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Post by Michael on Aug 31, 2018 19:51:23 GMT
8-30-18 (social problems-notes) In class, we demonstrated the difference between personal issues and social problems. We had a discussion of how society is all interconnected. How in some ways, a person’s personal issues are tied in with the structure of society, that contribute unknowingly to larger social issues. We compared the book definitions of a social problem to a definition of our own social problem. From our class exercise, our definition of a social problem is as follows: An issue that a large group of people claim creates inequalities that affects individual lives directly or indirectly Here is the book definition: A social problem is any condition or behavior that has negative consequences for large numbers of people and that is generally recognized as a condition or behavior that needs to be addressed. Then as a class, we had brief discussion of contemporary social problems. These social problems can be used to discuss in a post-modern chapter and group discussion leader. These social problems were Declining spirituality Trump Immigration Racism Extreme economic inequalities Homelessness High costs of rent Sexism Discrimination Drug and alcohol abuse Corruption Student debt Partisanships Mass shootings Harassment |
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Post by Michael on Sept 5, 2018 5:57:36 GMT
Based upon our class definition of a social problem is Donald Trump a social problem? It’s a difficult topic to talk about. I stated my position, and my approach to understanding the Trump era analytically. At the start of class, we explored notions of post modernism. The vague notion that we are past a period of modernity where grand narratives don’t exist anymore. Where in architecture, designs and styles are being created. Things like “gender” are being undone. Our class definition is found at www.nitzani.net An issue that a large group of people claim creates inequalities that affects individual lives directly or indirectly How might Trump contribute to economic inequalities? Racially divisive rhetoric Policy implementations Then we had a discussion of Trump’s twitter and the power of the feed. As his main outlet of communicating, it allows him to make “attacks”, like the two he made on Jeff Sessions this weekend. Two long running, Obama era, investigations of two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department. Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time. Good job Jeff…… — Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) September 3, 2018 ….The Democrats, none of whom voted for Jeff Sessions, must love him now. Same thing with Lyin’ James Comey. The Dems all hated him, wanted him out, thought he was disgusting – UNTIL I FIRED HIM! Immediately he became a wonderful man, a saint like figure in fact. Really sick! — Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) September 3, 2018 But are they really attacks? They’re just words. But for the people that are on the brunt of these attacks, they are amplified by his fervent political base as well as computational propaganda. Is it even an “attack” . When Donald needs to defend himself, he can control the narrative through his Twitter feed. He can say what he wants, and the newspapers will print it. Which brings the question up, is Donald Trump good for the media? In many ways, yes, as he is the magnifier of attention. He commands it. He is like a tesla coil. This allows his political party to run things unencumbered as the media is distracted with Trump. There have been numerous claims about Trump. Former whitehouse worker, Omarosa Manigault Newman claimed he was on the mental decline, and racist Former FBI chief Dick Comey said that he was like a mob boss Michael Wolf claims that Trump had an affair with secretary Nickey Haley, child like, does not read, does not listen, didn’t’ want to be president. Trump claims, “I alone can fix this” in his “midnight in America” speech at the Republican National Convention. Fix “what”? Here is where explored the notion of “post structuralism”. The notion that language has no fixed meanings. The meanings of things change over time. For instance, the word “queer” has been reclaimed from being a perjorative term to a term of endearment in the LGBTQ community. Here is where our class had a discussion on language, Trump’s language in particular. He uses a lot of hyperbolic speech. He uses deception. With deception it’s a characteristic of intelligence. Is Trump intelligent?... I discussed the video Lie Spotting by Pamela Meyer www.ted.com/talks/pamela_meyer_how_to_spot_a_liar?language=enBut then again, he has some word choices, as if they are purposefully vague to appeal to many. With Trump, meanings of things are much different. We explored the use of “very” as “very empty” can mean absolutely empty, or it can be interpreted as a modifier “not entirely empty”. It’s a low level word. Here are some other trump mannerisms: Usage of word “consider” Making outrageous claims when called out “probably”=probably not “fairly”=favorable to him We talked a little bit about Trump’s negotiating style how he is a far right dude that does things to benefit himself. In many ways, Trump is the embodiment of our capitalistic society. |
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Post by Michael on Sept 9, 2018 0:52:15 GMT
The main point about this class was #fakenews.
