How do you spot someone that is deviant? You pick a sample and watch them. If you want to know who they think is deviant too, you listen. I listened and watched my parents this past week to see who they thought was deviant. My parents are very overt of who they think is deviant. My parents make it very obvious who is normal and who is deviant. The deviant people are African Americans. You can tell by the way they talk about African Americans compared to whites.
My father doesn’t gain anything but self confidence or self esteem by considering African Americans deviance. It makes him feel better each time he talks about African Americans, or how he says “those blacks.” The only reason why “these people” (African Americans) are considered deviant to my father is because that is how he grew up. He has been prejudice towards this population for as long as I can remember. My father is in his 50’s and the only explanation that I can think of is his parents grew up in the generation where African Americans were looked at differently than whites more than they are now, so I was taught to keep that going. I never heard any definition or any other explanation of why he thinks African Americans are deviant. You can either hear a black person joke from him or something about our President, Obama, daily. It’s not even worth bringing up anything that deals with those two populations because he will go on and on about how they are deviant or how he thinks they are deviant. The consequence of African Americans being deviant is punishment. It’s like we all hear in the media, this African American did this, and that one did that. They are getting so many years in prison. My parents don’t police or monitor African Americans; it’s how they were raised. They don’t go looking for them to monitor their good or bad behavior; it’s just something they may run across. If you are talking about a crime, the first thing from my father is “was he black?”
My parents, but mostly my father follows a path of least resistance. Like it is discussed in “Privilege, Power, Difference, and US” whether he intends to or not, he follows this path of least resistance, and that is how white, male dominance will continue even if it is not meant the way it is portrayed, to gain there power. If they would follow the path of resistance then maybe others would move up in the chain of command, African Americans or maybe females. This reminds me of those two videos that we watched this week of the African American boys vandalizing and then white boys vandalizing the same thing. How would you react? The way it was portrayed in the videos or the right way. My parents would have reacted the way the people did in the videos because he considers the African American population deviant.
In conclusion, my father’s master status is he is a white heterosexual male that is able bodied and he has followed the path of least resistance. African Americans are deviant to him. He doesn’t gain anything from believing that African Americans are deviant, he doesn’t police or monitor them. He doesn’t go looking for African Americans; it’s more of just if something comes up. My father is privileged and he uses it.
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My dad was a substitute teacher for a while and he had some beliefs about black people such as: loud, disruptive, pant sagging, & trouble makers. He probably had some preconceived notions about what they would be like. Some of them might even be right. He described a guy that came into his class with his pants down to here (pointing to where the guy’s pants were.) My dad doesn’t substitute teach anymore. It’s not an easy job.
ReplyDeleteI think ideas get so ingrained that it becomes a habit or automatic response to think a certain way. Also like what was said in the article, ”Privilege, Power, & Us,” people tend to follow the path of least resistance.
Erin :)
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ReplyDeleteThe one thing you could do better would be to indent your paragraphs so that it is easier to read. I struggled with writing this first assignment and afterwards I realized there were a lot of different things that I could do better on my blog.
ReplyDeleteI understand where you are coming from with your posting. At one time, my grandfather also discriminated against another race. After fighting in World War II, he discriminated against people of Japanese decent. The people he fought with also held his beliefs and within their group they followed the path of least resistance. As Allan Johnson author of Privilege, Power, Difference, and Us explains the path of least resistance this way, "We often choose a path because it's the only one we see."
My grandfather later changed and apologized to the family for his earlier ideology. He was also able to fully embrace the Asian American man that my sister met and later married. I say this to say that there is hope for your father to change as well. :)
This post reminded me of what we read in Defining Deviance by Pfohl (1994): "The answer is that labeled deviants are viewed as such because they threaten the control of people who have enough power to shape the way society imagines the boundary between good and bad, ... acceptable and deviant." Our parents grew up in a time when African Americans were beginning to finally gain some power in society, and I think many white Americans were afraid this was going to hurt their ability to shape society in their favor. Insulting people because of their skin color is a way people try to maintain their dominance over minority groups. The more the dominant group in society feels threatened, the more they will retaliate (in ways you described that your father does in your post). Anyways, I enjoyed your post and appreciate your willingness to share something as personal as this.
ReplyDeleteStephen, Pfohl, IMages of Deviance and Social Control, 2nd ed. (New ork: McGraw-Hill, 1994), pp. 1-6