In this chapter on the external gender environment, Patterson explains how African-American women are not in fact victims of both their gender and their ethnicity. He argues that African-American women are definitely grouped in with gender discrimination, but not ethnicity discrimination, despite what others may believe.
Patterson starts out by telling us that these days, African-American men are at a greater risk for gender discrimination within their own ethnicity than African-American women. In fact, women of all ethnic groups experience higher levels of poverty than men. He goes on to say that there is little evidence of a “double burden” of gender and ethnic prejudice. African-American women are now making more money than they ever have, and soon will surpass African-American men in income levels. African-American women have come a long way and are now achieving a bachelor’s degree or higher in some cases. Patterson then ends his argument about inequalities in the economic world by pointing out that African-American women do indeed suffer gender biases, but it is equally suffered with Euro-American women as well.
He then goes on to discuss the life chances between men and women. He found that African-American women have a greater life expectancy than that of African-American and Euro-American men, and are fast catching up with Euro-American women. So we can see that African-American women are not at a total loss. Also Patterson discussed the suicide rate briefly. He found that African-American men are 6.2 times more likely to commit suicide than African-American women.
Patterson then goes back to the education factor. He states that in all other ethnic groups, women have been surpassing men in the number of bachelor’s degrees since the early eighties. I thought this fact was quite amazing. The fact that African-American women have come so far in this world is quite impressive, yet knowledge of this seems to be slim to none. If we were to look at the patterns in the workplace, we would learn that African-American women are sometimes at a benefit because of the fact that they are treated more as a professional simply because men do not view them as sexually attractive or as a “women” so to speak. Patterson then wraps things up by stating once again, that African-American women are not at a “double burden” for both gender and ethnic discrimination, they are simply in the same boat as any woman around the world.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Broken Bloodlines: The External Gender Environment
Race, Class Gender as Categories
Men still think that race and gender have means of power, but when it came to women and African Americans who had more power since they were in the minority group, so to speak. I like the point made about how oppression is full of contradictions. We tell our children not continue oppression yet we put ourselves in that situation and continue to support it.
I also like the point and agree with the point that was made about how we need to stop saying who is more oppressed than who. We need to do something about it rather than sit back and argue who is more oppressed. We keep placing ourselves in groups based on gender, class and race that is making groups who have more power become more oppressing to lower groups. If we stop placing each other in groups then there would be no need to have someone who has more power than everyone else.
Stereotypes are such a huge issue when we are not the same as another person. This is causing others to become oppressive, we need to stop judging others and start understanding that we are all different and have something different to offer. We all have different experiences because of who we are.
I like her point at the end talking about how we have to change the world, and even though we have our race and that is pre-set for who we are, we can change how we act and can eventually have change.
Broken Bloodlines: The External Gender Environment
In this article, Orlando Patterson spends a great deal of time examining the “burdens” and gender discrepancies in regards to Afro-American men and women, Euro-American men and women, and Latino men and women in some instances. It was once thought that Afro-American women were at a greater gender risk than the males were but this is no longer the case. Additionally, women do bear the greater burden than their male counterparts. “Afro-American women writers and leaders have claimed for some time that they share a double burden, being victims of both their gender and their ethnicity.” Following are the attempts that have been made at figuring out the factors that affect the lives of the Afro-American people.
The study starts by examining the level of poverty by gender. This was compared among the Afro-American, Euro-American, and Latino people. From the data gathered is apparent that women face higher poverty levels than men in general, which can be caused by many things. The fact that there is a great amount of female headed households may play a role in this data. It is sad to say, but females have always been among the poor; moreover, as past articles have addressed, women tend to get paid less on average than men do. Although, this rate of pay has increased to some degree.
This leads to the next set of data, which deals with the median earnings by educational attainment, ethnicity, and gender. This data was looked at with Afro-American men and women and Euro-American men and women. The data showed that Euro-American have the highest degrees and greatest pay, followed by Afro-American men, Euro-American women, and Afro-American women being last. Unfortunately, if I had to guess what the statistics were to show, this is what I would have assumed. Last, on the money issue, when comparing the median earnings by educational attainment with gender and ethnic ratios to search for double burdens of race and gender in economic matters, there are none.
When examining the life expectancies at birth by gender and ethnicity, the results are of no surprise to me. They showed that Euro-American women have the greatest life expectancy, followed by Afro-American women, Euro-American men, and Afro-American men. It has been known for some time that women tend to live longer than men. More interestingly, when looking at the same factors, but making projections for the future, it is displayed that all groups will continue to live longer except for Afro-American men, which appears to level off at some point.
Of course when we examine life expectancies, we must then look at death rates. The results show that Afro-American men have the highest death rates, followed by Euro-American men, Afro-American women, and then Euro-American women. This makes sense to me because men tend to be involved in more dangerous affairs. Suicide rates show almost the same results with men being more prone to death by suicide, except that Euro-Americans come before the Afro-Americans in this. I always thought suicide was higher among women.
These results were interesting and even more interesting were the accounts as to what may contribute to these findings from the book. Some of the results were consistent with what I would have imagined, but some were far from my thinking. So the beginning statement of the article dealing with Afro-American women facing double burdens from both ethnicity and gender can be proven as being false for the majority of the population. Afro-Americans are on a rise from where they once have been, but Orlando Patterson claims that their sex roles are what is holding them back, which I guess could be true for all women.
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Problem of Power
Sorry this is late! Along with the rest of campus I have been sick for about a week and a half, while being slightly sedated by the codine cough syrup I was prescribed I wrote down both of my summaries as November instead of October. Thanks for your patience!
In the piece Markets, Marriages, and other Mates: The Problem of Power, the power struggle between husband and wife is studied. The focus is on how each marital role is valued and how the contribution of power within the relationship is based on the individuals ability to provide for the marriage financially. Historically the husband is expected to be the breadwinner of the family and the wife is expected to supply the domestic support. Both partners make investments in a marriage that are either general ( basic needs) or relationship specific (only benefit inside on the relationship).
The authors propose that women have a disadvantage when it comes to the power contribution of marriage. They tend to provide more relationship specific investments that only pay off if they stay in the marriage. Their investments are not as tangible as the working husband and cannot be redeemed outside of the marriage. The husband provides the basic needs of the family and therefore has more bargaining power with the marriage because he could survive outside of it. The only way for a homemaker to cash in on her marital investments and training if the marriage fails is to remarry. Without the husband they would not be able to meet the basic needs for themselves and their family, giving women less bargaining power in the relationship. Women also learn culturally to be more selfless than men and tend to not push the bargaining stage as far as men.
In the last fifty years women have been entering the workforce by storm, not needed to depend on a husband as much as in the past. This article links the increase in divorce rates with the increase in female employment. Women have gained more power in the relationship but the domestic duties also still fall on the wife. Wives are more likely to exit a relationship when they are unhappy then in the past because of their ability to provide basic needs for themselves .
