Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s thoughts on racism and journalistic corruption

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has always fought for social justice. Here are his three thoughts on society.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is an NBA legend. But aside from all the accolades, he has earned in the sport of basketball, he is also an advocate of social justice. He has headed many protests and wrote many books and essays on the matter.

Abdul-Jabbar was raised prior to and during the Civil Rights movement. As a young teen in high school, he attended many demonstrations to fight against the injustices against African-Americans. He also wrote many essays criticizing the maltreatment of minorities. He continued to express his displeasure while he was in college, during his time in the NBA, and after he retired.

Here are his three thoughts on racism in America and journalistic corruption:

Noam Chomsky on capitalism, terrorism, and education

Noam Chomsky, who is often referred to as “the father of modern linguistics,” is a linguist, philosopher, historian, and social critic. Additionally, he is the author of over 100 books, writing about war, society, and politics.

Here are Chomsky’s 3 thoughts on society:

1) “It’s ridiculous to talk about freedom in a society dominated by huge corporations. What kind of freedom is there inside a corporation? They’re totalitarian institutions – you take orders from above and maybe give them to people below you. There’s about as much freedom as under Stalinism.”

Chomsky, in this quote, is criticizing capitalism. He believes that even though Western societies are always preaching about freedom and claiming that all their citizens are free, they are not. They are not free because they are controlled by the institutions that they work for.

5 books every armchair sociologist needs to read

Armchair sociologist – this is a term used to describe a sociologist who practices sociology without going into the field and doing research. And because these types of sociologist are often at home in their thinking chairs, analyzing society, they need to read a lot of books so that they can learn and understand the different perspectives of society; they need to be able to put on a different set of lens (racial, economic, gender, etc.) when observing people and their behaviours.

So here are 5 books that will show every armchair sociologist the experiences of people as they move through society:

What is a social construct?

Have you ever wondered why a post-secondary education is considered to be important? I mean, the material you learn isn’t as practical as actual work experience. Or have you ever wondered why each bill of money has a specific value? I mean, it is just a piece of colored paper. Well, these two things (and many others) have social value because of social construction.

Social constructionism is this sociological theory that believes all things that have social meaning are created by individuals and by societies. In other words, individuals construct meanings for things that would otherwise be meaningless. And as more people join the group (or society), the meanings of these things become reality because large amounts of people believe it. This is the basic process of a social construct.

Martin Luther King, Jr. on capitalism, policies, and racism

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Baptist minister and a Civil Rights activist. He was well-known across the world for his activism for equal rights for African-Americans and was the most visible spokesperson for the Civil Rights Movement.

Here are Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 3 thoughts on society:

1) “Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.”

This Martin Luther King, Jr. quote is pretty self-explanatory. With a capitalistic economic system, there will never be equally wealthy people because there will always be two groups --the rich (a small few who hold the majority of the riches) and the poor (the majority of the nation).

Angela Davis on racism, prison, and the women’s suffrage

Angela Davis is a political activist, social commentator, and educator. During the 1960s, she was an important voice who advocated for the oppressed and the Civil Rights Movement.

Here are Davis’s three thoughts on society:

Malcolm X on race, society, and the media

Malcolm X was an American Muslim minister who fought for civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. He often preached for race pride and social justice and encouraged visible minorities to fight against racism and oppression.

Here are Malcolm X’s three thoughts on society and my interpretations of them:

James Baldwin’s 3 thoughts on society

James Baldwin, born in 1924, was an author and social critic. He was a gay black man living during a time when racism and homophobia were still very strong. He had many thoughts and criticisms about this time. Here are three of them:

1) “People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.”

“What goes around, comes back around,” is pretty much what Baldwin is trying to say here. If you continuously treat people horribly and as less than equals, one day, the bullied will rally together and fight back. And sometimes, they’ll do more than protest –they may try to overthrow you to take back their power.

The oppressed are not going to just sit still in a corner, and let the oppressor beat and drag them down forever. They will eventually find the strength to stand up and fight back.

Inspire to study and explore society (video)

"Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both." C. Wright Mills

What is Peter Berger's Society as Drama?

Peter Berger's society as drama is a thought-provoking concept that examines the idea of humans being characters in a theatrical drama. 

Peter Berger, in his work Invitation to Sociology, brings up Erving Goffman's interesting idea of society being a drama. In this theory, Goffman says that humans are just characters with roles (specific ones based on their group) that society has given them.

