Dangerous Social Forces

In the poem, “Incident” by Countee Cullen , he looks back at a moment of his life that he encounters racism. Racism causes individuals to become alienated. He was a young Baltimorean and sees a boy staring at him. He says, “ I was eight and very small, / And he was no whit bigger, / And so I smiled, but he poked out/ His tongue and called me, “Nigger”.” (Cullen 5-18)To explain, he uses imagery to show he was called a racial slur just because of his appearance. This is also important because this demonstrates how racism can start at a young age, “he was no whit bigger” than him when he was eight.

“Etiquette is all human social behavior. If you’re a hermit on a mountain, you don’t have to worry about etiquette; if somebody comes up the mountain, then you’ve got a problem…” This quote from American journalist, Judith Martin, illustrates the concept that the presence of others creates or inspires expectations. Social norms, or specific cultural expectations for how to behave in a given situation, are practiced throughout various societies and cultures across the planet. People relay on social norms to provide order and predictability in social situations. Social roles are the part people play as members of a social group. With each social role one plays, the behavior changes to fit the expectations both you and others have of that role. It is most common for people to conform to the guidelines provided by the roles we perform. When one does not conform to the social norms, it is considered abnormal behavior. For this assignment, I faced the challenge to disregard expectations of social roles and norms in society.

Analysis: The same kind of race relational judgements are recreated here as Brent Staples was again not misconstrued, but defied into a black man of hostility. Yet, we can still visualize how an innocent man was reeled into a mindset of discomfort. As the woman fled away from him, he felt a unconstructive moment of labeling where he pictured himself as a criminal due to the cruel society that he lived in. He was not even considered a working class man. To many, he was someone that would do you harm.

Brent Staples is an author and editorial writer for the New York Times. His writing is mostly on political issues, cultural issues and controversies including races. In one of his essay written in 1986 which was published in Ms. Magazine “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space,” Brent Staples explains about his personal experience being black in an American society. Author wants his reader to understand that we are living in a culture with is constantly becoming violent and dangerous. Staples in his essay is gathering sympathy from his audience. He explains his thesis throughout the essay describing different incidents which took place in his life. Staples wants his audience to know how racial stereotypes has affected him as well as many other peoples like him and forced him to change so that he is not misunderstood by people and can prove himself fearless for others.

In his article, staples uses personal facts to be able to connect with the audience that may have been through the same situations he has faced thought out his personal life and professional life. Staples states, “As I swung onto the avenue behind her, there seems to be a discreet, uninflammatory distance between us” (staples 1). His first encounter with discrimination was while he was walking in Chicago and seeing a young woman assume, based on race that he was going to harm her. This would not be the last time staples would feel discriminated against. When working in Chicago as a journalist, staples had yet another unfortunate instance being falsely labeled based on his race by law enforcement, “One day rushing into the office of a magazine I was writing for with a deadline story in hand, I was mistaken as a burglar” (Staples 2). Solely based on the color of his skin Brent faced racial profiling for simply entering the building where he worked at and being mistaken for a burglar. In the many stories Staples writes about his goal is to

He tells us stories about what he witnessed being an African American and how he heard about Police brutality towards people because of race. How certain families had to live in poverty because of race. He also talk about his experience 94 and 95 about how a white woman pushed his son and he, like any other parent stood up for him. Then a white man comes and tells him I could have you arrested. After this he talks about Malcolm X. This incident shows the readers that he views this as an act of racism.

Brent Staples in “Black Men and Public Space” (Revelations 167) ,expresses his personal issues when it comes to the stigma that has been placed upon him. Being black, he is seen to be a danger. Women clutch their purses and car owners lock their doors at the sight of him. He has done nothing to make them feel threatened except for the fact that he is an African American male. They have no way of knowing what he is capable of doing so they immediately feel fear. They have fear of what they think they know and what they actually don’t know. Although, it

According to the “Social Forces” note sheet, social forces are the most influential aspect of society and they are big part of everyone's everyday life The many social forces can all come into play throughout