I do agree that women have a disadvantage in the power struggle of marriage based on cultural beliefs. In western society women are expected to be more subordinate and passive than men, and are often given negative responses if they come off “too masculine”. The study mentioned that this may be linked historically to women being better slaves then men but I feel in western society it is linked more to religion. Many religions view women as being inferior to men based on religious teachings such as Adam and Eve. Marriage between a man and woman is not only a civic union but a religious one for the majority of people. Therefore giving the wife even more pressure to naturally be a good mother and wife.
I also agree with the notion that female employment has increased the divorce rate in recent years. Women have much greater opportunities than in the past, even though they are unequal to men. I feel that this fact has changed the purpose and dynamic of marriage. Marriage was almost key to survival for most women in the past and now that they can function as an independent unit, marriage is not as necessary. This gives women a greater opportunity to leave a marriage if they are unhappy. I feel that this has affected what we look for in a partner, instead of each person looking for a “business partner”, the idea of marriage has been romanticized. Men and women are not just looking for someone to support them financially or provided domestic duties anymore, they are looking for a true compatibility and honest connection. Because women can now offer more, they are expecting more of their own needs to be met.
Overall I feel the traditional roles and values of marriage are outdated. Historically if began as a business transaction where each person had a specific duty to fulfill. Now that both partners are able to provide the same contributions that value of marriage has shifted to how well the other person fulfills emotional and supportive roles. With this being said I also believe that your upbringing and cultural identity contributes a lot to your role in a marriage. You are more likely to be content in specific role if that is all you have ever known.
I feel this is why I have a more egalitarian expectation of marriage, rather than the power being proportioned unequally. I grew up with my father being a single parent of myself and my three brothers. Being self -dependent was a major value in my family. I feel that this gave me an advantage in life and relationships. I was taught to hunt, rebuild a car motor, and expected to contribute to manual labor chores right along side my brothers. On the other hand my brothers and I were expected to contribute to household chores equally. Because of these values I feel that If I decide to get married, It would have to be with someone that holds similar values and embraces joint participation in every aspect of the relationship.
Race, Class, Gender
First I would like to say sorry for being a little late and not being so thorough. I have the flu and have had it since Saturday so I’m not all “here.”
In this article, Collins discusses oppression and how people classify themselves and also relate themselves to other social groups. Collins also talks about how people identify with certain types of oppression and how the view other group’s oppression. I find this article very interesting and one reason is because I can identify myself with an oppressed group since I am a woman. I like the part where Collins’ states, “White feminists routinely point with confidence to their oppression as women but resist seeing how much their white skin privileges them.” I like this statement a lot because this kind of stuff happens every day.
People are so worried about what type of oppression they identify with that they don’t see the brighter side of things; that some people actually have it worse off than they do. Life was not created to be a giant pity party. Sexism, Racism, Discrimination. These are very real and they will never go away. The problem with our society is that so many people focus so much on it and can’t give it a rest so it continues. It’s a never ending cycle. Every person on this earth is a part of the human race. It shouldn’t matter if we have dark skin, or light skin, or a penis, or a vagina, or a million dollars, or twenty dollars. What matters is that we all need education, we all came from a family (good or bad), we all need jobs, we all want happiness, etc. Most people feel that if they identify with the dominant group, they live a way better life than anyone who identifies with the subordinate group; I don’t believe this to be true. I believe that life is what you make of it, not matter what group you identify with. This may be because I haven’t had to deal with as many hardships because my skin is white and my parents are well off but I personally don’t think that matters. My mother was extremely high up in her company and was the 2nd person with seniority in her office, but she got laid off while a bunch of men, under her, kept their jobs. Anyone from the outside would realize that it was complete bullshit and sexist, but that’s life. I hate to say this but women will never have it as easy as men, the poor will never have it as easy as the rich, and blacks will never have it as easy as whites. White men are the least oppressed group while black women are the most oppressed group. Although it is bullshit, it’s been this way for many years.
I also like where Collins states, “Adhering to a stance for comparing and ranking oppressions—the proverbial, “I’m more oppressed than you”—locks us all into a dangerous dance of competing for attention, resources, and theoretical supremacy.” I would really like to know why people even waste their time stating things like that. Dwelling on it isn’t going to get them anywhere. If anything, it’s going to get people to stereotype and have prejudice against them even more. Life’s everyday experiences are what make people different and who they are. It’s pathetic that people focus so much on someone’s skin color, hair color, private parts, etc. There are a hell of a lot more important things to worry about then that. There will always be the rich and the poor, there will always be the whites and the blacks, and there will always be men and women. But one thing we all have in common is that we are all human beings. We go through many different experiences daily, but that’s what makes us unique. Life isn’t fair and it will never be fair, to anyone. I’m going to finish this with the quote by Nikki Giovanni in Collins’ article because I feel like she makes a great point. “We’ve got to live in the real world. If we don’t like the world we’re living in, change it. And if we can’t change it, we change ourselves. We can do something.”
The Problem of Power
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Marital power has a great deal with who makes more money in the relationship. I agree with some of the points that were made. The person who makes more in the relationship usually has the most power in the relationship overall. Like who decides certain decisions is usually the male because usually he makes more money.
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Forces that they discussed are for a male dominated society about how males earn more. It also talks about how because women do more domestic work they do not have the power in the relationship, but I think that doing the domestic work gives her more power. She decides when dinner is, what happens at what time and certain household decisions.
Women play an important role in their families life, though it is not money based it is the structure that the family needs to survive. If I think back to who was raising me and had the most impact on my life it would be my mom. Who do people thank when they give speeches, their mom? It does not matter who makes more money in the family but who makes the impact on the person’s life, they have the power. When I look at who makes the decisions in my family, it is always my mom who has the final say even though my dad makes more money. I do not think that it is the person who makes more money has power but rather who makes the bigger impact on the family.
It really has nothing to do with who makes more money but rather who has the bigger impact has the most power. The points that were made I disagreed with but I do agree with the point that was made about how men marry in exchange for what the other person offers. Men look for a mate who will do the domestic household work and women look for a mate who will financially support them. I also agree with the point about in most custody cases the mother gets full custody of the children, the system knows who is better at raising a child, and that is why most mothers stay home and raise the kids while the fathers go and work. I do not look at my relationships as investments when looking for someone to marry or someone who will support me while I raise my kids.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Sex and Violence
Rhode’s writing on Sex and Violence is my favorite of all the readings we’ve done this year. She offers a thorough explanation of the types of violence that occur, who the victims and perpetrators are, why it happens, theories and solutions to the problem; all done while speaking in a somewhat sarcastic, sharp manner and calling out ignorant critics, judges, and general public who refuse to admit there is a problem.
