Wouldn't you like to know (remix)

The definition of myself is ambiguous and unattainable. Not because I feel like I'm individually unique from the crowd, but rather because I am part of the crowd. This crowd known as humankind. All of human kind can be placed on a physical gradual spectrum where slight variations make each and everyone of us unique (identical twins excluded). It's very difficult to begin to draw barriers and lines separating us into different catagories and groups. On the other hand its also very difficult to describe a certain person without commenting on race of culture. So where these two ideas crash, the ambiguous definition of my life lies.

It's difficult on both sides to describe me without groupings or describe me with groupings. Race would be one way of those ways of groupings. Race itself is not real, not concrete, and subject to change due to social views and standings. Race is a social construction that helps people grasp this notion of human diversity. The diversity span is much to mass for anyone to really be able to comprehend and grasp the concept of a single person that's why there is race. In actuality there really is no physical bounderies that restrict one to a single race because it usually is a conglomeration of traits and characteristics that sum up that race as a general. Which then creates stereotypes.

I earlier said, "to label myself under specific names and brands would be unfair to me and your understanding of me. No one likes being stuck with a label and the connotations that follow that label." Which still remains true. I hate stereotypes and the way they affect the way I live. I'm Asian and therefore I'm expected by my parents and or peers to perform at a certain degree academically. It's annoying to have someone judge you completely solely on the stereotype and generalization of people that look like you, and yet I still catch myself doing it to others. Its such a horrible thing that I'm trying to change but I feel like it's going to take a little longer than the 5 months I had.

"Well then what makes up the person that I am? Experiences." So very true. Most lives are dictated by the social construction in which they grow up in. Social construction is the influence that affects how we view the world. Growing up as a minority and moving around a lot, I've come to see and hear a lot of things. I've learned and was taught to be open up to different cultures and traditions. Thus I feel like not to many things offend me, which makes it difficult for me to realize what offends other people. For instance, in China it is not uncommon to see people slurping their or noodles, but here it disgusts and upsets a lot of people.

My goals and dreams being vague and nonexistent could be contributed by the social class that I live in as a teenager. This social class, known as upper middle, distills a sense of helplessness within all teenagers of this social status. In an age where, anything we want we receive, anything we mess up our parents fix, anything we do amounts to nothing, a sense of identity is lost upon us. We usually don't struggle through anything, and never really experience any true pain or suffering. The closest we come to suffering is staying up all night doing a paper. We are separated from the rest of the social classes believing that everyone has a cell phone or internet. We are isolated from everyone else where no one else's problems are as important as our petty problems like keeping up with the Joneses. Volunteering however helped me realize a sense of self importance that is actually beneficial to the community. A sense of belonging where I could actually see the kids I was helping in inner city Chicago by painting schools.

As a whole, Sociology helped change the way I viewed the world. It made me become aware of the social construction of reality built within my life. IT allowed me to see the tiny pieces and parts that make up this complex structure. It's allowed me to tinker and bend things to change my perspective and views. I wish I could say that the generic, "and it has made me a better person" because I dont know that it has. It's only made me more aware. It's only become another experience and piece to add on to the influences in my life. Will I hope to seek out to do good with this new found knowledge yes. Will I be able to? I hope so.

Crashing Sterotypes

Stereotypes exist because they must have a general basis in society. Without this overarching common knowledge, then why would people think particularly because of a certain race? It's tempting to just conclude an entire person's character based on the pigment of their skin, but its unpreventable. So then does believing a stereotype mean I'm a racist? Is that a fair statement to make?

I wonder how I'll feel after I ramble to myself on this for a little bit...

In the movie crash, Stereotype is portrayed in two ways. One that confirms the stereotype and the other that rejects it. With Mr. Ruiz, he is believed as a Latino gang banger and untrusted by all the clients that ask him to fix their lock. They call him a cheat, a liar, and an untrustworthy person, just because he is Hispanic. The movie however portrays himself as just the opposite. A hard working man providing for his beautiful family. A loving father willing to risk his life for his daughter and his entire family. Mr. Ruiz represents a pillar of honesty and trustworthiness, the exact opposite his stereotype calls forth.

Ludacris confirms the stereotype. He confirms that all blacks are poor and crime ridden. Robbing cars seems to be his career and carrying a gun and having armed robberies only confirms the fear that the white community has in the black people. He also confirmed that he didn't like coffee like how the waitress wouldn't fill his cup and then ran out on the tip. He seems to confirm the defense attorney's wife's fear of all black men.

