The Sociological Imagination Essay

The Sociological Imagination: race and racism

The sociological imagination is a capacity, ability, and a quality of mind that allows an individual to understand and connect her or his life with the forces and dynamics that impact it. It is about not blaming others for what they do, it is about judging ourselves before we judge others and understand people as if we understand ourselves for example if a student comes late to class there could be many reasons behind this student being late; there could have been traffic or an accident on the way that made him or her come late to class, so we should not judge but understand.

Although we should separate between personal trouble and public issue, for example a student could be coming to class late all the time because of his or her laziness this would be called a personal trouble but if all students are coming late to class than this is called a public issue, meaning there is something wrong with the class. 

Sociological imagination engages in, the minority status, gender, socioeconomic status and the family structure.

Sociological imagination is a social fact and empathy; social fact is the idea, feeling, behaviour of individuals. An example of social fact is when the sun is rising, this is a social fact that we cannot change whether we like it or not it will still rise. Empathizing is verstehen meaning when I ask myself what If I was this person or what if I was in this persons place.

There are many sociological issues in society; one of the issues learned in this course is the race and racism issue.

Race and racism are two different issues race is a social constructed aspect of identity in all cultures, race is not biological it is powerful; it is what makes us who we are for example what we are born with like hair texture and skin colour.  

Racism is an interlocking system of advantage based on race existing at individual and cultural symbolic. Racism comes from power, and culture. Racism happens when some social groups have more power over another social groups, but racism have changed even if it still exist it is not visible in which it is been described as dangerous or a hidden fact. Racism is racism that it can’t be better or worse in any country. even though being born with a specific skin colour is a cause of geographic conditions, in which where the person is born for example being born in a sunny place is different than being born in a place in which doesn’t have sun, so all humans are the same if we put skin colour a side, also black people are born with more melanin in their skin and that protects them from getting cancer that’s why white skin coloured people are more likely to get cancer than people with dark skin. So there are always advantages and disadvantages about what we have and what we don’t have.

The fundraising-dance

The Social Justice Scholarship fund-Dance was held at the conference center, at kwantlen polytechnic university at 72d Avenue in cedar building  on April 7 at 7pm.

In the fund-raising I learned how interacting with people is very important, meeting with new students, gathering and talking, sharing information about the course and talking about why we were there, this event was a very good opportunity for me to understand and see how people from different cultures, languages and different back grounds can get together and create social groups for example when I got to the fundraising-dance I met a student from the Langley campus, she was talkative and outgoing and we became friends so we created a small social group. Also it was interesting to see how different people with different cultures can eat the same food which belongs only to one culture.
i also realized how people can change and effect the way other people live  for example this new friend i made can change my life in an either positive or negative way.

It was also interesting to see how people have changed over the years for example before poeple used to most likely slow dance whereas now people go very close to each other as if they are couples. and how the music changes too for example the music now is becoming more modern and the lyrics are different than it used to be back in the day. over all the fund-raising was useful and enjoyable. 

The power of illustration video

The film: The power of an illusion; the differences between us

Human beans are different; we classify people by their hair texture, skin colour and eye shape. Race is real.

In a research students had to test their genes to classify themselves and to see to what racial group they belong to. Students had been asked to give a sample of their blood to test it and compare it with other student’s blood to see whether their genes are similar or different. A white male had been asked which of the students in this group do you think you are more likely to be similar to and which student in this group you think you are different from, he replied my genes would be more similar to the white male student and the most different is the black student.

Surprisingly the results show that this white student male’s genes are more similar to the black student’s genes and different than the white male student’s genes, so we are similar even though we look different.

This research shows that we have been mixing over the years and generations, there is no pure race

The danger of a single story video

By: Chimamanda Adichie

Chimamanda talked about the danger of a single story, seeing only one side of the story. She talked about her roommate in the United States who could only see Chimamanda as poor and non-knowledgeable of doing even simple things for example like using the stove and that’s only because she is African.

Chimamanda remembered herself when she was in Africa and how her mom described a family as poor when she wanted to explain to her and tell her how they have to give them food so they can survive. One day Chimamanda and her family went to this poor family’s house but Chimamanda was very surprised about how creative they are and how they can actually make beautiful things. Chimamanda did have a single story about this family; she could only see them as poor. As well as her American roommate in America who had a single story about Africa that she could only see Africans as poor.