She draws attention to the fact that recognition of sexual abuse is a recent advancement in our nation’s history. However, denial of the extent of the problem still isn’t fixed. Many people believe rape, harassment, and pornography are about sex, when in reality they are about subordination. “We fail to see sexual abuse as a strategy of dominance, exclusion, control, and retaliation—as a way to keep women in their place and out of men’s” (595). Many people deny the problem exists, that the victims are seriously injured physically and emotionally, that men are responsible despite the tendency to blame the victim, and that legislation is the solution. (595).
Rhodes criticizes people who believe the courts are flooded with frivolous harassment accusations; that men have become victims of overreactions and hypersensitivity. Sexual abuse complaints are HIGHLY underreported, and often it is easier for a woman to ignore the problem or deal with it internally than to complain. Complaining often makes things worse because, “the minimal remedies usually available may not compensate for the risks of retaliation, such as transfers, demotion, informal blacklisting, physical threats, and vandalism” (599). Women often face a no-win situation. Rhodes’ solutions for this include clear workplace policies, educational programs, sufficient legal representation, and unbiased complaint outlets. (600)
Outside of the workplace, domestic violence is sickeningly prevalent and the leading cause of female injuries, leading to four million victims a year. (600) Denial of it’s pervasiveness is due to two things: the men who batter and the system that allows it. These “family matters” are frequently discounted as “an unfortunate incident” and acceptable within a marriage. Women are often blamed for not leaving violent situations, when in reality it may be impossible to find a safe refuge when they are dependent on their batters for economic, social and emotional support. Rhodes stresses the need for stricter punishments and more funding for programs to help victims with few resources.
The United States has the highest reported cases of rape in the Western world. Yet the reasons for why rape occurs generally blame women. Individuals and institutions deny the problem and are deeply convinced of stereotypes about rape, including that they are done by sexually deviant strangers with weapons, that attractive men don’t rape because they don’t have to, and that “’nice girls’” aren’t assaulted; ‘loose’ and ‘careless’ women are” (605). However, rapists indicate they are attracted to power and domination, or they desire to punish women for one reason or another. Within the judicial system, there is a belief that sexual assault without other physical injuries isn’t really harmful, its just bad sex. The woman’s emotional trauma is discounted, even though it may cause her deep turmoil as she questions her choices, judgment and sense of trust.
The heart of the problem is social inequality. “As long as [women’s] status and economic security depend so much on relationships with men, the conditions for sexual abuse will persist” (610). Egalitarian sexual experiences must be created in order to end female objectification and victimization. The denial must end and steps need to be taken to stop the abuse.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Sex and Violence
This article is about sexual harassment and how it affects and is affected by men and women. Rhode talks about how the victims are generally the ones that are trying to defend themselves in court not the alleged perpetrators. She says that a lot of Americans believe that sexual harassment is over exaggerated and that it really doesn’t happen that much when it actually happens quite frequently. She said that 90% of women under 50 in the military have been sexually harassed even though they claim to have a zero tolerance policy. She also talks about how many people feel that a woman would be much better off to just not even mention the things that happen.
I completely agree with this, which is unfortunate. There are a lot of setting at work where someone will “jokingly” say something inappropriate to a woman and really what other choice does she have than to just laugh it off. If you go and make a formal complaint then you were have many more repercussions to face which might just end your job. Its horrible.
Rhode talks about several very vulgar and humiliating instance that women have been put in by men and when it was taken to court the judge said that they really didn’t have a case. In some ways this shocked me and in other ways it didn’t.
She says that not only do we need to respond to the people that are engaging in these actions but in the institutions that are perpetuating them. I agree with this statement. Unless workplaces are really going to get behind their policies than I wouldn’t expect any significant changes.
She also talks about violence against women. It has been found that judges devalue aggression and domestic violence when it is brought to the courtroom. They say that women “exaggerate.” She says that 90% of domestic assaults and a majority of domestic violence arrests never result in prosecution and less than 10% of those that do result in any jail time.
People feel that if there was really a problem the women would leave the relationship but seriously?? How do they expect these women to leave when someone, bigger and stronger and very threatening, is telling them everyday that if she leaves him he will kill her? The legal system is not taking the time to look at the thought process and the mental state of battered and abused women. Many times they feel that they just cannot get out and I find this information really frustrating.
The topic of rape is covered as well. There is of course the stereotype that good guys don’t rape women and only sluts get raped. Clearly this is false. There is the misconception that rape is about sexual gratification when really it is about power and domination. There are just so many things that people do not understand that leads to the way society views these problems. Most women are raped by men they know, not strangers. Up until not that long ago, isn’t wasn’t even a crime for a wife to be raped by her husband, she was his property and he could do what he pleased with her.
All of this is just crazy I think and I also think it’s a huge problem in our society. I’m sure a good portion of the women in this class have experienced inappropriate comments that can be uncomfortable and even threatening. I think that some men just aren’t able to see this from a woman’s point of view. Most men would love that kind of attention from a women as Rhode mentions in this article but how much of a threat do they see women as? I just don’t think it’s the same when it’s the other way around.
I like the points that were raised in this article. I feel that this is stuff that probably most of us, especially in this field, know by now but its stuff that a lot of people don’t realize.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
The Second Shift
Alright, I guess I'd like to know that we were not always dealing with the most extreme cases in these readings. In Sociology of the Family there was always a discussion about the "second shift" for women, and I just feel like all we hear as young sociologists is how extreme cases work where women get the shaft and men do nothing.
Now, I'm not one to say that women aren't getting the shaft in most cases with the second shift, I am just saying I'd love to see a "normal" case presented. Some may think that the case was normal, but I am not so sure that it is. In the study done in this section, the fathers ended up getting more sleep than the wives/mothers did. They also watched more television. But here is my question, what if the wife didn't like television? I'm just saying. Trying to be the devil's advocate. I thought one of the interesting quotes from this section came from page 572 when they say "One reason women take a deeper interest than men in the problems of juggling work with family life is that even when husbands happily shared the hours of work, their wives felt more responsible for home and children". This is finally something relevant! Simply because it is real. The real deal is that there is a sense of responsibility that women have for home and children that men do not.
I also saw some interesting information on the same page about why it is that men seem to have more control over when they make their contributions. Men are usually able to tell the secretary to hold his calls, but a working mother would probably be the secretary. Meaning that the working mother would not have much control on what she is able to do as far as holding calls goes.
I know this post is really late, but hey, I got it up here. This is my opinion on the matter. We have got to get out of this idea of thinking for other situations and get into this idea of thinking for our situation. Fella's, help your lady out with things at home. I ask the question here, now, we always talk about situations that the wife has to deal with (laundry, dishes...), but we never talk about the outside house work that has to be done. I know that there are tests telling about much more relaxed the guys position is, and I am not really denying that, but we never look at the full spectrum I feel.