To understand fake news, the key point was to look at the environment in which it manifested.
This was one that was largely based on an internet model built off free advertising. With this model, companies served to compete for user engagement. With more user engagement, they could command more from their advertisers. Thereby, companies would use whatever tricks they could to keep people engaged more readily.
In the illustration we used, we compared Yahoo home page from 2018 to 1997 to show how the world processed in formation more in terms of feeds, rather than categorically. Companies like these feeds, because they keep us engaged with their services. When they don’t allow us to finish, it plays a trick on our minds, because we are naturally curious, and our minds want to close the loop. With clickbait, we would click on stories, as it would satisify our minds wanting to close the loop.
With the media so focused on Donald Trump, and people wanting to click on the things about him, there became a main reason why media companies followed him. This was because they could earn a lot of money as he was more likely to generate clicks on news articles. People were more likely to share these news articles on these platforms.
What we see with these platforms, is they have come up with numerous surreptitious ways to figure us out. From the websites we visit, to what we like, to where we go in the real world. These companies are constantly looking for the correlations that exist in our social world, and as long as there is money to be made to capitalize off them, this influences the way their platforms are designed.
Ultimately, this environment fostered fake news to proliferate as Trump stuff, and the meta narratives that existed in fake news, created an effect where more and more people wanted to ride the #fake news gravy train, as it was financially viable, as it was also an exploit of how news is proliferated in American society.
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Post by Michael on Sept 11, 2018 18:43:44 GMT
9-11
We started class with a discussion of how 9-11 has affected American culture.
In our didscussion we learned that many of us were not really old enough to remember.
As the resident old guy, I talked about how it was one of those pivotal moments in life where we remember. It was one of those things where everybody wanted to do something. It changed our cultural zeitgeist. Our relations with one another.
One of the laws that was rushed out after 9-11 was the patriot act. What this allowed for was companies to examine our records. It was done under the guise of creating a more safer society.
P.A.T.R.I.O.T.
In addition, after 9-11 the Bush administration seized more power and created the department of homeland security.
From our discussion on the tools that the patriot act enabled, like Prism, which allowed government to snoop on telecom businesses, we also talked about how there now exists a world of big data. Where our data is out there, and it’s easily acceptable.
In a recent case, there was a guy that was convicted of murder because a distant relative gave their dna to a database that was readily available. We explored, that for bringing justice, this was probably a good thing, but that it created a slippery slope. For instance, if it was manslaughter, probably good, but something like going after Banksy, might be problematic.
From this discussion we discussion the strava fitness apps revealing top secret US. Military installations. In our discussion, we thought about do companies own this data? Is it their right to sell this data? This is a fundamental question in our changing world
We made connections to Moores law, and the rising rate of computers, and the ease of which data is stored for companies to make connections. For instance, in our class discussion we talked about how faces are digital cookies. How, companies, and government can use our faces as digital identifiers, and combine the surveillance apparatus to spy on us.
We briefly discussed a changing world where all this surveillance is leading to a state that is more readily surveillable.
When it comes to general data regulations, there are three schools of thought.
1. The European Model –which allows for individuals to own their data
2. The Chinese model-where the state centralizes the data and cracks down on political dissidents
3. The American model where anything goes.
With the discussion of the European model, we briefly had a discussion of how by allowing European companies to fine American companies, and Trumps relationship with Putin, it’s arguable that America is giving away soft power.
At the end of class we discussed what I am looking for in writing assignment 1.
