Genius Hour Blog Post #10

Right now I think I will focus my project on on two neighborhoods:Englewood and Garfield Park. Both are lower-income, higher crime neighborhoods with notoriously poor public education, especially at an elementary level. However, these neighborhoods have some schools with good teachers and good potential, just lacking the resources and funds. I think I can help schools in these neighborhoods.

Unit 3 Blog Post

1.) Race has been socially constructed for thousands of years through the perpetuation of stereotypes that are supposedly connected to the color of one's skin. A prime example of this is found in the episode we watched of What Would You Do, in which Latino men who tried to order food in Spanish were refused chiefly because the manager of the restaurant told them that he believed that they were illegal immigrants simply because of the way they looked and the language they spoke. Even though that part of the show was a setup and the manager was an actor, the fact that people came into the restaurant, heard what he was saying, and agreed with him showed the continued perpetuation of stereotypes on minorities. These people agreed with what the manager was saying simply because of the way the men he was saying it about looked and sounded, which shows explicit bias and completes the cycle of discrimination: these people had been thinking prejudicially and stereotypically, and were now discriminating against these Hispanic men because of their race. Another primary example of this social construction and its effects on everyday life was the video we watched in class through Freakonomics: White Names vs. Black Names. The video shows that implicit bias because of the social construction of race affects things as important as jobs by telling us that identical resumes with different names get largely different amounts of responses. The video shows that resumes with a stereotypically white name get more calls back than those with a stereotypically black name. This is an instance of clear implicit bias because while some people deciding not to call the people with black names might be out-and-out racists, the scale that this was done on means that, because of the quick nature of the decision and the relatively few amount of people in the country willing to admit their racism, many of these people must be affected by implicit instead of explicit bias. A final example is the article of how the social construction of race to day is in the article Disobedience or Civl Disobedience? Who Decides When Breaking Rules is Good? The article shows how the subtleties in the comments made by the National Review adhere to the social construction of race. the Review initially says that the girl who was thrown by the police officer paid the price because she didn't listen to the police, despite that earlier this year, they had defended a man for refusing to pay the fees necessary to keep his farm going, even when the police show up and demand him to. the Review is affected by implicit bias here. Although these cases are remarkably similar, they agrees and sides with the white man, and puts down the black girl, despite the violence towards her. Although we can't be sure that this was a racially-motivated decision, these kinds of decisions are made all the time in America, many based purely off implicit bias. The social construction of race through the perpetuation of stereotypes based on skin color affects our lives through both explicit and implicit bias in many ways and almost on a daily basis.

2.) Learning about the social construction of race and the mass incarceration of black men in the criminal justice system has opened up my sociological imagination a little bit more,helping me understand and realize some of the privileges that I have simply because of the color of my skin. As shown in the What Would You Do episode along with the video about White Names vs. Black Names, the stereotypes and prejudice that many minorities face on a daily basis, while going to get food or trying to get a job, is a serious problem and disadvantage that occurs because of the social construction of race. Until we began this unit I was not aware of the daily struggles like these that minorities had to undergo because of racism. This unit also showed me, however, that these problems can affect large swathes of minorities at a time. As shown through What's Happening at Missouri, institutionalized racism and discrimination can occur on a large scale at a campus, and it does so through initially individual racism building to a point where racists banded together. When the black students tried to strike back against this, they received only limited support from administration and the students still are facing that racism right now. In The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, she details how the War on Drugs ends up imprisoning many more black men on average than white men. This continues a vicious cycle in which black men, and some women in poor neighborhoods receive lacking educations and grow up surrounded by gangs, eventually leading them to prison, where, instead of receiving help and the chance at a new life they are just thrown back out onto the streets, starting the cycle again with their own children. This unit has shown me that because of the social construction of race, not only are minorities persecuted daily on an individual basis, but the color of their skin also sets them up to face institutionalized discrimination both at college and through the prison system, two nearly opposite ends of the spectrum. Coming into this unit, I knew that racism was a severe problem, but now my sociological imagination has developed an awareness of not only the social construction of race, but how big the problem of racism truly is.

