American Experience Blackout Sociology

The movie Crash is a drama film that shows you several life experiences of different people living in Los Angeles.  All the characters in the film are somehow inter-related to one another.  A police detective who mother is strung out on drugs and has a brother who likes to kill, two car thieves, a white district attorney, a racist cop, a black Hollywood director, a full Persian descent father, and a Hispanic locksmith are all the characters in the film.

In the history of the world, there have come many such kinds of incidents that have changed the whole map of the history. In about every nation, there have occurred a lot of surprising events which distinguish that nation from the other one. So history of the world is so much rich when we take a close look at it.

The Effect it has on people that survived ,is that there family, and friends might not of lived through it. Also a lot of houses were flattened

Hurricane Katrina was a devastating disaster that has affected many people in New Orleans. The communication broke down hours after Katrina because of the unexpected fast winds and floods that broke down “3 million phone lines and 1,000 cellular towers in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.”( Joch ). Because of the millions of phone lines that were broken down, contacting the government for help was difficult hours after hurricane Katrina. Not only that, the people of New Orleans underestimated the power of Hurricane Katrina causing many to be “ stranded with no food or water” (Narrator, “The Storm”,PBS).

Minority groups like African Americans are forced into being part of the lower class and to live among horrid conditions, such as the ghettos, making them vulnerable to economic and social disadvantages. As mentioned by Sharkey, "...social isolation [resulting] from persistent segregation, [poverty], a lack of political influence, and violence makes the residents of America's disadvantaged urban neighborhoods even more vulnerable to an environmental disaster such as Katrina."

Hurricane Katrina was a devastating disaster that has affected many people in New Orleans as well as the surrounding areas. It had a stunning “death toll of 1300 people and damage over $100 billion ”( Davlasheridze 94 ). The communication were taken down hours after Katrina because of the unexpected fast winds and floods that broke down “3 million phone lines and 1,000 cellular towers in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.”( Joch ). Because of the millions of phone lines that were battered, contacting the government for help was difficult hours after hurricane Katrina. Not only that, the people of New Orleans underestimated the power of Hurricane Katrina causing many to be “ stranded with no food or water” ( Narrator, “The Storm”,PBS ).

While racism in the handling of the disaster was evident to many Southern blacks, some believe that poverty was a contributing factor. Not only were 90% of the citizens of New Orleans black, they were also extremely poor.

New York City’s population is a little over 8.3 million people. 8.3 million people are spread out among five boroughs and each have their own set routine. Each one of those 8.3 million see New York in a different way becuase “You start building your private New York the first time you lay eyes on it” (“City Limits” 4). Some people are like Colson Whitehead who “was born here and thus ruined for anywhere else” (“City Limits” 3). Others may have “moved here a couple years ago for a job. Maybe [they] came here for school” (“City Limits” 3). Different reasons have brought these people together. They are grouped as New Yorkers, but many times, living in New York is their only bond. With on going changes and never ending commotion, it is hard to

The New York Times article “Pummeled Florida Staggers Toward Long Recovery” by Alexander Burns informs readers on the controversy surrounding the power outages in Florida. The author explains how right after Hurricane Irma weekend it had started to head north of florida, being that it was just leaving somewhere between Miami to Jacksonville. In the meantime florida has power outages throughout the cities, there are people are without no electricity, and to even get back electricity it could take days to months. In this case florida has so many damages with houses being in pieces, homes flooded, every thing ruined with only some things are salvageable and storm damages costing between $20-$50 billion. For other people in florida who didn't believe they needed to be evacuated and who thought they could wait it out, it soon will be necessary for some residents to evacuate. As there may also be tornado warnings because of the historical levels of flooding. With the storm later heading north it's is cautioned to residence when they return home because the powerlines

Finally the hurricane stopped people had their houses ripped apart like shredded paper they were devastated. Many people came to rescue others that were stuck in there houses they were like like a flooded prison cells you could hear the echo as if you

During my blackout period I gave up my smartphone, television, computer, microwave, and stove. I realized immediately how it giving these things up inconvenienced my life. Aside from not being able to contact anyone or watch any sort of entertainment, I had to eat all of my food cold. Living in a military

The opinion of New Orleans residents regarding how Hurricane Katrina was handled by the government also depends on the resident’s race, class, and gender. Many of the poor urban residents in New Orleans that were the most devastated by Hurricane Katrina were African American (Pardee, 2014). These residents felt that they were forgotten by their government and left to die because they did

In contrary, Sharkey acknowledges that the Knight Ridder Newspaper published a report that found that Blacks represented only a small majority of those who had passed away from Katrina despite the fact that they make up a large majority of the population that was affected the most. (Sharkey 2007) Therefore data used in Sharkey’s analysis uses descriptions of people and the communities that were directly affected by Katrina as a basis for sociological understand of survival and deaths caused by the storm. His findings concluded that, the storm hit New Orleans’s black communities hardest and found that African Americans were disproportionately likely to die in Katrina and were more likely to remain missing. (Sharkey 2007) This is also known as “geography of risk” (Sharkey 2007) as social characteristics are imbalanced and the fact that low income could have made it more difficult to evacuate the city, especially for those without cars or who were unable to get transportation. The government’s lack of organization created extra chaos for those with vehicles as they tried to flee their homes. Since it was decided last minute that the city needed to be evacuated, citizens flooding the streets in a panic for survival.

The brutal 1998 movie American History X, directed by Tony Kaye, follows former skinhead Derek Vinyard while he is trying to prevent his younger brother, Danny, from going down the same path Derek was led down. While leading a violent white supremacist cult and being a large part of many racial crimes throughout the L.A. area, Derek was sentenced to three years in prison for killing two black men who attempted to break into his truck. Throughout the three years, Derek learns that there are good and bad people in every race and becomes more open and friendly to those he believed he was superior to. After getting help in prison, Derek is released on parole and tries to cut ties with his old “brothers,” it is then that Derek realizes how much

When I got home later that night, the news was now claiming my neighborhood as an evacuation zone. I didn't believe it. "It'll be fine," I thought "nothing bad will happen here." Apparently, I was the only one that believed that because every person in my development was gone. The storm was scheduled to arrive that next morning and I would be facing it alone. I came to the realization that I was the only person in my county with a functioning brain. Everyone was wasting their time and energy preparing for nothing.