Chapter 8

In this chapter i think that Johnson's thesis is that people of "dominant" groups will go out of their way to not be connected with someone Else's problems, and make sure they save themselves from potential embarrassment. This concept he calls "getting off the hook". One of the concepts related to getting off the hook is denial. In order to walk away from a problem with out feeling remorse is to pretend like there is no problem to begin with. Some of the examples Johnson gives is the American dream is available to everyone now, and that "racism and sexism used to be a problem, but they aren't anymore." People deny that these things like sexism and racism exist, because they don't want to deal with the consequences. Another one of the examples of this Johnson talked about was how a white female felt "jealous" or felt that a female of color was "better off" than she was. It is known that privilege and envy often go hand and hand with eachother. Johnson says "as she defends herself against seeing what she'd rather not see." (110) Racial stereotypes is also another thing Johnson talks about, he relates this with blaming the victim. One example he uses is that "if blacks were smarter or worked harder or got an education, they'd be okay." You can call it what you want, stick a different name on it, deny it, or blame someone other than yourself, but instead of getting yourself off the hook, why don't people get ON the hook, and help solve the problem and make it better instead of just pretending it's not there.

So how do people, especially women, live in such close quarters without confronting the reality of a male dominated society? Men can find ways to lighten up a situation, and make it seem like what it's not. They make jokes, and excuses for why they intrupt a female during a conversation, they make excuses for why a female did not get the job and a male did. Johnson says, "Instead, it is because gender inequality runs so deep in our lives and has such serious consequences that we must go to great lengths to make it appear normal and so avoid seeing it for what it is." (112)

This article was okay to read. Johnson gave more real-life situations, instead of comparing it to a board game or to something unrelated like in the last chapter. A lot of the things he mentioned about the male dominated society I knew before, but i didn't recognize how I do it myself. Being in a relationship for 4 years, and watching my parents talk, you recognize the little things like when a guy intrupts a female in a conversation. It really makes you think about how much things have NOT changes in society, and that people literally just ignore them or just put them aside so they don't have to deal with it. I find that a bit interesting. Overall this article made me open up my eyes, and recognize the things that i do in my everyday life that Johnson tries to say in his articles. It almost scary, how "natural" it is, or how much it is engrained in us to just make excuses. Overall it amazed me.

Chapter 6- PPD

In this chapter, the author's thesis is that people rarely openly discuss differences or problems because it is uncomfortable, or it fallows the path of least resistance. The author, Allen Johnson, discusses the difference between Individualism and systems in a society. Johnson talks about how the individualistic model in his opinion is wrong, and that society consist of more than just individuals. He mentions social systems, which is something larger than the individual people. The example Johnson gives is a University, a University is not the people, and the people are not the University. However, you have to look at the individual people, and how they participate in it. When Johnson talks about the path of least resistance, he is talking about the choices people make that will cause the least amount of reaction. For example, if someone tells an offensive joke, and everyone is laughing but one person, that person will not say anything for the sole purpose of not hurting his friends' feelings. This is the path of least resistance. As people grow up, and become socialized, you notice one thing, that straight white men are the most important and successful people on the planet. (79) The example Johnson uses (which is an excellent one) is the on about the show "Everybody Loves Raymond". In the show Ray Barone constantly behaves sexists, rude, and insensitive towards his wife. However at the end of each episode you find out why she puts up with his antics, because she loves him. Johnson says "this sends the message that it's reasonable for a heterosexual man to expect to "have" an intelligent and beautiful women who will love him and stay with him in spite of his behaving badly toward her a great deal of the time." (79) In the end, people adopt the dominant version of reality and act as if it were the only one that exists. (80) The path of least resistance, is shaped by individuals. In any given social situation there are millions of ways a person could act, or things they could do. The example Johnson gives is sitting in a movie theater, a person could laugh or talk really loud, they could sing, they could jump up in down, they could sleep or dribble a basketball. However people would react strongly about that, and make it a very uncomfortable feeling. So when sitting in a movie theater people just sit there and enjoy the movie, maybe laughing when other people laugh. This relates to how people do not openly discuss problems, or racial differences, or other issues along those lines. Following societal norms is taking the path of least resistance, because they fear for what will happen if they deviate from those norms. The one other thing Johnson talks about is the fact that individuals make up the social systems, and make them happen. Along the lines of the University example, is does not exist without the students and faculty performing their roles in relation to one another. (82) Johnson admits to participating in the systems that trouble comes out of, thus involving him in the trouble itself. An example of the way he participates in this is by the clothes he purchases. If a person looks at the label of a piece of clothing, they will most likely see a foreign country next to the words "Made In...". Workers making those items chances are they are women, and they are getting treated similar to how the slaves were treated, and get paid only pennies a day.