3.) Much like the problems with gender inequality, there is no quick or easy solution to the problems of racism and racial inequality. We know the cause of much of the racial inequality: the social construction of race and implicit bias because of racial stereotypes expanded onto a large scale. In order to begin to solve this, we must first put minorities and whites onto a relatively level playing field. As Michelle Alexander mentions in The New Jim Crow, poor education in predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods contributes to the system of mass incarceration for black people. We must fix public education in poorer neighborhoods so that young black and Hispanic kids have choices other then gangs and prisons. While we are fixing education, we must reform the prison system. As the lady who came to our school to talk and was a professor at UIC said, the prison system is broken. While I wouldn't go as far as to say that we must abolish it completely, like she did, immediate reforms must be made especially in the field of non-violent/drug crimes. We need to accept that the War on Drugs has failed. Mandatory minimums in these cases must be abolished, because we need to give people who have been involved with drugs a chance to reform and come back to society to contribute. If we do this, a big part of mass incarceration and the inherent discrimination that accompanies it will be erased, and minorities and whites will be on a relatively even playing field. This is only a first step, however, because if the only thing we change is laws, the more deep-seated issue of implicit bias will never be fixed. The second thing we need to do is to change the minds of future generations. I don't think it's possible for us to "cure" implicit bias, but we don't need to. What we definitely can't do, though is "cure" everybody who's living right now. The Black Lives Matter movement has tried that, and it isn't working. As The Economist said when they spoke of what the movement is getting wrong, they are misquoting stats and making false claims, and as Michael Barone of National Review said, they are interrupting people who are on their side and are quoting extremists. None of these things are going to make people who haven't already joined you want to do so, and most people living right now are in that category. Instead of taking the BLM approach, we need to try to educate future generations. We need to tell them about implicit bias and what steps they can take to try to counteract it. We need to tell them what racism and discrimination are, without sugarcoating those terms. We need to make sure that they understand that we truly are all created equal. If we can get as many future parents and guardians as possible to do that, with a reformed prison system and better education across the board, future generations might be able to abolish most racial inequality from the earth. But first, we have to give them a chance.

Genius Hour Blog Post # 9

This week we had limited time, so I was mostly only able to do some more research on which schools and areas would be best for the focus of my project. Still need more viable sources.

Genius Hour #8

This week I looked more into the PDF that I discussed earlier. I was looking for more schools and sources to use. I was able to narrow it down a bit in terms of schools, but didn't find much in the way of sources during our limited time.

Genius Hour #7

School funding is my main focus, and I'm trying to help by providing aid that would be available to the schools that I will be working with with more funding. In class this week I mainly researched which schools I would be able to help, but wasn't able to find any sources that I felt I would be able to use, at least out of the sources I was able to read all the way through to the end.

Genius Hour #6

Friday in class I came up with my topic proposal and a potential solution. I may volunteer some of my time to a school that is within a lower socioeconomic setting, and I may also try to donate books and/or other school supplies. I also found a cool PDF that could serve as a source:
https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/BakerSchoolDistricts.pdf
It discusses the problems with funding for CPS as a whole and specific schools within it. I need to start to find the schools that most need my help.

Unit 2 Blog Post

Question 1

Gender is socially constructed, and has been for centuries, by a male-dominated society casting gender roles upon men and women in order to keep men at the top in the gender hierarchy. The difference between sex and gender is subtle, but apparent: as it says in Doing Gender, "Sex...was what is ascribed by biology: anatomy, hormones, and physiology. Gender...was an achieved status: that which is constructed through psychological, cultural, and social means." In Masculinity as Homophobia, they talk about the socialization of gender roles: "Manhood is equated with power-over women, over other men. Everywhere we look, we see the institutional expression of that power." Men use their power to socialize gender roles in order to create more power over women, and you can see it in society. This power also leads to rampant sexual harassment of females, as males who do this believe that because they have all the power, they cannot be punished for their wrongdoings against women. Women have a glass ceiling over them that they cannot breach while males dominate society. As discussed in The Confidence Gap, women are less likely to seek promotions than men unless all the right conditions are met, and we can see in Miss Representation that the media is especially able to socialize us against female politicians by focusing on their looks and/or attitude more than their political views. All of this affects women's looking-glass selves, because they see the socialization of women to be lesser than men, which leads to them thinking that everybody sees them as weak and unimportant. After a while, women begin to feel this way about themselves, especially since they have been socialized since childhood to think themselves unequal to men, as evidenced by I'm Glad I'm a Boy, I'm Glad I'm a Girl. Even the looking-glass selves of men are affected, as they begin to believe that society sees them as effeminate if they don't follow every one of the so-called standards of masculinity. This is discussed in, and is even the thesis of, Masculinity as Homophobia: "Why, then do men feel so powerless? Part of the answer is because we've constructed the rules of manhood so that only the tiniest fraction of men come to believe that they are...the most virulent repudiators of femininity, the most daring and aggressive." Most men don't even feel like they live up to the standards that have been set for them. Gender is socially constructed by a society ruled mainly by males, but this doesn't only affect women, their looking-glass selves, and really every aspect of their lives negatively; it does the same, in some senses, for most men.