Is she a racist? I dont know. I think personal experience makes up what you think of a generalization of a person. If you had ever been personally affected by a direct stereotype in life then more you would more then likely develop a generalization about that particular concept. ITs like if you've only eaten one type of vanilla ice cream, then you would probably generalize that all vanilla ice cream is good. if I had come into contact with alot of intelligent asian people, I would more then likely believe it, however since, I'm an asian myself and don't consider myself smart, I can't really believe in the stereotype. So being stereotypical in my eyes is not racist but rather just a personalized generalization of life. However, if you fail to acknowledge the complexity in life and close yourself from new ideas and concepts, then you will never really because enlightened and forever remain a bigot.

The Social Illusion

It was difficult for me to even begin writing this blog because I have no idea where to even start.

Do I start off with the broad generalization of how I appear on a standarized test? Sure, that's easy, I'll just bubble in Asian/Pacific Islander as oppoed to white, black, and hispanic. Huh, that wasn't too bad, I just summed myself into one of the most diverse group of humans ever. No biggie. What does that mean though, to have a blackened bubble next to Asian/ Pacific Islander? What am I? Asia is the biggest populated continent in the world. It's people range from white middle easterners of Turkey to dark skinned south Indians. Not everyone has pointy eyes, yellowish skin, and incredibly high math scores. In fact its very difficult to distinquish where the oriental end and the middle east begins. In China there is a region of people, in the rural west I want to say, that have brown hair and green eyes. They aren't the stereotypical looking Chinese fellow. I remember watching their folk dances on TV on the Chinese New Years festival and think, Whoa, they can't be asian, their white. So if physical features cant truly pinpoint a persons race I guess culture and values must be the uniting factors amongst race.

When people ask me where I'm from I usually say FLorida. Then they would clarify their question and ask, "What am I?" I would then say Chinese and then all of a sudden it seems as if I was classified into a whole new group of people with a different set of moral code. Then I would ask, "what are you?" They would respond, I'm american. GAHHH Why are they american and not me? I grew up with a heavily dominated american Culture and environment. I've lived here since I was 2 and grew up speaking English. Why can't I be considered an American as a race? A small little pet peeve that I have. If my values and desires don't classify me into a race then I guess that leaves an ambiguous nature behind too.

Maybe it's nationality that truly really seperates us apart, Where we were born, the people we resemble, the way we dress, and the way we carry ourselves. Wait that doesn't work either. I often get mistaken as a korean. A lot of the times I would be walking through the super market and an elderly Korean couple would walk up to me and start asking me questions in Korean expecting me to help them out. I would always see the suprised look when I said, "meeyahn, nahn joong gook sah lahm eeyah" , and then they would shake their head and walk away dissappointed. Completely befuddled on the constant confusion I asked one of my Korean friends, Becca (I think you had her last year). She said something along the lines of, how I don't act like all the other Chinese people being extremely book buried and up tight. So basically it was just a stereotype that I seemed to break with the Chinese which made my nature completely ambiguous. It was difficult to classify because I didn't fit the general stereotype and therefore I'm no longer Chinese, intresting. Believe it or not, there a definitly a lot of differences between the different asian nationalities. The Chinese tend to be extremely school bound, the Koreans and Japanese tend to be loud and more attuned with the social trends, and the philipinos are the hispanics of the asians. I'm not sure if most people are aware of that but to classify all of us as one group, usually tends to either offend people or please people. I'm not baseing this on any real statistics or fact but, when you ask Chinese what are they, they tend to respond Asian. When you ask Koreans what are they, they tend to respond Korean. A cool little tidbit

In the end I think race is just a stereotype and social construction that society creates in order to distinguish itself and each other quickly and efficiently. It's just so much easier for us to be ignorant about the differences and just label each other so that we could generalize, judge, and act towards each other accordingly. Race will always be here, and always be there to help us describe the way people are. With the social standard of race it would be like describing what a color looks like to a blind person. Impossible. There must be some catgorization of people in order to even be able to talk about them. Even in this blog where I tried to talk about how race is ambiguous, I couldn't help but still use it in order to dispell the usual stereotypes of race. As an intelligent society, we just have to be aware that these generalizations and standards are never complete and full. There will always be variation and we must keep an open mind and never have a bias against someone based on race.

The Upward Strive

Watching 30 days on minimum wage seemed to conjure up old memories of when my parents and I lived on welfare...

Oh what a time, a time where my mom would calculate everything down to the last penny. She would time our showers, screw out light bulbs in the bathroom to save electricity, and seal off windows to conserve heat in the house. We never ate out, never ate nicely, usually it was just some vegetables that my mom prepared very nicely. We lived in a one room apartment for a year when I was about 3 and moved to an "extravagant" 1 bedroom apartment in the inner city of Akron Ohio. It was pretty horrendous, however the only reason how my family could rise from pits of society to upper middle class suburbia is because of one thing. My dad's intelligence. I hear the term everyone who works hard will succeed, but that I feel is completely false. No matter how hard they work, without a little skill, there is no way to surpass the current social standing that you stand in right now.

