Invisible Children Sociology

Today, people seem blinded by their outsized enthusiasm for social media. According to them, a few clicks can change the whole world and accomplish wonders such as curing cancer. Good intentions become sufficient on their own, as if there were no need for medicine and scientific researches anymore. Well, this is pure nonsense. Facebook’s likes cannot save African children from starvation, the same way Twitter’s 140 characters will not put an end to acts of terrorism. This notion is not even remotely debatable. For instance, the project Kony2012 had a perfect starting point; inspiring video, moving story and most importantly worldwide spread. Unfortunately, the terrorist is still at liberty, and the lack of thorough investigations is to blame. Instead of focusing on the real problems of war and kidnapping of children, the so-called activist related to the obvious and spent all of his money and energy on his movie. Ultimately, due to the predominance of weak-ties, the project was not successful. More importantly, certain tools of social networks, especially “likes” and “retweets”, encourage people to feel good about themselves, when actually they should incite them to put their efforts and means in the cause they supposedly defend. As Gladwell wrote, “[current] activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that

There are No Children Here, by Alex Kotlowitz, tells a story about the family of LaJoe and Paul Rivers. The book focuses on Lafayette and Pharaoh, two of the younger children in the family, and their interactions with each other, the neighborhood, their family, their friends, and the police. Following the family over three years shows the importance of neighborhood factors when it comes to crime. According to Sampson and Groves (1989), social disorganization refers to “the inability of a community structure to realize the common values of its residents and maintain effective social controls”. Many aspects in the book exemplify how neighborhood factors, social controls, and community factors have impacts on crime. The book exemplifies how neighborhood disadvantage can lead to informal social controls, which in turn produces crime. Due to these factors, social disorganization is the best theory to explain the crime that occurs in There are No Children Here.

     Alex Kotlowitz’s book, There are No Children Here, is a story about two boys, Pharoah and Lafeyette Rivers growing in the late 1980’s in Henry Horner, a housing project in Chicago. The boys try to retain their youth while they see constant gang violence, death of close friends, their brother in jail and their dad struggling with a drug addiction.

In the New York Times, the article, ‘Invisible Child’ written by Andrea Elliott who is an investigative reporter, and photographed by Ruth Fremson. The writer talks about Dasani and her family. Dasani who is an 11 years old, also she is a homeless children in New York City. Generally, this article informs that homeless people’s life and their child. Moreover, this article shows that the girl, Dasani. She lives in shelter for homeless people in Brooklyn. Her parents have no job and also they are drug addicted. Furthermore, the shelter where Dasani and her family are living place, Elliott explains that "The smaller children lie tangled beside her, their chest rising and falling under winter coats and wool blankets. A few feet away, their mother

There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz tells the harrowing story of the Rivers family and their shocking experiences living in an underserved Chicago public housing project. The story focuses on Lafayette, a middle school aged boy discovering his identity, Pharoah, an elementary school aged boy with high ambition and goals, and their resilient mother LaJoe. Matza’s Techniques of Neutralization discuss how people can create rationalizations to justify delinquencies and crimes. Specifically applicable to There Are No Children Here is the theory of Denial of Responsibility which occurs when the perpetrator of an offense claims the situation was out of their control, they did not know the law, they were a victim of circumstance, or they were acted upon by outside forces rather than acting themselves. The second theory applicable to There Are No Children Here is Becker’s theory of Master Status. The theory of Master Status states that labels can take on a “master status” and can have an enormous influence and once you’ve been labeled, then define you. These theories aid in understanding how the pattern of violence and destruction is perpetuated in the projects of Chicago and the misfortune in the Rivers family.

Besides friends using social media to connect with other friends or families keeping in touch with other relatives who are at a distance, in the recent years, terrorists have taken advantage of social media and used it as a platform to threaten and send jaw dropping messages to some of the most popular outlets across the nation. For this paper, I will examine how terrorists have used social media as propaganda. I will also analyze the trends in media and terrorism, and how it has provided access for the promotion of the violent messages as well as allowing the news of terrorist attacks and assassinations to reach many parts of the world within a matter of minutes.