Question 2

This unit helped me understand that me being sexist in any way, including tolerating my friends making sexist comments, is harmful to women as a whole, in turn widening my sociological imagination to help me understand how my everyday actions can have an effect on the world. Looking back on my childhood, I realize now how much mass media as an agent of socialization affected my life and views. I constantly watched shows that in some ways demeaned women or featured people not responding to others demeaning women. In Consuming Kids they point out how commercials can also enforce this sexism. I was taught subconsciously from these commercials what stuff was for boys and what stuff was for girls, making it much easier to make fun of people for breaking gendered stereotypes. School was also an agent of socialization for me from a young age, as one of its latent functions, part of the hidden curriculum, was to teach me and my classmates that being separated by gender was a normal thing that happens all the time, further subconsciously enforcing sexism. This was showcased during Freaks and Geeks when the dodgeball gym class is only made up of boys. As explained in Masculinity as Homophobia, all of these overtly sexist things socializing me from a young age made me afraid of being seen as non-masculine: "As adolescents, we learn that our peers are a kind of gender police, constantly threatening to unmask us as feminine, as sissies." My looking-glass self was always aware, always thinking about whether or not what I had just said, had just done, was manly enough. This is reinforced in Freaks and Geeks as well, when Alan implies that Sam is girly for needing to have his sister intervene for him, leading to Sam being willing to do anything to make other people see him as masculine. Because of all of this socialization, as I grew older, I listened to my friends making sexual comments about random women, making rape jokes, or making jokes about women in the kitchen without responding, fearing that I would be called a sissy, or become non-masculine in the eyes of my peers. But just as I now know the motivations behind my quietness, broadening my sociological imagination, I also know how my quietness affects women. As it says in Masculinity as Homophobia, "Shame leads to silence-the silence that keeps other people believing that we actually approve of the things that are done to women, to minorities, to gays and lesbians in our culture." I understand, through this quote and our class discussion, that not only does my silence lead people to potentially see me as sexist, but it also leads to me becoming another one of the faceless masses that deny women the opportunity to be on the same plane as men. My silence means my approval, my becoming a bystander, and in order to help women draw even with men I can't be bystander. This unit has widened my sociological imagination by making me realize that I can no longer be silent, as it affects the world around me in a way i don't want it to.

