Last Blog!

This week in class we talked about the use of technology and the inequalities that come with it. Technology was created to bring people together, but in my opinion it is pushing people apart. When using social networking sites instead of searching for new people to talk to or things to do, instead we continue doing what we know. We become friends with family, high school friends, and we play games that we were originally interested in outside of the internet world. When we do become friends with people that we don't know we do it because they know someone or they are interested in similar things that we are interested in.
The inequalities that this creates is that it separates people who know and have access to the technology and the people who have know idea how to use technology or don't have access. The younger generation is growing up in a world that has easy access to technology. We almost expect that everyone should know how to use technology and should have access to it. We don't like to explain how to use it or understand how someone doesn't know how to use it or who doesn't want to learn how to use it. While thinking about this I decided to youtube old people using computers and found this very funny video clip. Hope you enjoy!

Sumblog 11

I really enjoyed watching the Solar Mammas documentary. I thought it was amazing that a man would want to find women in undeveloped countries and give them education to enhance their community. There were women from Africa and the Middle East that were asked to go to India to become educated about solar power. They were told that they would learn what they would need to come back and teach the people of their communities about solar power. It was great to see that a man would want to empower women.

It was amazing to see how well all the women got along, even with the language and culture barriers. They all came together and became friends. They would help one another when they could and they showed their culture. I couldn't imagine going from being able to talk to everyone to having a language barrier all-around me.

This documentary showed globalization in the way that the undeveloped countries where given the opportunity to learn more about how to be more like the developed countries. Many of the women and the communities that they came from didn’t have anything. These women were given the opportunity to go and learn and bring solar power to their communities. I couldn’t imagine having completely nothing and having the opportunity to help your community grow.

While Goggling images of globalization I found this cute little cartoon. I know that it doesn't have anything to do with the Solar Mammas but it does show how far western ideas have spread over the whole world.

Sumblog 10

In our society we have so many horrible events happen and have a hate for many that we are taught to live in fear. Our society is so full of ignorance that it has corrupted the whole system and puts people in their place. The fact that we have warning labels, for the silliest things, shows how much our society lives in fear.
It has been one year since the horrible incident of the Boston marathon bombing, I have found an article on how it has effected the politics.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/04/19/how-the-marathon-bombings-changed-everything-in-boston-politics/

The article talked about the experience of that day, how the mayor in office was at the hospital and many runners where in the race that were going to run for office since the mayor was retiring. After the first bomb went off people knew to come together and give any help that they could give. The amount of people who to came together in such short time was truly amazing; even with the amount of fear I’m sure was surging through their bodies. No one knew whether the incident was a terrorist attack or if it was planned specifically to take out some people that were known to be in the race. Between the bomb happening and till they found the bomber and even for some time after none of the canidents knew whether they could return to campaigns or not. After a few months campaigns were back up and running with many playing up the fear of the marathon Monday. The winner for new mayor made his speech and coined the phrase “Boston Strong”. This just goes to show how we can use fear to get a head in life. 

SumBlog 9

We as a society have always been sexualized; however it has been just recently that it is being talked about more often. In the mass media there is multiple underlying sex in anything from teen shows, family shows, basically anything on TV, and music. The majority of the time I pick up on the underlying sexually message in TV shows but music on the other hand that one gets past me. It amazed me in Wednesday’s class when we listened to “Blurred Lines: I never realized how bad that song was. We have people of all ages listening to music and not knowing what some of the undertones are.

The music that we listen to today would never pass as music years ago. We went from being classy to being trashy. Any genre of music is making their way into having sexually undertones. Now it isn’t every single song that you listen to but I would have to say that they majority of the music has some bit of underlying meaning. You wouldn’t think that country music would get on the band wagon. but yeap you guessed it they have.

When thinking about what song I would use it took me a little while but I decided to step away from rap and pop and look at a country song. The song that I have picked is “Something About a Truck” by Kip Moore. In this song it sounds so innocent talking about a truck and beer, but then it goes it to talking about a girl and not getting caught. Like the “Blurred Lines” song I didn’t pick up on the sexual undertone until my husband told me, which goes to show that when you don’t fully pay attention to lyrics you don’t really know what you are listening to. Now give this song a listen and see if you can pick up on the meaning.

Sum Blog 8

I really enjoyed coming to an 8 am class and to get to play Monopoly. Playing Monopoly was a great twist to add to the learning experience in the class room. In the group that I was in my partner and I were in the 3rd group, which we found out at the end of class represented single mothers. My partner and I started out with $895 and when we passed go we would receive $170(I think). On our first role we ended up landing on community chest and the card stated that we got to take a ride on the reading railroad (which was behind us) this was the only time that we got to go all the way around the board. However by landing on reading railroad we immediately had to pay the person who had bought it $25. Since we were in the third group we knew that we needed to avoid rolling any doubles, well with that said what was our next roll? Yeap you guessed it on the next roll we rolled a double putting us directly in jail. Once in jail we had a choice to make we could either sit out for 3 turns or pay in $100, this time we decided to just sit and wait. After the 3 turns were up and it was our turn again we rolled and got out of jail but immediately landed on someone’s property thus having to pay about $30. On our next turn we rolled another double and proceeded to sit in jail for the rest of the game. We paid to get out once or twice but after continually landing in jail my partner and I concluded that it would be best to save our money and sit in jail.

While talking about how the game was a comparison to real life we concluded that people would often sit in jail due to lack of opportunities and the bad choices that the make. In life it is often easier to do the time instead of paying the money for a lawyer and risking losing money and the case. Also in our game after finding out that we represented single mothers we decided that we were in jail for prostitution and were not good at not getting caught. 

