SUMBLOG 7 Anna Julia Cooper

As a minority of this society I can relate to a lot of Anna Julia Cooper’s ideas of pluralism, assimilation, segregation, and genocide.  Growing up I was made to believe in pluralism, where everyone regardless of ethnicity can all live as equal.  However, seeing how some studies have showed that this really isn't the case and from some personal experiences, my view of pluralism has changed.   Rather we may see it or not there is still a great deal of racism going on today.  This brings us to assimilation, and how I think the two kind of relate to one another.  Assimilation is the process of conforming a group into the dominate group.  However not many minorities have all the necessary skills to conform, and thus refuse to do so.  This is often seen as a negative, and I think some form of racism can rise from this.  If a person does not assimilate, than that person is often out caste and is somewhat hated.  Although segregation of race is no longer a law, I often see it unintentionally.  I often see this when I visit my younger sister’s high school or simply walking through the cafeteria here on our campus.   I often see whites sitting with whites, blacks with blacks, Asians with Asians. Etc.  We are supposedly be a diverse community, but that isn't the case at all.  Finally the last thing I want to talk about is genocide.  My family was given the chance to come to this country because of our involvement to help the USA during the Vietnam War.  After the US pulled out of the war, the Vietnamese was trying to rid of us because of our involvement.  My family escaped to refugee camp and eventually was allow to come here.  What I am trying to get at with this is that Cooper’s idea is still relevant today.  The US is supposed to be a melting pot of people.  I don’t really believe that because the idea of everyone becoming one in a pot just disturbs me.  I like to view the US as a salad bowl, because we are all represented in the bowl with a unique flavor.  The picture below helps demonstrate this.

SUMBLOG5 Harriet Martineau

Harriet Martineau who is often regard as the first female sociologist, really made a name for herself when she introduced her view on society to the world.  Her ideas such as the “laws” of social life and morals and manners are especially interesting to me.  They are interesting because it basically explain how people should act in society.  Martineau “laws” of social life says that human happiness is express through the fairness of our society.  What I got out from this is that if the government (society) treat everyone citizen equally, then people would in theory be happier.  Happy people mean more productive people, and with more productive people then the government’s economy can thrive.  However this is also one of her greatest critique, mainly because of the vagueness of the idea itself.  Although the idea does look good on paper, is it possible to achieve?  We live in a capitalist government where everyone is in for themselves, thus rendering this idea useless.  The example in class about the country Bhutan shows that a government measuring people’s happiness would not last long.  Secondly is her idea of morals and manners, and this idea is pretty self-explanatory.  It’s about the shared norms that people of a particular society have, and the action that we take based on those norms.  I really like the example that we use in class about men needing space in between urinals.  There are no written rules that say that no two men should ever pee next to each other.  However, in our society we view going to the bathroom a private matter.  Thus when going to use the urinal in public we like to give them space, so things don’t get awkward. I thought of the image below when the idea came up in class and I believe it helps demonstrate this idea.

SUMBLOG4 Max Weber

Max Weber really hit it on the head with his idea of bureaucracy and rationality.  What I really take an interest in is his six basic characteristics of rationality.  This idea in my opinion is what keeps everybody’s life in order?  For an example we as humans are afraid of change and we like things consistent.  We like to know what we are getting.  Let’s take a look at a franchise restaurant such as Denny’s.  When you walk into a Denny’s you are expecting the same service and the same food every time.  Now imagine if you walked into a Denny’s and receives a totally different experience and different food. In this case you would probably freak-out, because I know I would.  You would expect a certain level of efficiency from them because you were promised it.  Going off this idea, I think you can relate it to religion as well.  We got rules and religions all design to keep us save, but when those rules start getting broken we start questioning our faith.  What I mean by this is if we believe in something all our life but along the way found it to be false, that will shake and scare us a bit.  So I guess what I am trying to say is that rationality helps us cope with daily activity with a guideline and if these guidelines were to change it’ll impact us for the better or for worst.  I am using a picture with a quote from one of my favorite movie The Dark Knight to help illustrate this idea, which can be found below.

SUMBLOG3 Emile Durkhiem

I really like Emile Durkheim’s ideas on suicide.  I say this because it’s really hard to explain why anyone would commit suicide, and he manages to narrow it down to four logical categories (egotistic, altruistic, anomic, and fatalistic).  With all the suicides that I had ever heard about, I can usually fit them into one of these four categories.  First, let’s take a look on anomic suicides.  Anomic suicide from what I understand results when there is a change in the economy that negatively impacts people financially.  I've heard about people committing suicide after learning that they have lost all the money that they have invested.  Secondly, let’s look at fatalistic suicides.  Fatalistic suicide occurs when there is a high degree of regulation. Institutions such as prisons are where most of the fatalistic suicides occur.  I can understand to why people would rather die than spend the rest of their days in prison.  Many bad things can happen to a person in prison (i.e. rape, unsanitary living condition, bullying, etc.).  So it’s easy to see why some would choose death rather than succumbing to that kind of treatment. Thirdly, let’s discuss altruistic suicides.  Altruistic suicide occurs when a person commits suicide for the good of the group.  This can be both a good and a bad thing.  Take a soldier covering a live grenade to protect his brother in arms.  He is gives his life, so his brothers can live. This is taken to be a good deed.  However sometimes it may not like the kamikaze attackers during WWII.  They attacker is sacrificing himself for the good of the group, but at what price.  The person dies and other countless dies, so is it really worth it in the end.  Nonetheless there is a reason as to why people would do such things good or bad, because it’s for the good of the group.  Lastly let’s talk about egotistic suicide.  To put it simply this type of suicide occurs when a person feels excluded.  A prime example of this is bullying.  Suicides that was committed as a results of bullying continues to be on the rise.  With the internet, cyber bullying is becoming bigger and bigger.  I saw this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XLcfdkkHQE) a while ago and it shows the effect of bullying, and I think it does a good job of it too.  So it’s easy to see why this type of suicide is the most talked about.  Overall I believe that Durkheim’s idea stood the test of time because it is still relevant today as suicides keeps on happening, and we trying to figure out why.