Question 3

The only way to solve the problems of gender stratification and discrimination is to start from the ground up. We must focus all of our energies on educating children to make sure that they do not grow up to be sexist. In order to do that we must come at the problem from all three sociological perspectives: Social-Conflict, Symbolic-Interaction, and Structural-Functional. In the textbook, they talk about Symbolic-Interaction connecting to gender through everyday life, Social-Conflict doing so through male dominance/power, and Structural-Functional doing so through gender roles and conformity. In terms of Symbolic-Interaction, one way to start solving the problems of gender discrimination through everyday life is to have as many households as possible educate their kids to believe that women and men are equal. We can't use overtly sexist books like I'm Glad I'm a Boy, I'm Glad I'm a Girl anymore, so our generation must create new, non-sexist children's literature. We must take it upon ourselves to teach our kids about gender the right way, without any hidden agendas. As mentioned in The Confidence Gap, girls start showing a lack of confidence and initiative incredibly early on. We need to put an end to that. When it comes to Social-Conflict and gender discrimination, we must change the male-dominated positions of political power in order for little girls to see that they, too, can lead people one day, not just men. In Miss Representation, the video talks a lot about the negative way female politicians are treated in the media and how that often leads to them not being taken seriously politically. In order to end gender discrimination in positions of power, we must stop the media from asking female politicians about their looks, and start getting the media to ask them about their views. This way, we can get more female politicians elected, and kids will be able to see both men and women in positions of power all across the country. Not just in politics, because as mentioned in Masculinity as Homophobia, you can see male dominance "on the boards of directors of every major U.S. corporation or law firm, and in every school or hospital administration." Women must infiltrate these positions of power in order for the next generation to see gender equality in action, so our generation must make it happen. For Structural-Functional, we must take away gender discrimination and the encouragement of gender conformity in the mass media. Target has already taken a step in the right direction for this problem by taking away gender indicators in some of their stores, evidenced by Target Going Gender Neutral, but we still have a long way to go. What Target has done must spread to other stores, and then we must face the bigger issue. Consuming Kids shows that the media pushes gendered stereotypes on kids through commercials from the first time they turn on a television set. Commercials for makeup and dolls tailored for girls and wrestling and other violent things tailored for boys appear in droves on television screens right now. This clear division between girls and boys so early in life leads to the enforcing of other traditional gender roles, like male dominance. Our generation will eventually take control of the media and when we do so we must limit gendered ads in order to ward off traditional gender roles for the next generation. In short, for us to stop gender discrimination and stratification, we must educate the children of the next generation so that they understand that women can and should go just as far as men in terms of careers, be just as powerful as men politically and otherwise, and be equal to men in every way, shape, and form.

Genius Hour Update #5

Last week, my sources were a blog post from NPR: Code Switch, and a section of the book Freakonomics that talks about my subject (the difference in education between lower-class and upper-class children, specifically) and how it related to economics. This week, I spent most of my time thinking about what my actual project would consist of. Prospects include (I have done at least a bit of research on each of these):

• Volunteering at a neighborhood school in a neighborhood of disadvantaged kids.
• Volunteering at a charter school that takes in many disadvantaged kids.
• Donating books (from neighbors, friends, family and myself) and other school supplies (my old ones) to schools and kids.

I'm leaning towards donation right now, but am also looking for other options that could help me contribute in different ways.

Genius Hour Update #4

Today during class we only had a half an hour, so I wasn't able to get as much done as I normally would have. I was able to find two very relevant blog posts that helped me gain understanding for my topic. I also found two sources that helped me out. Finally, I had a short conversation with a classmate who has a similar topic as me. We will hopefully be working together some more in the future. I'm making relatively slow but steady progress.

Genius Hour Update #3

Most of my research time in class this week was spent looking at schools in two different ways: Why the bad ones were bad and how I could help them be better (e.g. funding), and why the good ones are good and how I could get more kids to said schools. I'm leaning towards the former for my project, as it seems to involve a more tangible goal. Also, I'm finding it harder and harder to focus on my research. Every week I waste a little more time reading sociology blog posts or just plain blanking out. I have to refocus for next class.

Genius Hour Update Number 2

For the start of this class period, I was able to talk to my teacher and gain a better understanding of how to move forward with my project. He told me to think about the questions I need to ask in order to find an answer that will serve as my project. I thought about it for most of the remaining class period and I decided that at least for now, my research will be focused around why lower-class children typically attend worse schools than their upper-class counterparts and what I can do to begin to fix this problem. I think I will begin by seeing how I can help out these supposedly bad schools and/or try to get some of these kids to better schools, like charter schools or private schools. The rest of the period was spent doing research on schools in lower-income neighborhoods and reading some more posts on the sociological blogs provided to me by my teacher.

Genius Hour Project Update

We worked for 45 minutes on the aforementioned project in Sociology Class on Thursday. This was an exploratory class period for me, as I was trying to find out as much as I could about my subject and its relations to Sociology. I read some of a book provided to me by my teacher, giving me more information about the plight of lower-class children. Then, I set up a way to catalogue my sources for my required bibliography. For the last 15 minutes of class, I read post on a well-known Sociological blog pertaining to my subject and how said subject related to my class and what we have done so far.

