Sociological Imagination

“Public Issue”

The Economic issue in the United States and the educational system

The U.S. educational system is compulsory for the first 9 to 12 years of education, depending on the state. While most students graduate between 17 and 18 years of age, many states allow for the student to voluntarily remove themselves from enrollment, or "drop out" without earning a diploma^.

Although some funding comes from the federal government, public education is almost entirely funded and controlled individually by state and local governments and school districts. Within a state, primary control of the system rests with the state, which delegates authority to local authorities. Although the Department of Education wields some authority, most powers concerning schooling remain with the states.

The funding and condition of the school system in each municipality is largely determined by the school district or local government. In affluent communities, especially those with many school-age children, the educational system tends to be more heavily funded on a per-student basis and tends to be more effective. Communities that are less affluent or have a lower proportion of families with children generally spend less money per child. Statistical information generated by the No Child Left Behind Act, and similar acts at a state level, demonstrate the general correlation between money spent per child and academic success.

State governments since the 1970s have grappled with these issues of educational equity. Despite these attempts, in 1992, the U.S. General Accounting Office stated, "Although most states pursued strategies to supplement the local funding of poor school districts, wealthier districts in 37 states had more total (state and local combined) funding than poor districts in the 1991-92 school year. This disparity existed even after adjusting for differences in geographic and student need-related education costs." In some states, most prominently New Jersey, courts have ordered dramatically increased funding in lower income areas. In other states, legislatures have acted on their own initiative to somewhat equalize the funding available.

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.

Black History Month And Africa World Civilization

Conference held by Dr. C. Quist-Adade

In the conference today a very important topic was covered which is black history and black history month as well as Africa world civilization.

Black history month is February. Every February all countries celebrate the history of black people. They talk and get to learn more about black people, about all the interesting things in their culture. Black people are just like any other people, they have high and low class, and they have famous people just like white people do, such as Michael Jordan, the most famous black basketball player in the world.

Classical African civilization is also an important topic that had been covered in the conference.

Usually when talking about classic civilizations the first thing that comes to our mind is Europe and specifically the culture of Greek and rom, the reason behind us thinking that is because classic civilization had been ignored in all other cultures including the African culture by the United States and European countries. Classic departments such as well-known Universities like Oxford in the United States and Europe focused on publishing books about the importance of the Greek and Rome’s culture to be described as the highest class in the world.

Chapter three in social justice issues in local and global contexts

Chapter three social justice and the social construction of inequality and difference, in social justice issues in local and global contexts book talks about inequalities and differences between people how they are reinforced in our society. It talked about how people seem to find themselves more comfortable living around people with the same culture, religion and language. It also talked about how power and the power of control, race, gender, and class could result and lead to inequality in our society, for example: talking about classicism, how a high class group of people can control and have power over a hall population because of the amount of money they have. Another example is about racism as how in the United States white Americans used to differentiate between themselves and black Americans by believing that they should not exist only because of their color which they were born with, this also created inequality in society. These examples don’t only lead to equality they also violate human rights, because the decisions that these people made have affected those victim’s lives and made them suffer as well. This chapter also talked about oppression and the types of oppression, such as the internalized oppression which is directed at oneself. The last thing it talked about is stereotyping which is as the American journalist Walter lipmann said, that the imagination is shaped by the picture seen, for example if a Chinese person have been seen by an individual littering on the street and this individual believed that all Chinese people do the same thing, than it’s is called stereotyping and this could lead to racism.

Chapter two social justice and the social construction of inequality and difference in the book socialjustice issues in local and global contexts

Author: Charles Queist-Adade
Chapter 2 social reality construction and global justice in the social justice issues in local and global contexts book talks about social constructionism that there is nothing natural in the world and how social reality is made or created by people, and how people from the same society seem to understand and read things different than others just like for example reading a text message, some people will take this message as a joke and laugh at it and some others might take is serious and get mad. It also talked about critical constructionism which is the way social reality is constructed. also about how media takes place in society in which it makes people believe in certain things that they may have not happened, and how different people commit the same type of crime but because some have more power and control than the others have they don’t consider what they do as a crime which means there is no social justice. The last thing it talked about is is the global social justice that we should have not only health and income but also freedom and equality.

chapter 1 in social justice issues in local and global contexts

Author: Cahrles Quist-Adade

The first chapter in the social justice issues in local and global contexts book talks about many things such as critical thinking and how in society people need to think critically and how we people need to understand the nature of things and look in to the reasons behind other peoples behaviours and cultures without judging them because there is always something behind what appears to be.  Also how we need to accept new and different ideas and have an opened minded, this chapter also talked about human rights and justice which is the equality and fairness between all humans with different back grounds, color, gender. it also talked about the norms and how people are born to rely on each other to survive and how life and society is constantly changing, also that we have to know that there is no gender without race and no race without gender and no class without gender either. It also talked about how our chances in life are based on our gender, race and class but not in all cases for example someone poor could actually have the chance in life to be rich, and a rich person is not guaranteed to live rich for the rest of his or her life. It also talked about that we have four types of ideology which are dominant, reformist, radical and counter. And about the sociological imagination which is the capacity, ability and equality of mind with allows people to interact with others and how sociological imagination includes the problems and issues of society and how our actions and interactions takes place withen the context of social structures.