Alex Kotlowitz was a freelance journalist. In 1985 a friend came to him and asked him to write a text for a photo essay he was doing on (children living in poverty) for a Chicago magazine. That is when he met the Rivers brothers, Lafeyette, age ten, and Pharoah age seven. He spent only a few hours with them interviewing for the photo essay. Lafeyette had an impact on Kotlowitz. When asked what he wanted to be, Lafeyette responded with "If I grow up, I'd like to be a bus driver." Meaning, at ten years old, he wasn't sure if he'd make it to adulthood. In 1988 Kotlowitz suggested to the boys' mother, LaJoe, the idea of writing a book about Pharoah, Lafeyette and the other children in the neighborhood.

In the article "'Kony' Surprises As Record-Setting Viral.", Riley Wilson explains that the non-profit group behind “Kony2012” has had its share of criticisms. Wilson elaborates that the group has faced criticism by the media and bloggers for its financial practices and manipulation of the facts. The author’s goal is to report the facts in order to inform the reader. The intended audience is anyone interested in the “Kony2012”

In a 2015 article written by the New York Times, it was seen in the census data that in 2013, black children were almost four times more likely to live in poverty than their white counterparts. According to the data, 38.3% of black children lived in poverty, as opposed to only 10.7% of white children. However, researchers did not investigate into the reasons why this trend was seen. After taking this sociology class and other ethnic studies classes, I have drawn on the Minority Status and Socioeconomic Standing section of this class, as well as relating this issue to the theory of job stratification in the United States. I conclude that three of the reasons that there are more poor black children than poor white children is because of the differences

Joseph Kony, a Ugandan warlord abducts children. With the help of his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), he forces children to join the military. Invisible Children, a US-based company, created a viral YouTube video called “Kony 2012” that opposed Kony’s and the LRA’s actions. John Naughton wrote an editorial praising “Kony 2012” in the Observer. Children from other countries enlist unwillingly in the military as well.

The Invisible Children used Kony 2012 to show the atrocities that Joseph Kony did to the Ugandan’s. Kony kidnapped children, turned them into child soldiers, he also raped and murdered many. Kony 2012 was meant to get attention and it was an effective.

Often, environments that gay men grow up in do not foster the celebration of same-sex love. Adding in the stigmatization of being gay and the weight of the church in the Black community, can force gay men to leave their neighborhoods (or be pushed out). When people are not heard, they are forgotten and the Black community, the LGBT community, and mainstream society continually forget about Black gay men. Invisibility disparately impacts this group and causes them to experience homicide, HIV/AIDS, homelessness, and violence at a higher rate than non-Black gay men. This is largely true for Black gay men living in California. The Invisible Lives Project hopes to introduce stories of Black gay men in South Los Angeles who are at the intersection of racism, homophobia, and Black culture. Documenting the

Children from the Victorian society suffered from this kind of oppression. Children belonging to the lower classes were forced to work, uneducated, and perhaps unaware while upper class children were bound by sex for the rest of their lives. Males were sent to school for their future profession while females were taught about the Victorian household. The two classes are pretty much the same. Working class children lacked education and money while upper class children lacked family time and they have to live a very monotonous life, having been assigned the same tasks every day. Children from both classes were under the control of age, sex, and class, having no power to choose for themselves (Frost, 2008).

Many children escaped with parents or other relatives and sometimes on their own to family camps run by Jewish partisans” (www.ushmm.org). Thousands of Jewish children survived the brutal carnage because they were hiding or they had time to escape. Children were hidden in many different ways to save them from the Nazis.Childrens who was actually hidden with at least one of his/her parents. Younger hidden children were often too young to remember their parents. Older hidden children knew that if they were discovered by the Nazis their fate was dire. If the children didn’t had enough German blood, The women were forced to bear their children's under conditions that would ensure the infant's death. Each child had his/her own experience during

A personal issue that I struggle with is the representation of different people in art, writing, advertising, and media. When casting directors, character designers, and writers choose a specific type of person to represent their product or work, it influences how these actual people are perceived. I and many others see an unspoken preference to make important characters and influential people fit a “comfortable” set of traits: white, male, straight, thin, and able bodied, only straying from these when it is for a definite purpose. My use of the word comfortable is to say that the listed characteristics are not controversial or stereotyped; they give creators an easy way to make