The whole belief that your environment around you is extremely influential and definitly affect your mental and social development affects the immobility in social class too. You are raised in a certain culture, taught to think a certain way, and born will an abundance of chances or none. all of which affect the way you will perform in life and later determine the social status of your nature. The apple truly does not fall far from the tree. For instance a blue collar worker instills in his or her child the belief that authority and traditions must be followed, thus killing creativity and innovation. Restricting him or her to rise to the top. In order to really obtain social mobility one must be able to rise above his or her nature, and utilize some sort of talent. Whether it be intelligence, atheleticism, or mere creativity. If you are unable to obtain anything, you will forever be trapped in the "nurture" that will dictate your social outcome.

Dirt

How do you describe someone from the countryside in China? Dirt. The universal catagory that fits just about any creature that crawls from the "plain village" It also pretty much describes the general social class system that describes China. Those from the city and those from the farms.

Why is the social class so vague and simple as opposed to the multi rung social class present in the United States? My idea is because of communism. China, before it became the economic powerhouse that it is now, used to only have two jobs avaliable. 1) you could either work in the factories in the city 2) you could work in the farms in the outer villages. Everyone recieved the same amount of pay in the factories so generally there wasn't much competition. Therefore there was no seperate classes for people, everyone was the same, all under one class. All the farmers were generally poor so very rarely did they compete against one another either. The only distinction that could be clearly made between the people of China were those that were city dwellers and the farmers. And that social class carries over to today.

My dad was from a peasant village, and my mom was from the city. Had my father not been educated my mom's parents would have surely objected to their marriage. Even though my mom's parents accept my father, they dont accept his parents. When ever there would be a family reunion, an awkward silence would always accompany the clanking of chopsticks and rice bowls. The families just wouldn't be able to talk about anything that interested both of them. The silence doens't only attribute to a lack of common interest but also a lack of respect for the village people.

Thats common in China. It's very common to see the village people being discriminated against in the cities of China. They had a hard time finding jobs beside labor jobs. They had a hard time finding housing because there is this generalized assumption that the farmers dont understand the social values of the city. Merchants would very rarely sell to the village people, and the countryside men would often just find themselves on the streets and soon return home empty handed when they sought out riches in the city.

This discrimination would continue to lead the widening gap of the rich and the poor in China. As globlization and world commerace hits the busy streets of Shanghai and Beijing, the rural communities will be left alone to wither out and soon die. As the saying goes... the rich will only keep getting richer.

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.

The Man

In our society there are specific ways a man should act accordingly to his fellow peers. Society portrays men as strong, independent, wealthy, intelligent, strong willed, and especially confident. Usually these characteristics would be freeing and empowering, but instead, they've become more restrictive and harmful. They bind all men under this one catagory which forces them down a specific path whether or not they want to follow it or not. When one man does stray from this path, or is unable to live up to the standards of men, they are stripped of their title as "man."

When I was at the doctors office the other day, I happened to peruse through Mens Health. I just remember reading a snippit of one of the articles that said "live up to be a true man," and then it continued on to discuss workouts, money, and women. A clear theme through all of these articles no matter how much they vary is subject was the need for the man to dominate it. The man had to "own" the money, the man had to "own" the workout, the man had to "own" the woman. Of course in the magazine it talked about how men should please and amuse the women, but in the end it came full circle to being able to get what men want. This society view of man's need to dominate its task is ridiculous.

For instance, Prom is coming up right? The Masculinity complex is right there. The guys are supposed to pay for everything, provide for everything, and even plan everything. When we talked about letting the girls paying for a little of it, I heard "be a man and pay." Since when does being a man involve money? Society portrays these men as these providors and protectors. One who cares and protects his family from any harm whether it be physical or financial. This physical image of men as being these ripped brad pitts in fight club is really beginning to tear down upon some men's self esteem. Women might think they are they only ones affected by public advertising but as sensuality increase popularity in mainstream culture, men's physique becomes targeted. If a man can't live up to these standards they are considered weak and insignificant.

Men can't be considered weak or submissive. They must stand their ground whether or not they think they have any. That's what society imposes on men. I remember once walking down the hallway at Newsome High when I witnessed two guys violently punching each other. They slammed each other into lockers and the ground quickly became bloody. After cops came and pulled them apart, I remember walking away and hearing, "he looked at me" when asked why'd they fight. What's more crazy was two days later those two guys were perfectly fine with each other. No hard feelings, nothing. They didn't fight because they had a grudge between one another, they fought to showcase their testosterone levels to their peers. They only wanted to show society that they weren't weak. The fight meant nothing to them, but the social recognition at the present time of the fight which identified them as men dictated the outcome. Unfortunetly if one decides not to fight, they aren't labled a man, stripping them away from their identity. With a lose of identity it usually results in a outburst of violence to regain recognition from society. When will we ever learn?