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.

Sociology Tool: History of Black History Month

In 1915, Harvard-trained historian Carter G. Woodson and Minister Jesse E. Moorland founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH). In 1926, this organization, which studied and promoted achievements by black Americans and people of African descent, started a campaign called the Negro History week that encouraged schools and communities in the U.S. to learn about and celebrate Black culture and history for one week.

It wasn’t until the late 1960’s when people (mainly college students) started to extend the event to one month. In 1976, President Gerald R. Ford officially recognized Black History Month and urged the public to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”

Source:

http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/black-history-month

Sociology Tool: Martin Luther King Jr. on capitalism

If you didn’t know, Martin Luther King Jr. was a radical who often criticized America and its policies. He wasn’t always an obedient person who only talked about race relations and equality.

Here is an example. In 1967, King spoke to the staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) about how they must work harder to “revolutionize” society, as well as for fair distribution of political and economic power:

“We have more from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights,, an era where we are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society. We have been in a reform movement… But after Selma and the voting rights bill, we moved into a new era, which must be the era of revolution. We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power… this means a revolution of values and other things. We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together… you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others… the whole structure of American life must be changed. America is a hypocritical nation and [we] must put [our] own house in order.”

Here’s more on King’s thoughts on capitalism (from The Young Turks):

Sociology Tool: Africville

(Africville, Halifax in 1965 via Rabble.ca)

Africville was a small community in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, where the population was entirely Black. In the first half of the 19th century, this small community was treated unfairly by the government. Though many of the residents worked (ran fishing businesses, farms, and small stores) and paid taxes, they didn’t get the same benefits and services as other working Nova Scotians.

Some of the services they didn’t receive were paved roads, running water or sewers, public transportation, garbage collection, and adequate police protection. Rather, the City of Halifax placed unwanted services in the community. Some the services were a railway extension (1854), the Rockhead Prison (1854), and the Infectious Diseases Hospital (the 1870s), to name a few. Many Africville residents back then believed that the government allowed for this unfair treatment because they were anti-Black.

Confusing Social Concepts: Feminism

(I originally posted this article on my other blog, The Bamboo Post, but I thought I should post it here too because it is a sociological topic.)

Admit or not, feminists have a bad rep. They tend to be seen as crazy women who want to kill masculinity and will scream and bark false facts at all those who oppose them or deny their equal rights. But this is simply not true. Not all feminists are loud, scary, and evil, and I’m willing to bet that there are more nice feminists than there are mean ones.

However, this post isn’t about the visuals of feminists. Rather, it is about what feminism is and what most feminists fight for because it gets misconstrued quite a bit by the media.

So let’s travel back into history and look at the 3 waves of feminism.

Confusing Social Concepts: White Privilege

(I originally posted this article on my other blog, The Bamboo Post, but I thought I should post it here too because it is a sociological topic.)

Society is such a complex thing. There are so many factors that go into social issues, and many times these factors are not discussed. Journalists and social commentators tend to throw terms (concepts) around to try to explain issues, but often times, viewers don’t know what the terms mean. As well, some of these same people don’t explore the terms deeply, while some misconstrue the terms so that it will fit their agenda.

So for today, I am going to discuss White Privilege, a term that (it would seem) not many people understand, and is misconstrued a lot.

Sociology of Power: What is Power?

What is power?

Being at the heart of social stratification, many people view power as the ability to influence or control another person's behavior.

Economic Sociology: Emile Durkheim’s Division of Labor in Society

(Emile Durkheim)

In Emile Durkheim’s book, The Division of Labor in Society, he describes the differences between a society where people have similar tasks (mechanical solidarity) and a society where people have different, individual tasks (organic solidarity).

He says that in modern times, society is not gelled together by people’s similarities in tasks and beliefs. Rather, social solidarity is kept together by people’s individualism and specialties because it forces them to rely on one another, as citizens of modern society perform a narrow range of tasks.

Economic Sociology: Marx’s Materialist Conception of History

(Karl Marx)

Karl Marx, as you all should know, was a sociologist who often criticized capitalism for what it will do to society in the future. He was able to “foresee” this because he believed that history would follow a predictable course. This belief was based on his materialist conception of history, or historical materialism, a methodological approach that he used to study society, economy, and history.

Economic Sociology: Max Weber and ‘The Protestant Ethic and Capitalism’

(Max Weber)

Max Weber was raised by parents who held polar ideologies about life. His father, a bureaucrat, enjoyed the pleasures of life. His mother, on the other hand, was a devout Calvinist who lived an ascetic life and constantly pursued salvation. Because of the differences in his parent’s personality, Weber was able to experience the two sides of living, even though it affected him psychologically as the tension of having to choose a side played a great deal of stress on his mind.

In his early college career, he followed in his father’s footsteps by joining a fraternity, where he developed socially by going out and drinking large amounts of beer with his frat brothers. However, as he got older, he became more like his mother. In his late 20s, he developed a compulsion for work and lived ascetically.

It was these first-hand experiences (and extensive research in religious studies) that helped him write his most famous work, The Protestant Ethic and Capitalism (affiliate link) in 1904-1905.