It is a response to the article with responses to your own life. There are no page limits, but I am looking for you to articulate a coherent response with discussions from class, as well as your own thoughts building on some of the concepts that we discussed in class.
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Post by Michael on Sept 14, 2018 15:33:13 GMT
The theme in class was lawyers, guns, and money.
To open class up, we had a thought experiment about how would someone raise 15,000 dollars in one hour. Then from this experiment, we went into how the structure of our society encourages certain behaviors. How in some places, there are the conventional means to gain access to society’s resources, while in other places, society was still more exploitative.
With guns there are racial issues involved, and it is as if, the law, and gun ownership has racial undertones to it. With the example given a white person walking around with a gun is perceived as different than a black person with a gun.
We also discussed how lawyers, and people that know the law can lean on people who don’t know the law, as a means to resolve conflicts. We talked about intergenerational wealth disparities, and how this leads to different cultural values that arise from living in different places. Places with means to do well in society, and places with just enough means to be exploited.
We also talked about how for some people, guns are a problem, but for others, the general attitude is don’t take away my guns. Americans, love our guns, and it creates a paradox of trying to regulate them, as, there are things like 3d guns, that make it so guns are readily available to anybody.
Briefly, we covered the concept of moral entrpreneurs. These are people that make claims about society and wish to change it in their vision. When there are school shootings, what happens is there are competing narratives that arise. One from a gun control perspective, and the political left, and the other is a mental illness perspective that arises from the political right.
When we examined the amount of guns in this country, we looked at general social survey data and saw that Americans own a ton of guns, over 50 million Americans, and initial data suggests that there are more guns than people.
At the end of class, we watched a brief clip with Malcom X.
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Post by Michael on Sept 20, 2018 22:58:50 GMT
9-18
Lawyers Guns and Money
We talked about at the start of class, what makes a good sociological paper.
We talked about making claims, using Pew, Gallup, citing.
We also talked about how the social world is complicated. How there can be things with manifest intentions, but latent consequences, because smart people do their own thing, contributing to new social problems in and of themselves.
We looked at a few other things. Notably, why is it that the NRA has so much influence on voters, yet they contribute relatively little to political campaigns. The reason, apparently is the single issue voters.
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Post by Michael on Sept 20, 2018 22:59:09 GMT
9-20
9-20
Sociology is the rock star of the social sciences. We put ideas in history, psychology, economics, political science, and anthropology into action. We think we know stuff, but nobody knows anything. Though college gives us a better idea of how things work, however, with human behavior, things go non linear. Consider things like antibiotics.
Today we started class on how things are connected. We first talked about how laiseez faire capitalism led to the great stock market crash in 1929. Then we made the connection to how the downtrodden economy led to ideals of the new deal in Roosevelts new presidency in 1933. Then we made the connection to why the front page of the Amazon annual report is in accordance to some law in 1934.
IN other words, society is all about these connections. In class, we explored multiple connections to how power is concentrated.
We talked about normal markets, and exuberant markets. Exuberant markets are like the ones with the Dutch Tulip Craze, The stock market before 1929, Bitcoin, and California real estate before 2004-2007. We talked a little bit about stock market corrections, and how finance works.
We also made connections to double speak. How the annual report is intended to communicate but uses double speak to communicate.
For instance, in class we talked about short selling. How short selling could lead to a squeeze on companies. For instance, this is what’s happening with Tesla’s stock price. We connected the plot line of the movie The Big Short to the short selling that was going on around the market.
We also talked about the saavy products these companies create, and their taking advantage of the tax code, as these companies are considered people, who have people working for them legally obligated to make as much money as possible (fidicuaries), and do whatever they can to maintain power in society.
We also talked about companies like Amazon and Wal Mart and how and why they get so big.
For a company like Wal Mart we can see how they use supply side economics to gain concessions from their suppliers, as well as offer things for less than others. They are known as a big box store. These big box stores offer more products at reduced prices that allow them to outmuscline competition.