Article was sweet, another talk about the second shift. Perspective was different, but I think that the friction between couples starts far before the "second shift" hits. Maybe if people stopped marrying because of sex and started taking the time to get to know the individual we wouldn't have so many people unhappy with their relationships and wanting out or dreading their position. I'm just saying.
Alright, I'm off my soap box. Sorry this was SUPER late, but better late than never.
Goldin, From the Valley to the Summit - for J. Barone
I think that one of the biggest reasons women and men have such hard types working in each others gender based work fields is the stereo type as Kirlin mentions above. Men need to be masculine, strong, and provide while women need to be pretty, quiet and on the sidelines this is the American trend. A more important question that we should be asking is why did this trend start? In some Native American cultures basket weaving and clothes making were considered men’s work while women’s work consisted of keeping house and by keeping house I mean building it and maintaining it. It is strange that in these two very different cultures the gender roles would also vary so much.
If men are supposedly stronger why wouldn’t they be responsible for building houses? It seems although women have been graduating from college at higher rates than men and still earning less than men that it is just a part of our culture. If our culture calls for women to help others and be less superior then males perhaps they are doomed to stay their since graduating at higher rates hasn’t helped. Could this trend be irreversible will women always just be left striving to be equivalent to males. Even if we look way back to cavemen times perhaps this is where the trend started; women aren’t strong enough to hunt so they will stay at home while men go and provide. If gender inequality has existed for thousands of years is it able to be broken down?
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
"A Speed Up In The Family" by Hochschild
Hochschild paints vivid examples of gender inequality within the household in The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home. Hochschild outlines inequalities between the amount of work mothers do at home compared to that of fathers, and states that with more women moving into the economy, families have been hit by a “speed up” in work and family life; the speed up being that there “is no more time in the day than there was when wives stayed home, but there is twice as much to get done” (pg 572). Women are the ones who then typically absorb and deal with this speed up by working a “second shift”, which happens when women who have a salaried job outside the home (shift one) return home only to be confronted with their second shift of work (cooking food, doing laundry, caring for children, cleaning, etc.) all within their household.
Hochschild also found that working women averaged three hours a day of housework compared to their working male counterpart, who only spend "17 minutes on housework" (pg. 569). Working women also spent more time with their children, watched less television, and slept less then their working husbands. One of the major statistics Hochschild stresses as a summary of the inequality is that over a typical year, “women worked an extra month of twenty-four hour days a year” when compared to their husbands (pg 570).
When Hochschild tried to explain why women were the ones to feel the brunt of this “speed up”in the family, it seemed that gender role expectations and stereotypes were the base of her reasoning. Women felt more responsible for the homestead and children, women were in charge of gender specific tasks like cooking and childcare which took up more time then the male specific tasks like oil changes and general repairs, men overruled their wives in deciding who did what in terms of childcare (men doing more leisure and fun things with children, while women did more “maintenance” and routine tasks with the children) and so on. All of these tasks seemed to have specific rules attached to them as to which sex is allowed to do each aspect of home life. These rules are gender roles and gender stereotypes that seem embedded in both men and women, husbands and wives, which create the traditional gender ideology typically supported by an unequal, patriarchal society.
This Hochschild article reminded me of something I read about in my HEV 411 class (Family Relations) called “The Mommy Wars”, which is the “war” between the stay at home mothers who get treated as outsiders and sometimes deemed “lazy” and the paid working mothers who are looked at as not being 100% involved in their children’s lives. I remember the article mentioned how there is no “win – win” situation for mothers in today’s society, as both sides are stigmatized.
I believe that Hochschild presents good arguments for gender inequality in the household. I would have liked to see a more solid and clear conclusion when it came to the impact of this on children and the couple themselves, as this part remained a little vague, but was touched on. I would also like to see statistics on relationships with homosexual partners to see if there is a difference in gender roles/second shifts, etc between these groups when competing genders are eliminated from the equation.
Detours on the Road to Equality: Women, Work, and Higher Education
Jerry A. Jacobs states in his article that the incline of women entering male dominated work has been slowing, and seems to have come to a halt in 1990’s. Although this is happening, women are not giving up. They are instead attending secondary higher education institutes; in addition, the author states that women may be attending these institutes at an astronomical number because of the roadblocks they are encountering when attempting to enter male dominated professions. According to the article, in 1998 56% of bachelor’s degrees that were earned were by women. It is also believed that in the near future, the ratio of college degrees earned by women to men will be 60:40. If this is the case why are women experiencing this and what may be contributing to it?
There is a major trend in segregation between male dominated work fields and women dominated work fields. To show, women dominate the fields of secretaries, administrative assistants, child care workers, or registered nurses. Males tend to dominate in construction trades such as carpenters, plumbers, electricians, mechanics and repair, and engineers. This is interesting because I feel that these trades have been taught to males and females from an early age in life through gender stereotypes. Even more interesting, among high-status professions there seems to be an increase in the rate of women. The areas of medicine, law, and management are considered to be among the high-status professions. Although these professions are occupied by both men and women, women are still working in areas of these fields that are associated with the family. Moreover, women are being paid less even when they have the same work time, qualifications, and experience as men.
Why could a trend such as this career segregation occurring? The article discusses items such as a trend of growing up with gender stereotypes, burnout, and limits to parenting. These items seem obvious, but why is it then that women are entering male dominated fields and men are not interested in entering female dominate fields? The answer is masculinity. I believe that women are not necessarily afraid to be viewed as having masculine characteristics because it comes with power, but men do not want to demote their masculinity. I think this is bogus because men and women bring different traits and should want to contribute those to different areas of work.
Near the end of Jacob’s article, he goes in to great detail regarding the decline of integration in the work field. When examining the “index of dissimilarity,” there is a drastic decline between the years of 1970 and 2000. These can be explained by booms and depressions of the economy, the feminist movement, affirmative action, and other elements and changes in the functioning of society. Unfortunately with the way that the economy and society are going nowadays, the article predicted that by the year 2020 there will not be much change; furthermore, the conditions will resemble the current patterns. This is truly a shame because women should have just as much opportunity in life as men do; especially in a “free” America.
The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home
The information retrieved for this reading was done by interviewing women with different job backgrounds, from lawyers and corporate executives to day care workers and seamstresses. These women, and surprisingly their husbands both felt differently in regards to some issues. For example: how right is it for a mom with young kids to work fulltime, or how many responsibilities a husband should have at home. However, both agreed that it is hard for them to work fulltime jobs and raise their young kids.
Today in the labor force, 2/3 of women are now working. With that statistic Szalais asks how much more time are Dads contributing at home? The study shows that men only spend 17 minutes a day to help with housework, versus women who spend an average of 3 hours. Sadly, when it comes to spending time with their kids, women spend 50 minutes a day, versus men who spend only 12 minutes (P. 569-70). I think this statistic is very sad. I question how much this affects kids growing up.
