Week 7: Race

For those of who don't know, my parents are from India and my I identify myself as Indian. I was born and raised in California and my parents, who have been here most of their lives, have adopted the American culture as their own yet still kept a few Indian traditions, values and other memes of culture. When I thought about my first expirience with race, I couldn't believe I remembered all the way back to the fourth grade. The very first time I became conscious of my race was when I was about 9 years old and we had international day at school. The youngest class that took part was the fourth grade, so it was my first year. I had one older sister at the school, and my mom worked there so she was a parent volunteer. One of the countries we got to learn about was India, and my mom was the volunteer for it's booth. I helped her and that was the first time I really remember noticing that I was Indian and my friends were other races such as Chinese, Vietnamese, German, Italian, and Mexican. My mom brought traditional Indian clothes that she had and some food that I was used to eating. I had never thought about what other kids ate at home, but I thought it was similar to what I ate. As it turns out, almost nobody had tried the Indian snacks my mom had brought. This is the first time I became conscious about race and my race in particular.

Week 6: Social Class

For this weeks analysis of class, I went to Santana Row in San Jose to observe the people and atmosphere. Santana Row has an "upper class feel" because of the shops and the people there. Most of the stores are very expensive and often designer boutiques such as Burberry, Gucci, BCBG Maxazria and many other stores that I had never heard of (most of them one of a kind boutiques). There are a couple of mainstream stores such as H&M, Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters that are still on the expensive end of large clothing stores. Most of the stores are small and specialize in something. Almost all of them have elegant music playing and a couple of workers who come up and talk to you about their products which are usually available to test if that is necessary. The stores have simple decor on the walls and windows and the organization is usually pretty spaced out and nothing is clumped in the stores. I would definitely say that almost all of the people in one store that I was in, Shuz at the Row, appeared to be upper-middle class. I would say that most were wealthy as well because they didn't seem to be working people since they were out shopping on a Wednesday at 2:30 in the afternoon. These people were all wearing expensive clothing, (as someone who likes designer clothing, I can tell very easily), and even their children were wearing expensive clothes. They did not have any visible tattoos, which is supposed to show respect and high-class. All of the three that I observed were white or some type of Caucasian and looked physically fit, wearing a lot of make-up and had nice, clean, pretty hair. Also, two of the women I saw had many shopping bags from other expensive boutiques. One of them had a huge diamond wedding ring on her left hand which also showed her wealth. These status markers show that these people are upper-middle class and wealthy because they are willing to show off their assets and wealth by getting a lot of shopping bags and wearing very expensive clothes for an ordinary shopping trip. However, these indexes could be mistaken if the person only has one good outfit or had just gotten his/her hair done that day. But overall, I definitely feel that Santana Row is a place for upper-middle class shoppers.

First Expirience with TOUCHH

On April 23, I went to Watsonville with a group of students to volunteer with the TOUCHH program. I did not know what to expect and I was pretty nervous. I felt comfortable with the group that I went with, so that was a relief. However, as we walked through the door of the front office and the coordinator began to assign us classrooms, my nerves caught up to me again. I have done a lot of volunteering with children and also worked with them as a dance instructor, but this time was different because it was far from home. I walked into the classroom to find about twenty children in the after school program from grades 4-6. The teacher was really nice and she made me feel welcome. The kids were welcoming, asked me about myself, and even told me about themselves. When they started to do their state tests, I began to understand why the school needed our help. Some of the kids were behind, some did not want to take the test, and some were struggling with the language barrier. I wanted to help them all, but there was so much to tell them about how to take the test and how to answer each question and I didn't have enough time. I remember helping on little boy in particular because I saw that he had raced through the test. He had gotten almost all of the questions wrong and I asked him why he raced through it. He said because he hated taking the time to read the sentences and then think about it because it took much more effort since the test was in English. I sat down and told him that this was important and practicing would just make things easier. When I got the chance to walk him through each question, he got about 90% of them correct. I was so happy for him and he seemed really happy as well. I love helping children because I remember what it felt like to have older kids and adults help me when I was younger. The individual attention is amazing and I look forward to going back in a couple weeks.

Week 5: Deviance

When I first heard about this story I felt my heart skip a beat. I have always hated bullies, and these two boys simply sounded like bullies on a much more serious scale.

The Oakland Tribune reported the beating of a local man, Tiansheng Yu, 59 years old, in mid April. He was waiting for his son outside a store when his son came out only to tell him that an African American man had punched him in the face without warning for no reason. The father and son looked for the two African American men and found them on a street corner. Yu, the father of the boy who was punched, confronted the men only to be beat down and left unconscious.

I have no idea why anyone would want to beat up a random person. However, if I were to take a guess, I would take on from Marx's conflict perspective. These two African American men were from Oakland which is densely populated with African Americans. They might have been lower class teens with no real futures ahead of them simply looking for trouble. The situation they are in and their class leads them to be violent and bored on the streets. They have no respect for other people, especially ones of other races. This might be why they chose to victimize a young Asian boy who they thought would do nothing and they could get away with what they did. However, when confronted by his father, they might have panicked. Not wanting to be arrested for punching the boy, they overreacted to the older man and ended up injuring him. This seems like an indirect result of inequality in our class system, but one can never know for sure.

To read the whole story, visit:
http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_14920033?source=most_viewed

Week 4: Group Influence

When people get together in pairs or in groups, I think they are definitely inclined to make bad decisions and influenced in bad ways. For some reason, when friends get together in groups, risky behavior seems a lot less risky because the consequences will affect everyone, so you're not going to be alone. I talked to my older sister's best friend's boyfriend, Brian, when we were all out at Dave and Busters a couple nights ago. He said that whenever he gets with his friends, they get into all sorts of trouble. It's because they are always competing and making bets with each other to do things. He gave me one specific example of how they were all out to dinner at a very expensive restaurant one night after winning the CCS baseball championships. The boys were all very rowdy and fired up from the game they had just won. One of Brian's friends who was playing with the pepper dared him to snort a line of it up his nose and offered to pay for his meal if he did it. Some of the other guys got in on the bet and they all watched as Brian accepted because he thought it would be funny and he did not want to back down in front of his teammates. He did it and afterward he said had never felt worse! It burned his nose for a couple days, gave him nosebleeds and he sneezed a lot. I also asked my sister if she was ever influenced to do something dangerous or risky in a group and she told me a story about college. I often hear about people doing this. She said that she was out with some friends for her 22nd birthday and she had to work in the morning, so she told them she was not going to drink too much. But, her friends did not listen and they continued to buy her drinks and shots all night. By the end of the night she had too much to drink and ended up getting sick when she got home. She stayed up for a couple hours because she was so sick and ended up having to call in sick to work, which is what she was trying to avoid. Last but not least, I was talking to my best friend about what him and I had did one time when we were with our friends and how we don't think we would have done it if we weren't in a big group. We were all at a party in highschool one night and one of our friends had an idea to break into an elementary school nearby to play "drunk tag." We agreed and since we had all been drinking, about 12 of us walked to the elementary school. We had to jump the fence and then we started to play tag. About 20 minutes later, we saw some lights and realized the cops had heard us or seen us and there were 2 cop cars outside the gates. We all ran so fast to get back to the house, but 3 of our friends got caught. They were taken in to the police station, and their parents had to pick them up. I was so lucky that I got away that time. Groups can definitely make people do things that would not normally do on their own. Two heads are not always better than one...