We also talked about these companies tend to purchase their competitors, and have innovative business models that allow them to itnergrate their offerings. For a company like Disney, this allows them to cross market products. For a company like Wal Mart, this allows them to be ultra successful in urban areas.
When it comes to the connections with the law, we can see how these companies can also put their money where their mouths are. We can see how they can influence local policy, by influencing public opinion, and supporting city infrastructure. The examples we used in class were the one student that opposed Wal Mart in policy, and Wal Mart took up advertising campaigns for their opponent and the issues. This is exactly what’s going on in Anaheim now.
We ended the class, realizing how much stuff these companies know about us, as the big 5 (FAANG) Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google all know information about us.
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Post by Michael on Sept 25, 2018 19:26:39 GMT
At the start of class, we had a discussion about processing information. How this information processing has changed from the days of newspapers to now. With newspapers, we could get a better sense of a story, and the larger picture. With television, we get served information in a way to get us as hooked as possible. With digital era, it’s challenging because it could be last week, last months, or current information.
We had a brief discussion of grading and revisions for the article responses.
We continued our discussion of wealth and power by analyzing whether we were beholden to our phones. By and large, we know that we are.
We talked about how companies like Amazon get really large by being innovative and reinvesting into their business to take advantage of our changing structure in which we interact. They influence laws, and new technologies to create business efficiencies. How it is difficult to regulate them, where within our system, the political right is pro business, while the political left is for regulation. For individuals, less regulation is good for business, but there needs to be some, as there are conflicting needs in society.
We talked about some of these laws have good intentions, but can be problematic, in the effect that they have latent consequences. Like rent control.
This went into stratification, as we can see how the people that have money use it to make more money. How in our economic system, money is concentrated within a small group of people, and the rest of people are fighting for the scraps. We talked about how people who have power can use the legal system to bully more power.
We talked about education being part of a false consciousness. That someone loaded with student debt can be a good worker, as it’s difficult to discharge their debts in bankruptcy.
We talked about the systems of how society organizes itself
-capitalism-(individuals own the means of production)
-socialism-(workers own the means of means of production)
-communism (government owns the means of production)
and we got into a discussion of proposition 10. How it’s confusing to understand even for intelligent people, as there are a lot of mumbo jumbo. To cut through the mumbo jumbo, it was brought about in class to follow the money, and then look into what is being said. But realize, that there are ideas meant to deceive.
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Post by Michael on Oct 1, 2018 19:22:07 GMT
We talked a bit about the examination being essay based to ask for critical thinking.
Non linear connections are ok.
We talked a bit about the symbolic elements of of language and how it can be used to assert and claim power. We used the real estate example of how language is used to disguise actual numbers, and when we do the math, we can see how language is designed to take people away from the power that they have, whether it be talking points or scripts.
We did a role play exercise where we had students say yes, and no to each other when it came to upsales. The connection is that these upsales increase profits for these companies. The purpose of this exercise is to ask questions, including the tough questions that put people off guard.
Workers are trained to use certain language and scripts to sell people products. Saying no, can be challenging. The idea is that the social world appears pleasant because it creates an environment where it’s easier to buy things.
In class we talked a little about the challenges of regulating companies and how big these companies can get through being vertically integrated.
For example companies that are vertically integrated can outmuscle their competition and create an illusion of choice. When they are monopolized, they can ask for more money without competition to keep them honest. The example we used in class was Pepsi company who owned (at one time, Taco Bell and KFC and Pizza Hut)
Unfortunately, the computer was broken, because I had slides with how much consolidation exists, so we did an exercise with a shoe company. The idea behind this exercise is that the decisions that go on in business ends are complex. There are a lot of competing and converging forces that influence their offerings. In our example, we looked at accounting, investors, workers, management, reputability, merging, and government tariffs.
