The Mischievous One

I always thought of deviance as one who disturbed the peace. In my mind before sociological enlightenment, disturbing societal norms is considered to be of deviant nature. Through the class and periods of discussion, I've realized that disturbance isn't always such a bad thing. It could be productive, helpful, harmful, or even useless. Our "nothing" assignment would be a classic example of a harmless deviance. Our soceity is built around work and stress, that's why someone who does nothing is considered to be deviant, because once someone steps out of the social acceptance circle, they are marked with suspicion. However, not everyone is marked the same way. Everyone is labled differently and can vary greatly depending on the appearance of the person.

Jocks in letterman jackets, girls with trendy clothes, well mannered kids seem to be able to escape the entire deviance system. Money also seemed to play a great role on the judgment of these kids. In Outliers, it described upper middle class parents teaching kids that they were able to influence others, talk back, and find ways around authority. Lower middle class parents often just made it obvious to children that they must follow the "mans" rule and do as he is told, not every trying to violate the norms. So in return, the richer upper class kids tend to be able to persuade and convince authorities of their case. For instance, I know of a girl who seemed to be very intelligent on her transcript and on her achievements. My friends have had class with her and said that she really wasn't that intelligent. Often she would break down and cry to the teacher to try to get a grade and often her mother would call her teacher to help. A ridiculous amount of pampering whereas someone else wouldn't even have a chance of changing their grade from a C to a B. They just don't feel that type of entitlement to themselves.

The rich are often overlooked when it comes to deviance. Why is it that corporate officials who embezzle over millions of dollars from their company get sent to a white collar "institution." Where as a drug dealer who has a couple thousand dollars get busted for drug laundering and sent to the real thing. The futures for these two men for sure would be very different, the corporate official will just get out after 2 years and resume a job eventually, the drug dealer would never be find a job, probably be involved in more drug smuggling through connections in jail, and more crimes. It's all because we have this social persepective on them.