Johnson mentions that just because a person participates in something that is creating a problem in society, couldn't that person also participate in the solution to that problem? The answer is yes. A person might think that they can't make a difference in the problem, they are just one person. However Johnson argues differently. If one person joins a group of a bunch of people coming together, than that one person has helped make a difference in the problem. Allen Johnson gives a perfect example of this in his article, he uses the floods of 1993 along the Mississippi and Missouri River, in a community hundreds of people came together and put sandbags down to barricade the water, to keep if from doing further damage to the town. Each sandbag a person placed down was just a fraction of the total number of sandbags, however they did not have to make a huge difference to feel like they helped. He states "It works that way with good things that come out of people pulling together in all the systems that make up social life." (88)

I did not enjoy reading this chapter as i did the first two we read. I did not feel like i got as much out of it as i did the other articles. There were only a few points made that sparked my attention, one was the clothing example, and the other was the "Everybody Loves Raymond" example. I felt the article did not go into explaining, different subjects, he only came up with what seemed like a thousand examples. It is nice to have a few examples here and there to help the reader understand a topic, but to have 3 examples for one topic gets a little repetitive. Overall i just did not enjoy reading this particular chapter.

Johnson Chapter 3

In this chapter the main idea Johnson is trying to get at, is that racism is caused by capitalism. Capitalism is the one thing that keeps races seperated such as the whites and the african-americans.

The way capitalism works in society is that a product is made at a lower cost than what it is sold for. Low cost of a product means low pay for the employees. Johnson states that when workers fight for higher pay, that is when they bring in the foreign workers or people of a different race, ethnic group. They will find someone who will work the job, for the price they are willing to pay. However, Johnson says that this is not the reason white Americans are afraid of other ethnic groups, or people of a different race. Different laws are enforced in modern work places that do not allow employeers to pay a minority a lower wage than say a white employee.

Johnson states, "most people have relatively little power to improve their class position. Most of the household wealth, for example, has been based on a growing mountain of credit card debt, people working two or more jobs, and families relying on two wage earners..." (44) Society today, is far more expensive, and "high class" people want what they can't afford, yet they still go out and buy it (hense the credit card debt) A lot of families like to think they can live a high life one one persons income, that is true if you're a well established doctor, lawyer, or business man, but those rare compared to middle class.

Why do people feel the need to criticize the employeers for paying minorities a lower wage? If they are willing to work for the money, then what is the problem? Johnson states that it has been happening for centuries, since they hired Africans as a source of cheap labor (45).

I think Johnson brings up many good points in this chapter, however i do feel that society is changing, more women are now entering the work force, and more women are gaining more powerful positions and becoming leaders. This changes the view of Gender in the privilege category. Men are no longer the dominating gender, and that is becoming evident. When it comes to Race, i think its whatever the employeer and the employee decide, if it works for the economy and the employee than it shouldn't be a problem. However i do not have enough experience and education in this field to be able to say that is right or wrong, and have a soild argument.

