paulsociologyessay Essays - Articles, Academic Disciplines

In today's world, it is easy to spot people who blame themselves for the problems in which they are facing. For example, a single parent may blame him or herself for being able to be in the position to support the child due to a number of different circumstances. Another example can be couples who have just married already having daily arguments which leads to an early divorce, or women who may be facing difficulty adjusting to being a stay at home mom and losing her identity. These issues may seem personal, but these are problems are all related to society. This is known as sociological imagination. Sociological imaginations is the idea that people will look at their own personal troubles and relate them to the problems of a society. They try to connect their own problems to the problems in society. Their personal problems are closley related to the problems of society and with the understanding of sociological imagination I begant to draw parallets between my own problems and the p roblems of our society. I saw how the daily choices I made, the classes I decided to attend or not attend, the way my parents raised me, the group of people I hang around with, the things I like to talk about all are affected by the public issues and what society tends to make us believe is right or wrong. There are many areas of my life that I feel are greatly affected by various sociological theories such as sexuality, family and culture, ethnicity and race, and social class.Even though America is the "boiling pot" country, there are still problems with race and culture. I grew up in an African-American household, but there are traces of Caucasion and Native American in my family tree. My family helped shapw my views and behaviors culturally. My grandfather was born in the south and he would tell me stories about discrimination when he was growing up. While he angrily expressed his opinions about Caucasian people, since he was someone I viewed as a hero, I slowly started to believ e that those people were the exact same in today's world. I believe that I was experiencing anticipatory socialization, I was expressing and taking on the norms and ideals and behaviors of a role in which one aspires but does not yet occupy. I viewed my acitoons as that of rejecting self-socializaton and making my family an aspect of primary socialization. Due to what my grandfather shared with me, I tried to avoid Caucasisian people. I started to believe that their culture was limiting the amount of opportunities and options that I had. Because of my familiar experiences, I started to believe that I had no control over my own beliefs on culture and society. Due to the anticipatory socilaiztion with my grandfather, I still have problems developing my own beliefs, but as I have gotten older, I am starting to shake away from that. Society will still always play a important role in the choices I make. Social influences can and will be uncontrollable. Sometimes people even use social in fluences to form their own beliefs. This experience helped me torealize that even though people do not think it does, society plays an important role in developing culture and family views and values (Tony). My racial identity became clear as I was considered a part of the minority in my class full of Caucasian people. I was used to being surrounded by black people, so I was surprised at the enormous variety of races that existed. Even though I was one of the only black people in the school, I realized that it was more to the world than a person's own race. At first I felt out of place in the predominately all while classes, but I learned to adapt. I did encounted people of my own race and I felt some comfort in talking with them. Soon, I started to feel that I was part of a distinct ethnic group and I would feel more accepted when I was with people of other ehtnic groups. Accoridng to Brym and Lie, ethnic groups is composed of people who perceived cultureal markers are deemed