For instance, a doctor is meant to have the role of a healer. But if we look deeper into society, we can see that it also hands out the roles of the scary thug black man or the obedient wife with great kitchen skills. For Berger, he believes that we have to use this knowledge to escape the "tyranny of society."

Sociology of Social Stratification

(Karl Marx)

Social stratification is society's way of ranking people based on a hierarchal system of property, prestige, and/or power.

There are two different types of stratification. The caste system and the class system. Caste ranks people based on whose family they were born into, while class ranks people based on both birth and a person's achievements.

The 4 Paradigms of Sociology

Emile Durkheim

For this week's article, I will take a very textbook approach. What I mean by this is that I will simply give you the definition of the sociological concept and a short example. The reason being is that these ideas are very broad, as they are tools used by sociologists to analyze issues of social institutions. 

So rather than giving you an in-depth, descriptive example of each paradigm, I will save it for when I write about the sociology of family or the sociology of religion.

My goal with this article is to get you to be familiar with the four major schools/ideologies of sociology so that you can start thinking about it, and maybe even applying it to the real world. So without further to do, let's get started:

1) Functionalism (Macro sociological)

Functionalism is the relationship and interdependency between all social groups, big and small. When a change occurs to one, other institutions will be affected as well.

An example of this would be the relationship between the economy and recent grads. Back in 2008, when the economy was hit with the financial crash, many new grads weren't able to find professional employment because companies were trying to cut costs by lowering the number of people working for them.

Functionalism is also broken into three sub-groups:

• Manifest Function - The intended result.
• Latent Function - The unintended result.
• Dysfunction - The harmful result.

2) Conflict Theory (Macro sociological)

Conflict theory looks at the inequalities of life/society.

An example would be the narrative of some very wealthy people using their money and status to persuade the government into creating policies that are beneficial for the rich but are (the majority of the time) detrimental to the middle class and the poor.

3) Symbolic Interaction (Micro sociological)

W.I. Thomas

Symbolic interaction looks at how individuals interact with one another. Symbolic interactionists believe that society, or people's social reality, is created as people interact with one another, and not something that has been predetermined.

For example, if we, as a group, were to collectively view immigrants as a negative element of society, then immigrants will be a negative element of society because this is the definition that we have developed for them in our minds. The root of this example is based on the Thomas Theorem.

4) Feminists Perspective (Macro and micro-sociological)

The feminists perspective looks at the inequality among the genders, due to the dominance of men in major social institutions, such as education and work. It also looks at the efforts of women in overcoming discrimination.

An example of this would be the pay gap between men and women. If one male and one female with the same looking resume and same personality traits were to work at the same job and complete the same amount of work, the man would have higher pay than the woman, according to studies. This is why many women challenge big corporations and fight for equal pay.

RELATED: Sociologist's Tools

So there it is. These are the four paradigms of society. So now that you have an understanding of the theories and a gist of how society works, which paradigm do you think best describes your society? Is it just one, or a combination? Write your thoughts in the comments section.

P.S. Do you want to learn more about sociology? Check out my book,  SOCI 001: The Armchair Sociologist’s Guide to Sociology, on Amazon. It's a clear and concise guide with descriptive examples to help you better understand this social science. Click here to learn more about it.

What is C. Wright Mills' Sociological Imagination?

C. Wright Mills

The Sociological Imagination is a book and theory developed by contemporary sociologist C. Wright Mills.

In this theory, Mills explains that to truly understand society and a person's situation, we must not just look at the social issue from an everyday viewpoint. We must use some creativity and imagination by trying to understand the person's story and the society that they were brought up in (or how the social institutions they were involved with affected them).

What is Sociology?

W.E.B Du Bois

Sociology, as defined by many, is the empirical study of society. In other words, it is the scientific examination of social institutions and the study of methods that are used to investigate society.

For a clearer definition, McGill University defines sociology as:

"Sociology examines the underlying patterns in human behavior and our relationships with one another. Pretty much anything involving more than one person is fair game for sociologists. The subject matter of sociology ranges from the intimate family to the hostile mob; from organized crime to religious traditions; from the divisions of race, gender and social class to the shared beliefs of the common culture."

But the study of sociology is much more than that, as it teaches its students about society's hierarchy of power, how to analyze it, and how to make fellow humans conscious of the invisible ladder.