Change: Using Institutions to Make a Stand

As I read the last articles for the semester about using institutions to make social change I started to think and realize how much institutions have been used throughout the past to make changes. Some have worked wonders others couldn’t even put a dent in society. The article about AIM and the Lakota Indians was one that really stuck in my mind. At the end of the article the Native Americans who participated in this “march of broken treaties” didn’t really accomplish what they wanted to with the government but it seemed that they had accomplished something much different, something that may have actually meant more to them. Reading the article I remember Mary writing how some of the male natives who had joined with the AIM group had felt like they regained their “Indianess” through the ceremony and by just sticking together with their fellow Natives and standing their ground at the BMI.

I think the idea of the Resource Mobilization Theory fits well with this because it argues that social movements develop when individuals with grievances are able to mobilize sufficient resources to take action. These Lakotas had grievances and they used the resources of other Native Americans to take action and try to make a point. When you think about all of these different movements, like Alcatraz, the Civil Rights movement, the UFW strike, etc, do you ever wonder why the things that these people fought for still subtly remain today? Yes the Civil Rights movement did so much for the African American race but prejudice and discrimination are still present, yes Native Americans came together and stood their ground at Alcatraz and the BMI yet treaties are still being broken. But then, I remember in lecture how we did discuss that these changes are being made in small increments. It just doesn’t seem right that such enormous efforts only bring about so little change.

Through boycotts and stand-offs and sit-ins, the minorities of this society continue to use their bodies as resources, but to me it just doesn’t seem like enough anymore. We all want to make a change but the resources we don’t have, we don’t have the power that the majority of our society has when we just continue to come together as separate groups (as ironic as that sounds). It’s amazing how much a group can come together to make a point, but it’s either the African Americans coming together, or the Native Americans coming together, or the Latinos/Hispanics coming together. What if all minorities came together to make a point, what if we all showed society how we are still being discriminated against “lowkey” and how we continue to have our cultures co-opted and simplified into something unauthentic. I don’t really understand how society has shown so much resistance to the movements that these institutions have created in order to push for social change yet America continues to call itself the land of equal opportunity and a melting pot. America tells itself that there is progress being made, and sure there is but when will a change come that doesn’t require years and years of baby steps to achieve its purpose? I’m glad to see these institutions paving the way for social change, I’m just waiting for the day that the real change will come.

Prom night in Mississippi

After watching the documentary Prom Night in Mississippi in class on Tuesday and Thursday, I was actually in disbelief that something like this actually existed today. I don’t understand how after everything our country has been through and how far we’ve come that some people are still that racist. I know there are racist people out there, but I always associated it with neo-Nazis and white supremacy. I could not believe that an entire town in present day America allowed for such outwardly racist customs to continue. What was more outrageous was that the white parents actually tried to resist the integration of the prom. Before watching this documentary I always had thought that in the south today blacks were accepted and treated more fairly and equally than they are in the north. I always used to compare Atlanta to Milwaukee and thought of the south as being more diverse and accepting. Maybe it is just because I grew up near Milwaukee and I always knew that Milwaukee was a very segregated city, in which blacks are severely discriminated against. I remember in high school one my history teachers told us that in a survey of blacks, the number one city they felt most discriminated against was Milwaukee. However, the outwardly racist views of these parents is completely different than the discrimination in Milwaukee and is not something I expected to see anywhere in America regardless of where they are from. I don’t think you would ever see a whole town outwardly expressing racism in the North. After seeing this video it just adds to the stereotype that Southerners are racist hicks. In class you could hear everyone laughing, especially when they interviewed the father of the girl who was dating a black boy. He was the epitome of a racist hick, and it was hard not to laugh at him, or the whole town for that matter. Watching this made me mad, but at the same time I felt sorry for all of those people. I think that a lot of them are poor and uneducated, and they were never taught that racism is wrong. I think that even if your parents are racist, you can escape the cycle by being educated about racism. However, I don’t think that a lot of these people ever were taught about it. One of the statements I remember the most was made by a girl referring to what her grandmother or grandfather had taught her. Her grandmother had said that God had made everyone different on purpose, but if everyone started mixing races then everyone would eventually be the same, and that is not for what God intended. I think that this statement is ridiculous and makes no sense. It makes me mad that people try to use God as a way to justify racism. I do not believe that God would ever want someone to be discriminated against. All of the excuses for why the blacks and whites should not share a prom were stupid and long outdated. Their excuse that mixing the proms could be dangerous didn’t any sense because if these kids could all go to school together and get along everyday, then why would it change for one night? I think that all of this comes down to education. If these people were just better educated on the matter then maybe their opinions could change and people would learn that just because their parents say blacks and whites are not equal doesn’t make it true.

Perpetuating Native American Stereotypes

Native Americans have inhabited America for a very long time. Since the Anglos arrived we have been cheating them out of treaties and displacing them. As our population has grown, the amount of Native Americans has made up a smaller and smaller proportion of the US. The fact that they are now minorities in our country has made it easier for the media and corporate America to represent them through stereotypes.

The Sport in America: The New Racial Stereotypes article mentioned that other races have been portrayed by “ . . .dehumanizing, one-dimensional images . . .”, but these images have either been altered or disappeared over time, on the other hand “ . . .the Indian image persists in corporate marketing and product labeling.” The movie we watched in class about Indian mascots also mentioned that we have stopped representing Blacks through caricatures, but not Native Americans. This makes one wonder, why do we continue to represent Indians in this way? This article also mentioned that American Indians represent such a small amount of the population that the corporations that use Indian images in marketing and product labeling have no incentive to stop using these portrayals. It’s all about making money; the fact that these are human beings are being depicted by horrible stereotypes does not matter. Why do Americans not care that these images are still being used? Perhaps we have become so accustomed to seeing them in advertising and in the media that we don’t even notice they are there. Much like violence in movies we have become desensitized to these images which is why they do not bother us.

