetuates gender because it feeds the fear and subsequently competition and dominance. Our larger social structure perpetuates gender and therefore impact every individual narrative.

How, if at all, can problems dealing with gender stratification and gender discrimination be solved?
Gender is inherently a power structure, as illustrated in the social-conflict approach. It would not serve it's function if it did not create discrimination and stratification. For centuries, in a structural functional perspective, it served as means to divide the labor force into raising the next generation (clearly the more important duty) and doing the physical labor needed to keep society functioning. As previously discussed, the divide has highly problematic effects. Moreover there is no need for division along those lines. Females are capable of serving society to the same degree.
Gender should be dissolved to eliminate this power structure that causes women to be disenfranchised. Although structural functionalist would see "I'm glad I'm a boy, I'm glad I'm a girl," as a demonstration of the complementary nature of masculinity and femininity. But what it demonstrates is that gender roles benefit men and put women in an inferior role.
There is no gender without this divide in power. To eliminate gender discrimination and stratification, we have to eliminate gender. The fundamental differences in the sexes are not enough that they require the amount of social divide we have created for them. Target demonstrated that not every children's product needs to be for girls or for boys. These products are ultimately designed to serve humans. From a symbolic-interaction approach, one can see that without gender defining the subtleties of daily interaction, women could finally exit their deferential role. In fact, there wouldn't be any roles. People would be able to dress, speak, and act how they want to based on their own individuality instead of their gender.