Szalais’ study portrayed a deeper set of emotional issues behind gender strategy coping with home, work, marriage, and life. The wage gap between men and women leads to a gap between work, home, and leisure time as well. We are all aware that “second shift” is a real thing that occurs with women in our society- Working fulltime and coming home to keep up with cleaning, laundry, cooking, and tending to the kids schedule. I feel that because of our history and society’s idea that juggling everything is apart of being a woman in a family, the second shift will continue to exist. Women in the study said that they feel as if they are always on duty- on duty at work and then arriving at home and on duty there too. The article leads me to the idea that women in our society are just plane overwhelmed. Also, many of the women believed that the speed up with more responsibility and the speedup lead to strain because they often have to do two things at once. Because of this, problems arise between husbands and wives in the marital and individual realm. The author believes that this an effect from their childhoods and how they were raised, and goes on to state that when couples struggle, it is not really because of who does what, but more so over who is giving and receiving gratitude (p. 578).During the authors interviews of husbands and wives in their home, began to see that these couples develop family myths. What are these family myths? Hochschild describes it as “versions of reality that obscure core truth in order to manage a family tension” (P. 579). Hochschild found by the end of the interviews that more people spoke about ending relationships for other reasons than the husband not contributing to household work and commitment to time with kids. I think that was a surprise because the entire reading seemed to be more about the gender differences in roles and the stresses of women and their role in society between labor and family. To me it seemed that the author threw in that statement at the end as if to say “oh by the way.” which makes no sense to me because of everything else she focused on. I do question some of her findings because she never described the setting whether it was rural or in the suburbs, or what the age of these women were. I wish she would have gotten some statistic on the reasons why wives divorce.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Jobless Poverty: A new Form of Social Dislocation in the Inner-City Ghetto- Wilson
In this article, Wilson is discussing jobless poverty and how it is effecting different racial groups. When Wilson is talking about "joblessness" he includes both official unemployment and non-labor-force participation. With these statistics he provides for us, it shows that people who live in the high neighborhood joblessness are more devastating than those of high neighborhood poverty. Wilson feels that this is because all of the problems in the inner-city ghetto neighborhoods such as crime, welfare, and low levels of social organizations. The example he presented in this article was a child who grows up in a family with a steady breadwinner and in a neighborhoods in which most adults are employed the child will tend to develop some of the disciplined habits that are reflected in the behavior of those around him. This could be true to some point, however, I do not feel that this is always the case. Some people grow up in poverty and they use this experience to guide them into becoming successful. Many times they learn from this and try to succeed.
Another thing Wilson talks about the "statistical discrimination" employers make when they are hiring individuals. Statistic shows that employers make assumptions about the inner-city black workers in general and make a decision before they even have a chance to interview. It is sad that this still happens in society. Just because someone is from a certain area or they are a certain race it should not matter. What should matter is their skills, work experience, and if they fit the job criteria. Also, employers judge people on where they are from due to the lack of skills that the one area may have. This makes me suspicious because just because you may be raised in a lower-class area, does not mean that you are like everyone else. Several times this may be the class, but you should not judge someone before you get to meet them. Wilson shows good statistics that show all the "joblessness" out there and why this may be a major problem in our society today.
Jobless Poverty: A New Form of Social Disclocation
In this chapter by William Julius Wilson, he introduces to us the jobless poverty of today and the jobless poverty of the last. He introduces to us statistics that back up his study. Wilson believed that inner-city joblessness is an extreme and severe problem them is sometimes over shadowed when the main point is focused on poverty and its consequences on being in poverty and or being poor. He focuses his work on the joblessness of the inner city.
This joblessness does not include people who are not employed by companies, or other places, but it also focuses on other types of “employment” such as street hustlers, drug dealers, black market, and unpaid housework jobs, such as babysitting, stay at home mom, ect. I thought Wilson brought about extremely good statistics in his research. He stated that in 1990 in the inner-city ghetto of Chicago, only 1 in 3 adults aged sixteen and older held a job in the ghetto poverty areas of Chicago. In the tracts of the nation’s one-hundred largest cities, for every ten adults who did not hold a job in a typical week in 1990 were only six employed persons.
What I liked about this article is he parallels the effects of joblessness with the way you live you live your life and the self discipline you have for yourself on the job, and outside of the job. A person who lacks a successful job or the absence of regular employment, that individual may be involved, in my opinion, in more petty crimes, violent crimes, ect. Your family life, and life in general become less coherent. If you grow up in the inner city of Detroit, not a breadwinner of the family, where none of your family members graduated from college, and only one of your family members has a job, you are more than likely going to become less coherent of caring about getting a job, or graduating from school. You will not be determined to be on time for a job, you are probably not going to have many goals in life, and your aspects of daily life will go down the tubes.(Not to their fault at all). If you are born into a steady upper middle class family with a steady breadwinner in the family and in a upper middle class neighborhood you are more likely to succeed and care about goals. If most individuals in your neighborhood are employed and have disciplined habits that are reflected of their jobs and goals, you are likely to want to succeed just like them. You have a sense of the recognition of the hierarchy of the neighborhood. If you see the rewards (material and nonmaterial) associated with hard work(the American way), and responsibility, it will thrive you to do well in everything you do. I absolutely agree with Wilson when he talks about this in this chapter. The external factors, the factors we can’t control, has a huge effect on how we are brought up, and how we see ourselves and the other people around us. If you are brought up on the streets of the city you are going to have a hard time moving up that social ladder and getting out of that life, rather than if you are born into a white, prestige family that has the money and resources to send you to the best schools. This has a huge factor on the jobless poverty. You must take this into consideration, and I thought Wilson did it well in his findings and research.
The Perpetuation of the Black Underclass
The authors of this article place their main emphasis on the word “segregation.” I don’t even know where to start. The author goes on to say that residential segregation is completely and solely based off whites and I quote “it was manufactured by whites through a self-conscious actions and purposeful institutional arrangements that continue today.” I think it should say “manufactured by upper-class” instead of whites. If were a high ranking top paid doctor, I would want my house in a neighborhood with people of similar socio-economic status. What I am getting at is I believe the price of real estate can be a huge attribute to residential segregation, as well as personal prejudice whether it is coming from a white or black person. An underprivileged white or black person would have trouble moving into a neighborhood that is not within their means. I understand that the author does contend that income is not a factor for residential segregation that it still occurs among blacks and whites of all socio-economic statuses. So instead of saying residential segregation is cause because of the institution and the structure, what about bringing it down to the individuals?