Examination of The Zimbardo Experiment

This is another sociology assignment.

Discussion of Sociological Perspectives: Conflict Perspective
Question: Why did the treatment of the prisoners by the guards get worse so quickly as the experiment progressed?
Answer: There was an abrupt changing of social class at the beginning of this experiment, when the group went from being comprised of white males from mostly the same social class to being split into two distinct classes: prisoners and guards. This social pattern gave guards all of the advantages and prisoners all the disadvantages, leading guards to feel empowered over prisoners because of their higher social standing, and causing them to lose Verstehen for their prisoners and to exert their newfound power.
Discussion of Sociological Perspectives: Symbolic-Interaction Perspective
Question: Why did the environment surrounding the Zimbardo Experiment become so much like that of a real prison?
Answer: Life inside of the Zimbardo Experiment became so similar to life inside of a real prison because it functioned as a real prison. Prisoners were allowed only minimal, controlled contact with the outside world, and guards were mostly shut off from the outside as well. Because of this disconnection from the rest of society, life in the micro became like life in the macro: with conditions similar to what real people in this scenario faced, fake prisoners started to act like real prisoners and fake guards started to act like real guards. They forgot what they had experienced in the outside world and let their day-to-day life define them.

Discussion of Sociological Imagination 
Sociological Imagination of Participants: A development of sociological imagination would have helped the participants because they would have been able to keep what was going on in their day-to-day lives in context with what they knew about society. With a sociological imagination, they would have been less involved with their daily life because they would have been able to keep the sociological perspective in mind and think about society as a whole, making their experience less intense.
Discussion of Sociological Imagination: This experiment going south so quickly showed me the things that society is capable of when isolated and how much regular society can change when put under a microscope. This widened my sociological imagination by presenting me with all of the different aspects of society, and also by showcasing how much societal norms and values can differ as a whole, especially when a couple of limits are changed.

Project Ideas

For the Sociology class that I spoke about in my first blog post, I have been assigned a project. I've been told to blog about my progress on my project, starting with my ideas for what I will do for said project. This project must be problem-solution based, and it must concern a sociological idea that we will talk about through this semester of school. These are some of the ideas I've come up with so far, each idea based on a problem I think needs solving and that I would enjoy trying to solve. My potential ideas revolve around the problem that is the massive gap in our society between the wealthy and the poor, and the issues that come with said gap. Children from poorer families typically have less access to sports, books, good schooling, and even things like television, which doesn't seem to make a difference but can be very helpful for impressionable children if used correctly. Right now, the focus for my project is trying to help poorer kids have access to these important facets of the lives of children. If anybody reading this has any ideas of ways I might help, I would welcome suggestions.

Signing off for now,
Noah

Hello, and welcome to my blog. I suppose I should tell you some stuff about me in my first blog post. First of all, my name is Noah. Names seem pretty important to me, as they define our every day interactions, so I decided not too keep myself totally anonymous. I've lived my entire life in Chicago, and I'm now a junior at an inner-city high school. I can't tell you which one, though, because there are some seriously freaky people out there on the internet. I'm a huge sports fan, and despite me being a White Sox fan, my dad being a Cubs fan, and my mom being a Red Sox fan, sports is one of the main things that binds us together. My two younger sisters play various sports as well, so it really runs in the family. I also enjoy reading and writing, which is as good a reason as any to write this blog. What do I want to be when I grow up? This is a question that I'm asked over and over agin by adults when I am meeting them for the first time, although now that I'm older they usually frame it differently: What careers are you looking into? What are you thinking about for a major in college? I figure that most of you are over the age of 18, so let's assume you want to know the answer too. Right now, I want to be a lawyer. I say right now because that answer has changed about 5 times since I was first asked the question. Why a lawyer? For two reasons; I love to argue and reason and try to prove myself right, and because I've always wanted to do something I will enjoy. Both of my parents love what they do. My dad writes, does a little bit of radio, and is the president of a youth baseball league. My mom is a consultant, which is a weird job to enjoy, but I really think she does like it. My parents inspire me to always do things that I will ultimately enjoy, which I suppose is another reason for me to write this blog. That's about all I've got for my first post, so I'm

Signing off for now,
Noah