What we saw is that there are a host of chain reactions that occur that affect the greater of society. When a new law happens, there are residual effects. Like for instance, prop 47 releasing non violent offenders from jail, increasing property crimes. When a new policy exists, it has chain reactions. In the case of Americans putting on tariffs on Chinese products, the Chinese retaliated on our products, diminishing the fortunes of our mythical shoe company.
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Post by Michael on Oct 2, 2018 18:25:46 GMT
Today we looked at a few things, high costs of rents and immigration and set to tie these things together. We had an interesting discussion of why LA rents are so high. When compared to Lancaster, Los Angeles is a city that offers a lot of opportunity and interesting things to do. People want to live here. It’s a desirable place to live. In comparison, Lancaster, is a hole. As desire is a contributing force to higher market rents, there are other forces. Notably, the concentrantion of wealth in real estate business circles. For publicly traded companies, these companies have fidicuary duties to their investors. However, when it comes to the reality, is there are places where people live, that are also investment properties. Which the piece meal solution of prop 10 seeks to balance the public interests for the greater good in society, vs the individual interests. This carried into a discussion, where as a sociologist, it’s not important to simply accept “facts”, as often it serves the interests of an educated elite to mispurport facts to their benefit. In class, this demonstration was how smart people in industries can do their bidding. We talked about Chinese investment coming here, contributing to higher housing prices and our political and value system that says we are welcoming to Chinese, even if they are not welcoming to us. Is it a false consciousness to think that we should not exclude others as it’s embedeed in American values? We then examined whether a few other forces were contributing factors to LA’s high rents. These were more controversial, as the first one was Airbnb, while the second one was immigration. With a number of 7 percent of people in Los Angeles, this can represent a serious problem without a good solution. We drew comparisons to Nazi’s and our own values and discussed how media would be outraged, as they are doing whatever they can to appeal to the largest base. Eventually the class discussion evolved into whether different companies had the right to enforce immigration policy. A few folks stated that Israel doesn’t have the right to given their political situation, however, these same folks stated that Japan has the right to because they are a small island nation with limited resources. The question is whether the United States had the ability to set our own immigration policies as a sovereign nation. This is tricky, because the people that are here are our friends and families. Of course, this is what the politicians are trying to do, and in a sense, have a right to do, and the child separations point I made was that this meant to act as a deterrent. Yet, there is still need for good policy. What would you suggest could “fix” the issue. the 2nd draft of the note that I referred to that I wrote to my landlord is here: elacsoc1spring.boards.net/thread/588/landlord |
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Post by Michael on Oct 4, 2018 18:15:05 GMT
Today we had a class “discussion” about terrorism to ascertain what it actually is.
The key takeaways is that terrorism is tough to define as there are a host of competing forces in the social world vying for political power. One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. Through our exercise between 2 or 20, the idea is that there are often people or entities that will take more than their fair share to take advantage of a situation.
From the video, our takeaway is that terrorism isn’t largely being born out of being mentally deranged, rather, when we put ourselves in the perspectives of someone committing terrorist acts, and seeing their perspective, it is largely bore out of their not having accumulated a fair share or seemingly fair share of societal resources.
When terrorism happens, it changes, the bonds in which we interact, and the ways in which we interface with the world. Our current social bonds are more digitally connected. This creates new data points that companies can examine for correlations. If someone is likely to commit a crime because their data suggests they are going to commit a crime, then they may have more surveillance. Yet, controlling and distributing society’s resources and ideas is problematic, as it involves peering into more and more aspects of a person’s life, which are egregious violations.
Also, the new challenge is should companies and private businesses do more policing of messages that are not culturally approved? For instance, with the nature of our world, things are more global, and people across the globe have access to our cultural marketplace of ideas. They can hijack our messages, and purport misinformation. In class, I suggested, that the new weapons are electronic, not military.
The idea from the class, is that there are multiple ways to solve problems. One way is a tit for tat measure, however, our world is much more complex. It’s difficult to combat terrorism, as it can be the acts of individuals that ruin things for the rest of the group.