Blog 7

In society we have the tendency to treat boys and girls differently and this is seen in the school systems. Boys are allowed to speak out with out being called on, whereas if a girl would do that she sees disciplinary actions. Both boys and girls should be treated the same. Boys shouldn't be able to speak out just because they are boys and girls shouldn't be disciplined on the things that boys do. I believe that girls are treated differently because since they are girls they should know better. Teachers are subconsciously treating kids differently because this is what society has taught us.
Also in schools boys are pushed towards math and science and girls are pushed away from those topics and towards English or art. Girls are seen as incompetent towards math and science they are seen to be not as smart in those ares compared to boys. When doing the tests it is shown that boys do better in math and science but this most likely has to d with because they are told they will do better so they do. We should push all programs the same and shouldn't tell either gender that they are better then the other gender.

While looking through you-tube I found a video that shows that girls are actually catching up to boys on math. The margins are narrowing and boys and girls are becoming somewhat equal.

sum blog 5

Society is built around people in majority groups and people in minority groups. People who are in the majority groups show discrimination to people in minority groups. We learned about the question of reverse racism and of the question of weather it can actually exist. Reverse racism puts us to question of if minority groups can discriminate against the majority group or if they have built up animosity for what they have been put through. There is also the question of if what the majority group does to the minority group if it is the same for the minority group to do the same thing to the majority group. We looked at how at the Mississippi college some students put a rope around the statute of the first black student. We talked about if it would be the same if there was a rope put around a white statue would the reaction be the same. The discussion turned into that it would not be the same because white people were not discriminated in that way. I feel that minority groups have as much right to discriminate against majority groups because we are all people and one group shouldn't have more right over another group. While thinking about groups showing discrimination to other groups I began thinking about how we find it acceptable for blacks or other minority groups to act white but we find it unacceptable for whites to act black. Not only is it unacceptable to act like the other group but whites also have to watch what they say in front of black people this leads me into the video that I found which is 50 things white people cannot say in front of black people.

Sum Blog 3 Westboro Baptist Church

Watching the documentary in class I could not believe how the Westboro Baptist church could do the things the do so I decided to do my blog on them. The Westboro Baptist church believes that they are the only true church to God. They have extreme beliefs on how everyone is going to hell incept for them. They teach their children to do the same and show them how to protest what the church believes is wrong. The church has isolated itself from others and discriminates against many. With doing this they are also being discriminated by others.

The major controversy with this church is how they picket soldier’s funerals. They believe that the soldiers were killed because they were doing homosexual activities and that God doesn’t like homosexual activities so he killed them. They rejoice when bad things happen to others that the church deems as bad people.  

The church is practicing all of the three B’s they have something they believe in, they have a sense of belonging and their behavior is that they will do anything for the church. The isolate themselves from society and they strongly believe that their way is they only way to be. The only group that they feel like they belong in is their group and being around people who believe in what they believe in. The whole group participates in pickets and doesn’t question the reason for picketing. To others this group may seem like a cult but to them they do not view themselves in that sense.

While Googling the Westboro Baptist Church I found a very interesting video of the women from the documentary that we watched doing a parody to a Lady Gaga song. I found this to be very interesting because they are putting their beliefs to music. 

Sum Blog 2 Gender

Just like anything else in society we have placed gender in to two boxes, male and female, based on biological sex. We learned that sex is based on the biology of the person what bits they were born with and that gender is the personal traits that are attached to being either male or female. Before you are even born you are placed into these boxes and are socially constructed to act the part of that gender. You are born in to the roles that society wants you to act out.

Boys are expected to like the color blue, play rough and to not show emotions. Girls are expected to like the color pink, play nicely and to be emotional. The color schem starts right from birth if you are a boy you are put into a blue blanket and if you are a girl you are put into a pink blanket. As a side not when my brother was born the hospital ran out of blue blankets and they ended up having to put him in a pink blanket. Since we are programed that pink is for girls people would say to mom “oh what a cute girl you have” the first few she would correct then after a while she would just say “yea isn't she.” This goes to show that we base the sex/gender on the color of the blanket. Once we are categorized we are then programmed to “do gender”

When we run into people who do not fit these categories we become confused. If someone is ambiguous, meaning there are no indications to what sex/gender they are, we try to put them into the male/female categories. We want everyone to fit perfectly in the image that we have of how things should be.

Recently I came across and add for push-up bras and since I don’t want to ruin the add I am going to end my discussion here and let you watch for yourself and see what you think.

SumBlog1

In this first part of class we have been learning about race, class and ethnicity. To start I will be giving the definition of each from what Professor Berry has told us. For race we were given to definitions one is a way to categorize based on biological traits: this to me means that we are being categorized by what we look like. The second definition is 'race' the socially constructed category of people who share biologically transmitted traits that members of society consider important: this is also dealing with how we look and it is that society places people in boxes that fit the color of their skin. The second term is class which is defined as a system of stratification based on achievement: this is to say that a person is born into a class and they can work their way up or not work and move down. as a society we look at what a person is 'worth' and place them in a box. The last term that I will describe is ethnicity which is a shared cultural heritage this is shared ancestry, language and traditions. People who come from the same background share the same ethnicity and if someones ethnicity is different they are put into a separate box.
As you can see my main thing about society is that it places people in particular boxes. Society views white, middle class and English speaking people to be the majority and if someone is different we place them in a box and look down on them. In the intro it talked about poor people and how we look down on them and when we do help them we place them in parts of town that no one wants to live and we don't give them the means to move up in the world. Before that it was black people it took many years for African Americans to have the same rights as the majority(ex. Whites)
Thinking about how we as a society base our opinions on if someone is the same or different made me think of the song People are Strange original by The Doors but I like the Twiztid version. This video talks about how the strange are looked down upon and forgotten about.