Race

This week in sociology, we learned about race. We learned that "race" is actually just made up and it isn't a real thing. If a person has one black parent and one white parent, in America they're still automatically considered black. For example, Barack Obama isn't 100% black, but since he has some black in him, he is considered the first black president. So this is weird to me, because if a black person has some white in them, they aren't considered white, they are still black.

Minimum Wage

This week in sociology we watched a movie about how a guy and his financè do a 30 day experiment where they lived off of minimum wage. It was very hard for them to adjust to that lifestyle instead of being in the upper class. It was sad to realize that someone like me works at minimum wage for some extra spending money while there are people out there working at minimum wage and making a life from that. For me it's just for some shopping money with my friends, but for others they work to feed their family and pay their bills and are working paycheck to paycheck to get through life.

Pennies

This week in sociology, we played a game that involved gambling. Each person in the class started with 3 pennies, and we would have to gamble with those. Once you lost all your pennies, you're out but the other person keeps what they have and moves on. Eventually you're paired with someone who has a different amount of pennies than you do. This game should technically be fair because everyone starts with the same amount of pennies and has the same 50% chance of getting heads or tails. This game is supposed to relate to life and how everyone has equal opportunity, but I don't agree with that. We talked about how in life, not everyone starts with the same amount of money. Some people inherit it, some people start with nothing and have to work for it, and others are part of the lower class. It was very interesting to me to understand the sociology behind this and how wealth really does make a difference. For example, Stevenson is technically a wealthy school. This means we can do things like give students iPads which opens more opportunities but at other less wealthy schools, they don't have the ability to do that. So overall, how wealthy a person is really does make a difference as much as people want to say it doesn't.