Interesting article about the future of war.
"https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/02/future-of-war-memes/"
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Post by Michael on Oct 10, 2018 12:47:59 GMT
Today in class we did an overview of the mechanics of environmental problems in our society.
We talked about how societies structure themselves in their deliveries of goods and services. How these structures change over time, and how a small minority of people will ruin things for the rest of people.
We pondered whether environmental problems are built into our dna as Americans? Or whether they are companies doing what they can in the pursuit of profits. We did a few exercises and thoughts experiments to explore this.
The first was the game, mcvideogame, where we examined how companies in the pursuit of profits will cause devastation as a byproduct. How there can be existing contractural structures for these companies to say, “hey, look, where playing by the rules”.
We examined actual environmental problems and their unintended effects on other aspects of society. In class, we connected ideas of food, population, water supply, energy production, pollution, global warming, and overuse of resources, with a theoretical discussion on whether private industry, or big governments are better suited to create solutions to these problems.
In addition, we talked about differences in attitudes towards social problems ranging from the radical left, liberal, and conservative positions.
Radical left-burn it all to the ground, change everything
Liberal-governmnents must do their part, individuals must do their part
Conservative-more optimistic
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Post by Michael on Oct 12, 2018 1:24:38 GMT
At the start of class we talked about an extra credit assignment available to students that were present. This would be to gather your trash for a day, and then write up a paper on it, making connections to the amount of trash you create, multiplied by 325 million!
Also, tertiary PowerPoint slide notes will be uploaded on canvas soon, as my class lectures tend to go to abstract and weird places. This is ok, but for those folks that want power points, enjoy them. Enjoy your damn PowerPoint;) jk.
Ok so we talked about actual environmental problems on Tuesday, today, we discussed the paradoxical solutions. We discussed why these "solutions " are" are popular, and then got into their residual effects.
The first topic we discussed were the political connections to oil production. In the case of the bush administration, there were monies dedicated to increasing ethanol and weaning America off of foreign oil. Here the connection was the government was using investment to spur a private solution. Likewise, during the Obama administration, the government invested heavily in solar, increased restrictions on car mileage, and opted to make things more difficult for dirty energies. The trump administration seeks to remove two rules for each rule added.
For republicans, they are more optimistic about solutions to social problems. Whereas the Obama administration EPA was more about protecting citizens, the trump administration EPA, formerly ran by Scott Pruitt, was more focused on removing barriers to business. Notably, Pruitt was formerly the attorney general for one of those square states (Oklahoma probably m) and sued the EPA numerous times as attorney general. This was the dude slotted to run the agency.
There are gimmicks that help us understand American society. Operationally, people are not always honest, especially politicians. When it comes to getting power, a lie, can create a false consciousness that aligns people against their own interests. Similarly, a politician, may kick a problem down the road to make themselves look good.
We explored a few more uncomfortable solutions. One was 35000 Hondurans showing up at the American border. We talked a bit about ninbyism, as well as the issue of smart people taking advantage of a situation. This applies to a lot, including the well meanings of providing homeless people food and shelters. People talk, and then next thing you know, you get more people. Arguably, the symbolic element of separating children at the border had an intended effect.
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Post by Michael on Oct 16, 2018 18:26:51 GMT
We started class with a discussion of the changing morals of society over time. I felt “assaulted” because you as students didn’t like my points of view when it came to children in society. But then, with my platform, as I articulated my points, some of you hated me even more, but hopefully some of you hated me less as I challenged your ideas. The point was to show how societal attitudes have changed over time. As members of an industrial society, my points were contrary to a lot of the ideas and values that you’ve been taught.
With the #metoo movement, this has been something that’s radically shifted our society. Through our first exercise, we started off with unfiltered thoguhts about #metoo. Originally it was going to be an attendance exercise, but I changed my mind. I hope that our class session might have given you some new insights on this hashtag, this phenomenon, and the changes that it has had on our society.
