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.