Blog #6

I have decided to write about the Jewish community that lived in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust. I have chosen this group because I have always been interested in pursuing more knowledge on the subject and it is within my field of study. I believe that I will be able to use texts about the group and also by texts written by people who have survived the holocaust and have written their own memoirs. I believe I will use mainly books but I will also use websites and videos to gather my information for this paper and as of right now I have a few books in mind to start off my paper but I am still developing my overall thesis for this paper.

Blog #5

The Lorber text takes a very direct route to social construction based off of physical attributes and not so extreme instances as are found in the Hanfler excerpt. Lorber uses sex (gender) as the basis for her discussion and focuses on the generalization of men and women. Lorber focuses on what some people may seem as extremist social views such as the skinheads, punk, hip hop and heavy metal enthusiasts and even falling into the discussion of virgins and their view on society.

The immediate assumption would be to think that skinheads are racist and not good people, which in all honesty is what I thought before reading the article. Hanfler however is able to explain that some skinheads fight for the opposite of what you would assume most skinheads to fight for. “Not only are SHARPs against racism they also tend to oppose sexism and homophobia, reflecting the official stance of the ARA. There are even websites for queer skinheads.” (Hanfler 23)

Young takes the approach of language and how people connect hearing someone talk and what their race and land of origin might be. Many people believe that if someone speaks a certain way they have to be of a specific race or area of the world while that may not be entirely true. Another comment made in the excerpt is how it is okay to talk however you want but only in the safety of your own home. “Dominant language ideology also say peeps can speak whateva the heck way they want to—BUT AT HOME!” (Young 111)

I see these things in my everyday life and I too can be found guilty of some of these prejudices. My job requires me to understand people as they bring their problems to me so I can explain a way to solve that problem in a way they can understand. Lincoln is a very multicultural city with people from the far east, the middle east, Africa, South America, and Europe. The problem is, some of these people may have learned perfect English but because they are from another part of the world their accent makes it difficult to understand and I find myself wishing they knew how to speak English even though they already do.