For example, say if there was a middle-class neighborhood of all whites and a family of blacks wanted to move in, I would like to point out that maybe they would not want to move into that neighborhood because it was purely all white, and they might feel uncomfortable. As well this can certainly go both ways. I do understand that the author states that blacks would prefer to live in half and half communities, but I do not believe he had any statistical data to back that up.
When the author says “Deleterious neighborhood conditions are built into the structure of the black community. They occur because segregation concentrates poverty to build a set of mutually reinforcing and self-feeding spirals of decline into black neighborhoods.” What about extremely poor white or other race neighborhoods? Does this apply to them too?
The authors talks about how Black English has become progressively more distant from Standard American English, and its speakers are at a clear disadvantage in U.S. Schools and labor markets. What about redneck English? I would like to believe that redneck English would not put those speakers in advantage of those that speak Standard American English.
Overall this article was good, even though I do not agree with some of it. Which could very well be because I am white, or it could because I am middle class (or would like to think so). I truly believe that residential segregation has a lot to do with both money and personal prejudice. Not the institution or the structure of things. That’s just my two cents.
The Perpetuation of the Black Underclass
When someone thinks Black underclass we all think; ghetto, drugs, welfare, etc. But we never think about how those things became associated with the blacks. The word that Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton believe is the main explanation for this is “segregation”. Massey and Denton seem to focus on the fact that the United States has moved into two societies, one being black and one being white – separate and unequal. Back in the 1950’s and 1960’s blacks lived in separate neighborhood, or for that matter a separate side of town because of all the racism that was going on at that time. Once civil rights moved in, it was not supposed to be segregated any more; everyone was supposed to be set on equal term. But in today’s society we still see some of the same segregated actions; it’s just not as out in the open as it used to be 70 years ago.
In the book it states that the reason segregation is still going on is because, the civil rights laws that were passed in the 1960’s haven’t had enough time to work yet. I agree with this statement because if someone was treating you like crap for 300 some odd years you’re not going to just have changed feeling in a 50 year period, it’s still people alive that remember and went through all the horrible things that happened in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Massey and Denton States that “this extreme racial isolation did not just happen; it was manufactured by whites through a serious of self-conscious actions and purposeful institutional arrangements that continue today”. They also go on to state that the black segregation is unique compared to the other races, because basically it shows no promise to get better.
So because blacks are residentially segregated it undercuts the social and economic superior of blacks in the United States. Segregation is also a big factor in poverty. One can’t improve their life chances, when their primary means are not too great to begin with. Due to the fact that blacks and whites live in different districts that leads to the fact that blacks have different schools, hospitals, and other intuitions. These district lines were made to separate the whites from the blacks. I look around my home town there are three high schools in the city one is predominately black, one is mixed, and one is predominately white. The one that is mixed I looked back at the history of the school and it was considered a white school but as the years went on it became a fairly mixed school. I see that now there are more blacks moving into that area, but on the contrary the whites are moving out. A school that I attended and once was a mixed school is now predominantly black, and the whites are shipping their kids off to better educational institutions. I want to leave you with a passage from the book that I think really sums up how white society is deeply caught up in making of the upholding of black the black underclass. “White institutions created it (the ghetto), white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”
American News Media and Public Misperceptions of Race and Poverty – Martin Gilens
Our opinions and behavior are a reaction to the way we view the world. Lippman believes that what we view through different forms of media leaves “pictures in our heads” that influence our actions and feelings. Many people depend on the media for information on our society and world, however he thinks that these “pictures” do not always represent absolute truth. Everyone knows that reports about the world and its relentless issues come from the mass media.
Gilens aims for readers to understand the core of American public opinion, to understand Americans’ viewpoint of the social and political world we live in, and also the role the media plays in developing those views/ideas.
One of the surveys show that public views of poverty is exaggerated by Americans in regards to the belief that African Americans compose to be the poor over any other race. The Gilens states “…news media distortions coincide with public misperceptions about race and poverty, and that both are biased in ways that reflect negatively on the poor in general, and on poor African Americans in particular”(P. 258). In Gilens’ argument he believes that the relation between misunderstanding by people and the media’s inaccurate representations of poverty goes hand in hand. The Medias distortion of what they present to our society are directly connected to our misperceptions that continue to build existing stereotypes and personal views.
Americans, who believe that there is an array of opportunities, also believe that poverty itself is for those who have personally failed. Americans have distorted ties between poverty and race, and these continuous stereotypes lead to the idea that African Americans are lazy and poor (P. 259).
I question Gilens studies because he admits in the reading that the depiction of poverty by American media has never been systematically studied; how can I as a reader be convinced that this research is accurate or done without bias?
Under the section of Findings (Page 532) there is a lot of statistics that support the issue of readers who read magazines like U.S. News and World Report are likely to have an influence that African Americans make up a large number of the poor. I could see that the majority of the reading was based with some truth, but I also think that the author ignores the fact that not all Americans are gullible and naive when it comes to seeking out information from the media. I do not buy into everything that I read or watch. I am somewhat of a skeptic. I believe that most people do not lack commonsense, and could agree with me. Didn’t your Mom or Dad warn you on how to view the media? Although, TV is a main source for Americans…I believe that sometimes information we receive does install to an unconscious level, but I think the Gilens is a turd to assume that Americans as a whole can not make conscious decisions for themselves about the media and its misrepresentation of poverty and race.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
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Tillys article the roots of durable inequality starts our discussing food and poverty and the way at affected the work force in 1800’s. The people who were lower class were often well on average shorter than the wealthy did grow taller as they came into adult hood or involved with different careers. A lot of the reason for this is because of the nutrition a lot of families were growing their own food because production was exported and they could do it faster themselves. Three to ten percent of the work force did not have enough food to have enough energy and power to be able to work an entire day. Up to 20 percent of the people at this time in all areas were beggars that is an outrageous amount. With the amount of poverty at that time the people who were not beggars barley had enough to feed their family let alone help out others.
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The height of an average adult in western countries has risen six inches over the last century. They say hat height comes form genes and also nutrition as a child. But he also indicates something about male and females living together and what I got from it he was saying that the female eats less food their for they stay smaller than the male. He says this is genetically so that females are just prone to eat less this is why this fact stays the same thought all cultures and societies. He talks about how starting at childhood we teach our children their gender roles even giving boys more food than we would give a girl. Well are the boy hungrier than the girl? Or is this just the way we train or children to be.
He tells us how in western countries they some times take food away from citizens to give to the military. Well with out citizens they would not have military. The idea being that they want the men to be strong and well nourished so they can fight the best for their countries. The will always need to recruit new members to the military so if the people are not getting as much food the people they recruit are not going to be strong when they go in and it will take a while to get them healthy and strong to be able to go out and perform the difficult tasks that the military actually has to and they can not be malnutritioned doing it.