In Mamie Till and Christopher Benson’s book “Death of Innocence”, Till was described as someone who was “always into something. Among so many other things he still was committed to helping me.” (Death of Innocence: Chapter 8). Mamie also describes him as someone who lived life with a sense of urgency and anxiety. She felt that maybe he felt this way because of how much he had been through as a child with being sick. Mamie felt that maybe he felt his families over protectiveness and in the book Mamie refers to Emmett as “two hundred percent boy” because he had to fit “twice as much life into half the time” (Chapter 8 Page 1). Emmett Till was a prominent victim of this hate. His mother Mamie was changing jobs and income was not what it should have been. After she resigned from her previous job at the Social Security Administration, she moved a few floors up to the U.S. Air Force. Mamie was the only black woman at her job and she in fact inspired many other young women to follow her up to her new job.

Brent Staples uses vivid language and rhetorical devices to express and convey the elements of fear, anger, and violence. We all make many decisions based on past experiences. That’s how we learn to avoid touching a hot stove burner for example. It’s also about how we learn to do things that bring us pleasure. So we all develop discriminating behavior, but when that discrimination is based purely on the color on that person’s skin, or his ethnicity, without knowing anything else about that person, it becomes racism. Being a malicious looking black man, walking the streets at night may give someone the idea that you’re a rapist, killer, robber, or even a stalker. Nearly everyone has experienced these same emotions before and each has

But at the time of the story, if a black man felt anything that wasn’t respect of inferiority towards a white person. Something bad was bound to happen. This act makes Tom brave because he had enough courage to admit his feelings for

He says, "Why were niggers and whites made? What crime did the uncreated first nigger commit that the curse of birth was decreed for him? And why is this awful difference made between white and black?... How hard the nigger's fate seems, this morning!—yet until last night such a thought never entered my head (Twain 74). This quote from Tom is really Twain giving his thoughts on race. Due to the time in which the novel was written and Twain being a staunch member of the abolitionist movement he was exposed the unfair treatment on blacks in all aspects of life. He asks why there is such a difference between two very similar groups of people. He realises that he should be living a life similar to Roxy and the rest of the slaves. Tom’s new knowledge about his heritage gives him a new perspective on race-one which he wouldn't have thought about previously. Although he should be living the life of a slave because society views him as a free white man he has the rights and privileges that any other white man would have. On the other hand, Chambers who is legitimately white was forced into a life of slavery because society thought that he was black. This perception of race only further complicates the ways in which race is assigned to an

Data obtained by assessing social vulnerability must be implemented within each phase of the emergency management process; mitigation, response, and recovery. First, to effectively respond and recover from incidents emergency management agencies must concentrate on the mitigation phase to prevent incidents from happening in the first place. This is achieved through a thorough hazard/vulnerability analysis (HVA). This type of analysis assesses the risk of physical, economic, and social vulnerability within all communities of a given jurisdiction (Lindell et al., 2006, p. 165). Additionally, the basis of the HVA allows emergency managers to effectively plan for disaster by creating pre-planned responses to disasters (rather than improvised response) and staging resources to locations with the highest probability of risk; ultimately contributing to the mitigation and response phases.

In our lifetime we are brought upon the normality in our lives. And once we someone doing or dressed in an abnormality way in public we are usually drawn to them. We tend to think of why they are dressed like that or why they are doing that particular thing. Folkways are the traditional behavior or way of life a particular community or group of people. Just like in life we get used to things being the same or normal each day these are norms. A norm is something usual, typical, or standard. Our society is used to things being like a folkway or a norm day to day lifestyle. This lifestyle is considered a mores. Mores are the essential or characteristics customs and conventions of a community. To someone that does something out of the norm there must be a reason or a meaning to them thats important to them. This is their value, a value is the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something. Sanctions are the mechanisms of social control. Sanctions are the opposed to form of internal control, like cultural norms and values, sociologists consider sanctions a form of external control.

In society, there are sanctions that are used to prevent, stop, and punish behavior viewed as bad or unacceptable. These unaccepted behaviors are called social deviance, and these sanctions are enforced through two forms of social control: formal social control, and informal social control. Both of these forms of social control work towards achieving the same goal: discouraging violations of society’s accepted behaviors, or social deviance, and punishing those who do. But what is the difference between these two forms of social control? How are these social control mechanisms carried out?