Through discussion, we discussed how #metoo has changed sexual attitudes, punishment for sexual assault, power dynamics, notions of “equality”, and “accountability”.
Of course, I shared with you my interactions growing up having open sexual attitudes, experiences, and awkward encounters that were less than perfect. However, in retrospect, in light of this era, my behaviors may have been different because whats’ acceptable then, has changed now. Nevertheless, as an old curmudgeon, I am cognizant, and hope you are too, that there will be new attitudes in the future that will supersede whats acceptable in the future.
While we had a spirited discussion in class, the general idea is that the #metoo movement did a lot to change our cultural values. The discussion points that I espoused with whats “right” and “whats” wrong has changed in our society. That these ideas are in competition with one another.
We explored things that were morally dubious like the Asia Argento stuff that highlighted that she is a smart person, playing the game. That there will always be smart people that play the game. That resignify words to gain influence and attention. We also talked about touch in society, and how it's changed attitudes when it comes to touch, love, and sex. Briefly we highlighted how men and women interact differently in our society.
The notion that #metoo is a hashtag highlights that more or our interactions are mediated online. With the #metoo hashtag it allowed people to connect with each other and share their experiences. This became a movement, that changed the cultural attitudes in our society, creating a shift in the ways that we interact with one another.
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Post by Michael on Oct 23, 2018 18:36:15 GMT
Today in class, we had a seemingly lighthearted discussion about the issues of race. We briefly talked at the start about how law can influence policy, as well as culture can influence policy. The idea we came up with in class is how eventually culture can influence a critical mass of people that can influence policy. But also, things can be problematic as its difficult for law to take things away from people. When it comes to racial and inequality, here is where we get some problems.
Granted there are entire classes on race, which we offer at this college, the focus of our discussion had a central point.
Race is largely a social construct with real implications and historical inequalities that are tough to remedy.
In class, we examined how Donald Trump attacked political figures by virtue of their race and ethnicity (Obama, and Warren)
And we discussed in class, how smart people do intelligent things to take advantage of the systems. Certainly, it’s a possibility that Elizabeth Warren utilized her ethnicity to earn admissions into Harvard. However, in these political attacks, they are also veiled attacks against race ethnicity. Being Obama wasn’t American, and Warren isn’t who she said she was. This goes in with the ongoing discussions in our class about the changing moral codes in our society.
This led to discussion about “white american” as a dominant group and racial representation.
For the colleges, this can be problematic as the traditional indicators of ability to succeed in school has been SAT score plus GPA, however, these are the not only indicators. Moreover, this model disproportionately benefits Asians, Jews, and Whites as groups, and disproporportionaltey affects people of color. To use the example of Harvard, the nation’s most reputable college, being able to select the best of the best
Therefore, if Harvard only has 6600 seats for undergraduates, on the merit of equal opportunity, and inclusivity, it appears that Harvard is discriminating against Asians at the benefit of people of color for admissions more representative of the racial breakdown in our society. This creates a problem that’s difficult to fix.
The discussion led to the point that race is a nominal characteristic, no different from eye color, yet it is something that is real in it’s effects. In our nation, it’s very real with generational inequalities and different treatment and life opportunities. When viewed from a scientific perspective, race and gender get more murky.
For instance, I was able to use scientific evidence to show that I am Hispanic and African American, and we can use a map to show that black people from Jamaica are not “African American”. What we see is that humans like to break things down into categories, but these categories are murky. Like for instance, percentage of race in (Plessy v ferguson) or determining what is scientifically gender. It’s not a matter of having a penis or a vagina, as there are nearly 200000 intersexed Americans that have variations of both. The point of this discussion was to show that “sex” is also a social construct.
At the end of the class, we got in small groups and geared up for an oppression contest. What we can see from this exercise is what are the similarities in which the groups are oppressed.
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