Spinning Knowlegde Into Gold
I thought it was interesting that the chapter talks about labor and capital, the two basic productive resources, and is defined culturally and are matters of perception. The Untied States thankfully now outlaws child labor so adults can no longer see children as workers. I don't agree that what labor is and who is capable of it should be a social judgement. I think there should be one definition of it that all the world has to uphold.
The chapter makes a good point when they say that knowledge, capital, and labor are the three basic factors of production. Each is essential to produce all goods and services in all societies and eras. This reminded me of a company today because every person working at the company has to take part to make the product. The five different resource distribution I found very interesting because I would have never thought of knowledge, capital, and labor being put in different distributions. I would have never thought that all the distributions could be found in history and that each would give rise to its own class structure.
Thanks to logocracy, investing in capital is not needed because people only need to possess knowledge in order to control and profit from economic enterprises and to occupy high seats of government. I think the spirits of witch doctors and the God of the Middle Ages are now ghosts and because of logocracy the ghosts haunt capitalism and socialism.
Spinning Knowledge into Gold: Knowledge as Property
Derber, Schwartz, and Magrass use their article to present knowledge and its role in obtaining, controlling, and retaining class power. Using historical examples knowledge is characterized in forms ranging from magic performed by witch doctors, blessings by clergy, and industrial knowledge retained by management. Derber and his colleagues elaborate on the importance of these knowledge holders efforts in legitimizing their status as experts and their means of establishing and rationing the control over their knowledge as property.
The authors of the article describe the importance of establishing a worldview to support the importance of your expertise in society. So, just as the witch doctors of the Azande are described in the article as having set up a magical worldview their people cannot escape so we live in the age of high science and the existence of such threats that support the importance of that knowledge. Fifty years ago people were not worried about such things as super volcanoes and cataclysmic meteor strikes but now we have scientific experts who have discovered evidence to support the possibility of their occurrence and dream up techniques to counter these disasters.
Derber, Schwartz, and Magrass describe "enclosing the commons" or creating the exclusivity of knowledge. In our modern country we use the education systems to establish the rarity of knowledge. Any man, woman, or child can pick up a book and study physics but it is only through the achievement of various levels of degrees that this knowledge is made marketable. The authors use examples of this control of knowledge such as priests blessing fields. The peasants in the Middle Ages could have blessed their own fields in hope of a bountiful harvest but it was only the clergy who were legitimized and ordained through the church.
Finally, the article covers the topic of Logocracies and their past examples and future potential. This has particular relevance in an age of increasing technical development at all levels of society. Boardrooms, classrooms, and newsrooms are all perfect places to go looking for these high qualified experts related to the contemporary worldview and the problems it presents.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Roskin and Roo begin by talking about women’s progress into positions generally occupied by men. While women did make gains in these fields, this was overstated in the media. Looking back, most gains were made during the 70’s during the women’s movement. Roskin and Roo also explain that occupational segregation happens with race as well as sex. In general, the hierarchy goes like this: (1) white men, (2) white women, (3) black men, and (4) black women.
Next, the authors talk about a dual-queuing process (labor queues and job queues). This to me is just a fancy and elaborate way to explain the hiring process. First, it says that blacks experience more unemployment than whites because employers ranked them below whites in the labor queue. Then it goes on to say (3 times in one page at least) that the best jobs go to the most preferred workers; lowest-ranked white workers are chosen over the best black worker many times; when labor is scarce in top ranked groups, employers must be less choosy; women and minorities acquire “men’s” jobs when there is war, but men take most of them back over on their return; when the number of positions open to a higher ranked group shrink, they begin to take over jobs normally held by the less preferred; etc…. The book says more, but it is all the same really. It all boils down to the dominance of white males over the workforce, no matter what occupation it is. If it is a mixed sex occupation, men will get paid more. If it is a separate occupation, men will be the preferred employee, unless the employer has no other choice to hire a female or minority.
I am not trying to say the authors were incorrect, but I do believe that they repeatedly said the same information. If it wasn’t the exact same thing, it was reversed to talk about the second group of people in the first statement, but with the same outcome. What there wasn’t a lot of though, was reasons for this occupational sex segregation. It just stated what employers do and how they hire, but only gave descriptions towards the end when talking about reasons paying men more benefited employers more than hiring a woman for less. The chapter would have been a lot more informative had it went more in depth with the information it provided.
Minorities and Majorities
In “Minorities and Majorities”, author Rosabeth Knater discusses the roles of the dominant group in society and the reactions of the public to those actions. Knater begins with the argument of the single-sexed nature of the industrial supply industry and the effect that it has on arguments of inequality in the work place.
Further, Georg Simmel contests that the roles of the sexes in social interactions is largely dependent upon the number of members of each gender present. This assertion accompanied by a study of social interaction suggests that since there was not an equal number of each gender present, that it was inevitable for each sex to take traditional roles as opposed to positions of equal power. The author uses Indsco, which is an industrial supply industry, as an example. In Indsco upper level women were more visible much more than the higher level male. Some of these women complained about being overlooked in comparison to their male counterparts, but since there were so few women in the upper level position, they were actually equally, if not more noticeable. With this mindset, a few of them decided to do things in an unorthodox manner just to get remembered. Most women were looked at as a group, and as a result one woman’s actions reflected on other women in the office. On many occasions, the mistakes made by a woman were blamed on her gender and not due to circumstances of the situation.
Minorities have to work harder to have their achievement noticed and even harder to prove their competence. Retaliation against the majority is a concept that plagues the minds of minorities, even though it is something that seems unattainable at the same time. From their perspectives, there is a difference between doing well and doing too well and this fear that their accomplishments would go unrewarded or too highly praised is something that subconsciously controls their actions. From a similar situation, being a minority, especially Black, in the United States it is hard to get into doors that are supposed to be open to all people. Earlier in the semester we discussed open and closed relationships and I have witnessed the distinction and the lack of open relationships that exist. Some of the majority suggests that they are pro open relationships but cower out when the vast majority forms relationships between each other and don’t want to let the minorities in.
This causes a problem with the upcoming of minorities everywhere. Obama presidency opposes the stereotype that Black people have no place in this white man’s world and he has shows that Black people have the potential to be successful. In reality he was a token, he became a success against the odds. This, however, does not suggest that there will be complete equality in the world or an equal ratio of black to white in a Fortune 500 company. In relation to the situation with the women’s mistakes being blamed on their gender, if Obama should make any errors while he is in office, it will be attributed to his race. This will then create a mindset to avoid any further Black representation in office to evade any more mistakes. In contrast, if a white man messes up in office people will not think to eliminate any successors of the same race, they will elect a different one instead. I believe that this situation alone illustrates a few of the inequalities that are present on the basis of both, race and gender.
