Social Imagination Course Analysis

Personally, I believe education is the key to combating racism. We must education our peers on our cultures. We must explain that “colorblindness” in society is not what’s best. Only by embracing and recognizing each other differences we will be able to break the social bubbles we live in. I’ve gained a stronger sense of racial awareness through this course. I have the ability to challenge and change other people’s ideologies and understand my own. I know because of my social position have scholarships, financial aide and the values of hard work and education instilled in me by my parents and grandparents. I’m also aware that many people are not able to gain that same access. Because of my racial awareness there is so much more I want to find out about the contributing factors that led to my family’s social position in New Orleans. It is through my racial awareness I plan to beat the system.

This reading is significant because it shows us the dire need to rethink, revolutionize, and create changes that will give students a color an opportunity to progress to higher education. We know that the only way that poor people of color will find some sort of social remobility is through higher education, but they cannot achieve that if things

Before taking Social Issues, I thought that the course would be exploring a broad range of social issues. My definition of social issues before the course was an issue that affected many individuals, not thinking specifically about race, class, and gender of all people. After and while taking the course I have finally realized what social issues are, they are the issues that are associated with race, class, and gender of all people and how they are affected by the three main characteristics that make individuals who they are. Of course, I knew and associated racism and stereotypes with social issues concerning our society in terms of race. Before taking Social Issues, I associated race with racism and stereotypes as most people do. But as the course continued I found a new respect and understanding of race, class, and gender and the stereotypes, racists comments, and discriminatory actions that are associated with all three.

I came into this class not so naïve as some students may have been. I’ve grown up going to public schools, living in a diverse small town, and having interracial relationships in my family. Although I was informed on some forms of racism and the fact that racism does in fact still exist, I didn’t realize it was extensive as it really is. All the readings, videos, and lectures have directly related back to the purpose of the course. As a whole, I feel like this class has grown in knowledge not only about how racism affects people, but how to change and make a difference. This class has informed me a lot more about the unfortunately thriving acts of racism in the United States.

Diversity and social justice is not something that I was familiar with prior taking this course, nor did I ever have enough knowledge of the deep and complicated social and economic structure in this county. It has been an eye opener course, I gained a lot of familiarity on the issues of race, culture and the other elements that but this county together. My prior awareness about the issues of sexism, ableism, and racism was limited and mostly were self-taught.

So far in the course, the material that has sparked my interest the most were the concepts of privilege and oppression. Actually, I would not even say that it sparked my interest; I would say that I could compare my life with these two terms. I grew up on the East side of Detroit, in a neighborhood that looked down on people who did not attend schools in which they have. For example, I went to a predominantly all black private school not too far from my house. But my friends in my neighborhood honestly did not care whether it was a black or white school. They would make fun of me because I attended a private school. I believed that their interpretation of a private school was that the school was preparing us to into formal black Americans.

All of the protagonists’ experiences are based on living in a lower socioeconomic status. Researchers named Selina Mcoy and Emer Smyth found that “The middle-classes have more to lose by not staying on in education since they risk social demotion, whereas young people from working-class backgrounds may see less benefit to staying on at school”,3 thus revealing that living in poverty or having a lower socioeconomic status is, therefore, difficult to have a good quality education. Researchers whose names are Heather Wyatt- Nichol, Samuel Brown and Warren Haynes discovered, “The widening gap between the rich and the poor contributes to economic segregation among neighborhoods, perpetuating the problem of inequality in the education and criminal justice system” (190)2, thus explaining the hardship the protagonists faced in their personal experiences. It is evident their lower socioeconomic status affected their education, and it is a crucial theme

Through this course, I learned about access to work for black workers. Initially, before taking this course, I naively thought that

How has this course influenced your daily habits, beliefs, and actions, i.e. your world-view? Understanding the political nature of terrorism has helped me to understand numerous different social issues. Understanding of terrorism is not irrational, but emerges from genuine political disagreement is incredibly helpful. By this same logic, I now understand that criticism of protest movements, like black lives matter; often miss .the underlying structural point that there is systemic discrimination. This does not justify burning cars or looting buildings, but these problems cannot really be solved with police crackdowns. Instead, they can be solve with a genuine attempt to understand where these people are coming from. Instead of demonizing the protestor, we should seek to understand and empathize with them to achieve mutual understanding and encourage positive

Higher education can help people improve their social class and income. As the core reading The Lesson by Toni Bambara, Miss Moore showed the poor young girl a new world that higher education could offer. People like the young girl in the story want to get into good education facilities for a better life. Standardized tests are the stepping-stones to universities. Standardized tests score are often used to evaluate students’ performance.

Imagination. The force behind our direction in life, the fuel for what we hope to achieve, and the inspiration to follow a unique path. However, often unnoticed within our society, imagination also provides the framework necessary to avoid conforming to evil advertisements and political schemes. As Frye teaches through his lecture series, The Educated Imagination, literary training is of utmost importance in developing imagination, fostering of a progressive "social vision." Literary training can make the difference between being able to openly expressing values while working towards an ideal future, and being trapped behind the laws of an oppressive political regime such as communism, starved of imagination and in a state of belief that what

What I am taking away from this class is that race and ethnic relations are a sensitive topic that has to be talked about. This class has impacted me greatly on my views of racial relationships and that even in the same culture or ethnic background can be a lot of differences, as we have seen in our classroom. We learned that through out the history of humanity, racial relationships have been challenging and not easy and that there is a lot of work that still needs to be done. What most impacted me was the inequality that minority’s have been dealing with and still deal with today as a result of oppression. The decades of struggle from generation to generation in the African American community has deeply troubled me, especially the article

He questioned my amazement and told me something that I thought about for a while. He said that the students who did not finish school were either not encouraged or could not see themselves in higher education because of the social culture we were raised in. After hearing this I thought about shows such as “Love and Hip-hop Atlanta” and “Empire”. These shows glorify the pursuit of careers that have a marginal opportunity of success, rather than diversifying the opportunities that students of color can obtain. This scenario reminds me of the environment that was described in the book “Unbowed.”

My attraction to this course is rooted in the fascination I have for sociology; I am captivated by its ability to make me see life more critically and impartially. For me, Sociology uses engaging ideas linking with my interest in the structure of society and its influence on our actions, as these topics are applicable to everyday life. Learning about the inner workings of society is something I enjoy and I find various sociological theories interesting and thought provoking; I take pleasure in applying theories to real-life situations, allowing me to develop ideas using my own initiative.

Karkouti (2016) states that, the dedication of higher education to students of color has continually to be destroyed and the environment of the country as contributed to this issue regarding racial issues in our economy. Higher education is a predominantly White environment and students of color have to fit in this culture that is not necessarily made for them to be there. Even the faculty is outnumbered greatly with only “17%” of faculty is of color at institutions (Karkouti, pp. 60, 2016). After graduating from high-school attending college is considered a “social mobility and gateway” that helps people raise their level of education on a social and economical level that can create many opportunities for their future. Ethnic minorities were