Chimamanda put her shoes in the others and thought what If she didn’t live in Africa, what if she lived her hall life in the United States and have been told repeatedly that Africans are poor, she found out that she will have the same thoughts about Africa as her roommate.

In the case of Africa people have made the image of Africans as poor, dark and can’t speak for themselves, but that’s only one side of the story.

Single story begins when certain people say the same thing over and over again until people believe that this is who they are. They make one story become the only story, but that only makes people feel different than other people instead of similar which also lead to stereotyping.

In the end Chimamanda wanted to send a message to everyone that there is never ever a single story.

Articles:

Author: Quest-Adade

In the 4 articles it talks about the 9/11 attack which was blamed on people coming from middle east, it talked about how everyone who is involved in killing in other countries are criminals, that if middleeasternians were called tourists for killing people in the united states by crashing the buildings, Americans are criminals too for killing women and children in developing countries and causing war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It also talked about how bush, the past president of the United States talks about peace and seeking justice and forgiveness and peace on war but spending millions of dollars on the war against Iraq and Afghanistan while some people in Africa live with less than one dollar a day, and that the reason for this war is because bush wanted to take the oil Iraq has.

It also talked about race and racism and how they are different. Race is a human invented concept and a social construct; race is basically the features we are born with for example, hair colour and skin colour.

In the world there is no such thing as pure race, everywhere there is mixed people, a good example of that is the United States, most Americans are mixed with Europeans. It is difficult to know what race you are, and it is even more difficult to find out to what racial group we actually belong to, we can go back to few generations before like three or four generations to know what race we are but it’s difficult to know what was before that, so race has no genetic basis.

As humans we share the same genes for example a Chinese woman can get married with a white man, they will have a half Chinese and half white child, but a Chinese woman can’t get married with a bird because birds don’t share the same genes as humans do. Another example of humans share the same genes would be, if a black child was born in Africa and both his mom and dad have black skin colour but the child has a white skin colour and look more like white people than to look like Africans. That shows that all people with different shapes and skin colours have the same genes.

Racism is an issue in every country, in the United States skin colour has been a major issue in the past and even now sometimes.  white people did and still do differentiate between themselves and black people even though being born with a specific skin colour is a  cause of geographic conditions, in which where the person is born for example being born in a sunny place is different than being born in a place in which doesn’t have sun,  so all humans are the same if we put skin colour a side, also black people are born with more melanin in their skin and that protects them from getting cancer that’s why white skin coloured people are more likely to get cancer than those people with dark skin. So there is always advantages and disadvantages about what we have and what we don’t have that there is no point of feeling that we are better than the others.

Race is not biological it is powerful.  In the Christian religion it says in the bible how Africans serve Europeans and how the image of Jesus of him being with blue eyes and white skin colour as if Jesus is European, this leads to differentiating and discrimination between black and white people.

Earlier before Europeans used to have black people to slave for them, making people think that black people slave only because they are poor, but war and debt is the reason why different coloured people slave for other people,   for example Europeans slave for Europeans and black slave for blacks and white people slave for white, so not because the person has a black skin colour it means that this person will always slave other people.

Racism comes from power, and culture. Racism happens when some social groups have more power over another social groups, but racism have changed even if it still exist it is not visible in which it is been described as dangerous or hidden fact. Racism is racism that it can’t be better or worse in different countries.

Black people have been described as the victims of racism and say that we need both black and white people to heal the process of racism, black people can’t do that alone and that both black and white people have to make rules and follow them about justice between them.

In the articles it also talked about Stereotyping and how not everyone is the same also how pre justice is different than stereotyping. It talked about praxis which is a mix of ideas and actions and about privileges and the power of skin colour and how people suffer and not benefit from anything because of their skin colour and people’s stereotyping.

for example white people don’t see white privilege unless if they put themselves on the shoes  of others like black people and imagine if they were themselves black than they wouldn’t want to be treated different, otherwise white people don’t find being racist as a major issue.

In the end it talked about how we need to change the racism fact as we people created it, and change the educational system because that’s how the idea of racism can change, teaching children that there is no racism because we are all humans.