Johnson Chapter 2

In the reading by Allen Johnson, I feel that his thesis is that privilege and power is based on the construct of society, and that difference between race and ethnicity varies from country to country. It is clear that the United States has put "labels" on people based on physical appearance. Americans use colors to describe people, which in essence allows people to make assumptions about that person. Johnson talks about how human beings have been dealing with racial lines or divides for so many years it is now ingrained in us. He states in the beginning of his article " Ignoring privilege keeps us in a sate of unreality by promoting the illusion that difference by itself is the problem." (12) Basically he is saying that the illusion or physical appearance is the cause of all problems. Johnson also talks about the "diversity wheel" which is a way to "group" people by different aspects of society. Some of these "groups" consist of race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, Education, Parental status, and Marital Status. He talks about how these categories determines your role in society, it also determines the privileges and powers you have. One of the things he talks about is how a persons life would change if they woke up one morning and were a different race, or woke up as a homosexual instead of heterosexual. How drastically one persons life would change if this happened. Johnson states in this chapter that "the trouble around diversity isn't just that people differ from one another. The trouble is produced by a world organized in ways that encourage people to use difference to include or exclude, reward or punish, credit or discredit, elevate or oppress, value or devalue, leave alone or harass." (16) This is stating again that people base opinions and how they treat someone by the physical apparence of another person. Johnson talks about how in different cultures they do not have just male and female genders, they have more than that based on how a person is born. One example is that in the Native American culture they have a nadle which is someone who is born with a mix of "male" and "female" biological make up. However these people do not get treated differently. One of the powerful statements Johnson says is that "race and all its categories have no significance outside systems of privileges and oppression in which they were created in the first place." (18) A women in Africa is not considered black until she arrives in the United States, where then she is limited to what she can and cannot do. In Johnson's article he defines privilege as, "when one group has something of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to, rather than because of anything they've done or failed to do." (21) One example he talked about, it how a straight or heterosexual female can talk about her life openly to anyways saying how she's married to a great guy. Talk to a gay or lesbian person and they have to be careful because revealing they are of a different sexual orientation can put them at risk. Johnson creates a list of privileges in everyday life, here are a few of the ones he mentions;
-Whites are less likely to be arrested, but once they are arrested they are less likely to be convicted.
-Whites are more likely to have loan applications approved than black people.
-Whites can assume that when they go shopping, they'll be treated as a serious customer and not as a potential shop lifter.
-Whites have greater access to quality health care and education.
-Men are charged lower prices for new and used cars.
-Heterosexuals can marry
These are just a few out of a list of about sixty. Johnson states that, "one of the most visible consequences of privilege is the uneven distribution of jobs, wealth, and income..." (32)

If we did not have the concept of privilege and power, how would this county and society be different? Would it be better or worse? According to Johnson, more people would be succeeding, more people would have jobs, and people wouldn't be afraid of talking out in public about themselves. If a person cannot talk in public about the gender of their significant other without fearing for their lives, that take away a huge freedom and sense of security. If society in the United States did not have that false sense of security more people would get along, and less people would be living in fear.

I think that a lot of what was said in this article was true, however i feel that the concepts are so "natural" and ingrained in the minds of Americans that it would be almost impossible to change it. I know a lot of people of different ethnic backgrounds, and sexual orientations, and religions, that it makes it so hard for me to look at them and realize that they will never have the oppotunity to do some of the things I will be able to do in my life. I never quit comprehended the struggles they have to go through everyday, until i became really good friends with them. There was one time where i was talking to one of my friends who happens to be a lesbian, and all of a sudden i found myself talking about getting married and having kids, then when i realized who i was talking to i felt guilty. These concepts of privilege really affect people in how they live their life. You only have certain freedoms, other things are just given to you based on how you look, and for the most part that is not fair.

Video

In this video i think the authors thesis is that race is something that is created by society, and not necessarly biological. It talks about many different situations where race has played a part in history, a couple are racism among african americans and white americans and Hitlers Arian race. In the video race is defined as "divisions among people that are deep that are essential that are somehow biological and unchanging." A person is able to identify another person by simply looking at their physical features including skin color, eye color, and hair color just to name a few. The video claims that scientists cannot find a gene that is in everybody of one particular race and no one of another. There was a experiment conducted in the video of a group of college kids all of a different ethnicity. What they discovered was a shock to them, they were most similar with someone completely different than themselves. For instance, an african american was most similar to a white student, and an Asian was most similar to an african american, males we most similar with females. In this video they also brought up stereotypes of athletes, speciffically African Americans in running track. The stereotype is that they are naturally faster than any other races, some people thought it to be an extra muscle in their legs, or something else biologically. However this is only a stereotype, and for the most part not true,
I thought this video was extremely well done. I enjoyed watching it and actually learned a lot about different ethnicities and how similar people really are even though they look completely different on the outside. I think everything is well researched. Overall i was really excited to watch the video and learned a great deal amount of information from stereotypes to biology.