Occupational Sex Segregation: Persistence and Change
Reskin and Roos talk about how in the 1980s women started doing what was usually considered to be jobs done by men. Women had shown disproportionate gains in some predominantly male positions. But this didn’t really show the whole story. It only showed that women had gains in the jobs that the census looked at while they actually lost ground in some machine-heavy jobs. It is to be expected that the jobs that men tend to over represent the highest paying jobs in white-collar and blue-collar jobs. Women were overrepresented in jobs that are seen as jobs that are caring and administrative-support occupation. So instead of being a doctor they are more likely to be the nurse, who aren’t in charge but still works as hard and know as much as the doctors, who are generally men.
Not only is job segregation done by sex it is also by race. So whether or not an African American was a male or female they would still be below a white person. African Americans are overrepresented in service and labor jobs, no matter their sex. The authors state that occupational sex segregation has been more resistant to charge than race segregation. So even though there has been a lot of advancement in trying to make jobs equally dispersed between races and sexes women still tend to get the lower paid and less respectable jobs than men.
Even though the feminist movement has tried to open up doors to occupations that were generally reserved for men, the labor force hasn’t quite gotten to be completely integrated. Occupational sex segregation is deeply rooted in the ideas that our society has about gender roles. There are just some things that we believe women are suppose to do, like take care of children and clean the house, and there are some things that we are taught that men are suppose to do, like be the bread winner and do the heavy lifting. This leads to jobs that are just supposed to be done by women, like school teachers and nurses, and ones that are just suppose to be done by men, such as CEOs and construction workers. This is why it has been so hard for our society to get rid of sex segregation in the workplace.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Race at Work
Pager and Western’s article on Race at Work, shows us that discrimination most definitely still exists in today’s society. Since the 1960’s researchers have led us all to believe that our racial discrimination problem has been solved. This is clearly not true when looking at employment rates in America.
Pager, Western, and Bonikowski recently did a study to identify patterns of discrimination in the low-wage labor market of New York City. They took a number of real entry-level jobs and had three different races of young, mostly college-educated, males apply to them. The results were astounding. They used whites, Latinos, and blacks. They found that whites are about twice as likely to get the job rather than the black applicants. And Latinos suffered a little for their minority status. The interviewers made it not so clear that they were discriminating during the interviewing process. They told the blacks and Latinos similar things, such as, “The position has been filled, but we will call people in if it doesn’t work out, and you can leave your resume here with me”. These answers were not given to the white males though. Some were hired right on the spot, and others were told to come in for a second interview. The minority males would have never known that the employer was discriminating against them, if not for their white counterparts.
Finally, they did a study involving whites who just got out of prison, Latinos with no criminal background, and blacks also with no criminal background. You’ll never guess the results for this one! They were just about as ridiculous as the first study. They found that employers were more likely to hire whites who have been convicted of a felon over minorities who have a clean record. Even though this discrimination goes on to this day in the workplace, most of us are still not aware of it. It is quite sad, and I strongly believe that we must learn to look past the physical appearances of people. Just because someone is not exactly the same as us, does not mean that they are not as good as us, and that we should automatically overlook them. We must be open-minded and judge people on facts, not on personal opinions.
Race Prejudice as a Sense of Group Position
This article really struck me as pretty much putting a slight spin on the way prejudice is looked at through race. Written in the late 1950's, it was probably pretty groundbreaking for its time in that it really looked at race through the eyes of any race and not just talking about how the white man is putting everyone down, although there are some implications of that.
Blumer's main point of argumentation that he feels truly exemplifies himself from the rest of the sociology pack is the fact he looks at Race prejudice as the relationship between groups rather than the individuals point of views of race. The collective process is an important staple in Blumers way of viewing every race group and the way in which they perceive other race groups and in this perception is where the prejudice is produced.People love being surrounded by what is comfortable, and the easiest way to find some commonality is through our race. Whether you're consciously or subconsciously doing it, people generally congregate with their own race. In doing so, they create a group identity not only for themself, but also for how they perceive the other groups. The four types of feelings presented through the collective process is pretty much what you would expect for anytype of prejudice topic. Although, his idea of putting space between groups was interesting. Putting a group down by discriminating them and putting them away through alienation I felt was really an innovative way of explaining prejudice.
As a group, people do not like others that are strange or different than themselves to encroach on what is comfortable for that group and definitely do not like when a foreign group may threaten their current status. The though of the unknown is a scary thing for people and if the group in power is the one who is being encroached upon, you can sure bet that the incoming group is going to be estranged and put in a negative light in order to diminsh the threat.
The final stressed point in this article is the point that these judgements on other races are formed through public arenas or publicly demonstrated opinions of a race. The abstract image is formed through these encounters that are never first-hand, but rather "Transcending characteristics" of the group. Since these public forums are of major importance (otherwise they would not be of public matter), the influence will undoubtedly be from the dominate group in society. As i mentioned previously since White Males are the dominate group in society and have been since the writing of this article, Blumer calls them out indirectly as being the dominate group putting themselves above others. The dominate group looks out for their own self-interest despite what that means for their subordinate group members just as it has always been done throughout history.
Overall, I thought this article did a great job of demonstrating the ideas of group-think and how it impacts race prejudice in our society. Blumer did a nice job defining that race prejudice will only change when the group changes, one individual risks alienation from their own group if they chose to defy their own group and be left out in the cold with their strange ideas. The collective process must change first if we ever want the racial prejudice to change.
Race at Work by Pager and Western
The article by Pager and Western focuses on America’s racial progress since the 1960s. It was written to show people that even though all races are supposed to have equal rights and opportunities in today’s society they don’t. Pager and Western formed an experiment to prove this. The article goes on to describe how they had groups of white males, latino males and black males all attend job interviews.
All of these men had the same resumes and were all equally qualified for the job that they were applying for. They even went as far as making sure they were all around the same height and dressed similar. The results showed that more whites were hired than latinos and blacks and more latinos were hired than blacks. This shows that there is still discrimination in society. They even did the experiment again only this time the white male also had a criminal background whereas the latino and black male didn’t. Still though, the white male with a criminal record was hired more than the latino and black males with no criminal record. The issues drawn from Pager and Western were very serious and are things that should be paid attention to.
The things that I read in this article were quite surprising to me. In the second paragraph on the first page the authors say that whites turned their back on the issue because it was difficult to observe. I thought that this statement was ridiculous. I think that whites don’t even see the problem for the most part and that most are just oblivious to the whole situation. I also think that issues like these should be made more public and should be talked about more so that more people are made aware of the situations people are facing on an everyday basis.
Reading this article was honestly disturbing to me and it made me feel ashamed. I thought that the authors made some very bold points and I was shocked to see the results from the experiments especially the one where the white male had a criminal record. It angers me to see that even a white male with a criminal record would get more call backs on a job position than a latino or black male without. I think that the points made in the article by the authors were very dead on with what is happening in society today.