As far as the Native American mascot conflict goes, although some Native Americans may not take offense to being portrayed in this manner and although the mascot may stand for honor and bravery, which are all good things, I do not think that it is ok for people to take one’s sacred traditions and customs and use them for entertainment. As mentioned in class I think that if a prominent leader in the white community like a priest was used as a mascot and did a half-time communion show, many people would be very angry and loud about that anger. I think that the fact that there are so few Native Americans with respect to the rest of the population makes it is easier for us to ignore their angry cries. If we (the white majority) were put in their position, we would make sure that our voices were heard and that something was changed. As they say, majority rules.

I think it would take a large group of people in order to change these images. People other than Native Americans would have to get involved in order to create change. One main problem with this was mentioned in the article, What Can We Do?. Johnson mentioned in this article is that the people in the majority group who are not affected by these issues have trouble finding motivation to help change societies problems. If American’s joined together and forced the big companies, sports teams, and other people who perpetuate these images to stop, we may find that we ourselves gain. We may find a new sense of freedom from knowing that we are no longer a part of the problem, which Johnson suggested is a benefit of dominant group involvement.

I guess I have always realized that race is still an issue today but I never really thought it was still this strong. Maybe I have just been ignorant or maybe its because I have always lived in the Midwest, but I never thought that a school could still have two separate proms, one for whites and one for blacks. How is it that such a situation can still exist today? I just don’t understand how people can still be living like this. Like I said, maybe I am ignorant and just have been blinded but I thought that for the most part, segregation like this had ended. Since taking this class, I have learned and understand many of the reasons and ways that race still effects people and society. I understand that just because a law says that all people are equal does not mean that that’s true in practice. I believe that they key to ending the race problems today is education. Yes, I acknowledge that other things need to occur as well but I strongly believe that educating people to understand these differences and why they happen is the only way to end them. We learned in lecture about the paradox of social change and how changes are spontaneous and incremental. The little changes will end up adding up to be big changes and I feel that education is the key to those little and big changes. Just by understanding the few concepts we covered in class, I feel like I can teach others and start making those small changes. While watching Prom Night in Mississippi, something that a father said really stuck me as hypocritical. This man’s white daughter was dating a black boy and he completely disapproved of the whole situation and he straight up said that he didn’t like black people. But then he went on to explain how it is the parent’s responsibility to break the cycle of hatred because they are just passing it on to their children, and yet he is not trying to make a change himself. It just seemed odd to me that he would even say something like that. The most frustrating part of the whole issue of segregation in this city is that they kids who are being segregated don’t even want it and it is really the choice of the parents. The students have been educated and have started to made choices not to let race affect the way they act towards someone who is different than them. There small changes led to a very big change for their high school and community.

Co-Opting: Somebody Loses

The idea of co-opting is very interesting to me, and honestly I never really realized how widespread it was. Co-opting seems like huge circle, it never ends; somebody is always borrowing symbols and ideas from other cultures and turning them into their own. In lecture when we discussed co-opting in depth, the idea that really caught my eye was the idea of co-opting in the music world, especially with “race music” and the “Bo Diddly Beat”. I always knew that themes, and beats, were so called “borrowed” but I never realized for how long this has been going on. It’s funny to me because now they call it “sampling”, yet in my opinion, it’s still something that takes away from the original, I see it more as stealing rather than borrowing.

The biggest issue that I see with co-opting is that it takes away from the original culture, I feel like it makes the creators lose credit, or even leads to them being forgotten. Co-opting is diminishing to many cultures in some ways. I remember learning a couple months ago about the origin of the piñata and the game double-dutch. Many people believe that the piñata came from Mexico, and many people believe that double-dutch is strictly part of the African American culture, or came from Africa, when in actuality, both assumptions are wrong. The piñata was essentially co-opted from the Chinese culture, and double-dutch from the Egyptian culture, and due to that co-optation it seems like parts of the original cultures have been diminished or forgotten, and they have definitely lost the credit for creation. Like we talked about in lecture, co-opting is fun or beneficial for some and condensing and negative for others, but the ones that it is fun for seems to only be the ones that are committing the co-optation. Co-optation is basically people gaining popularity at the expense of causing a culture to lose a part of itself.

Co-opting is really big when it comes to school mascots, and usually a lot of controversy comes with it. The majority of school mascots that are co-opted are based on stereotypes of Native American cultures, the Washington Redskins, Chief Illiniwek of University of Illinois, and the Kansas City Cheifs. These mascots not become representative of the teams but they also become representative of the tribes that they are borrowed from which takes away from the authenticity of the Native American culture. When co-opting is used in sports such as these, it makes these cultures subject to mockery as well. In my opinion co-opting is only positive when it comes to popularity, but it seems as though popularity is something that the American society is very preoccupied with. Yes, symbols are polysemic, so we can all see them in different ways, which is something that is natural, but when things like co-opting cause cultural symbols to be polysemic in a way that is diminishing to the culture it becomes an issue. Of course, co-opting will continue on, as I said before, it’s a never ending circle, but I believe that in the end, maybe nothing will really be authentic and original.

Symbolic Order and Co-opting

One of the concepts we discussed in lecture this week was symbolic order, and the very first thing I thought of after learning about it was an article I once read about the Twilight saga. The article was basically making fun of the books for their lack of character development. Bella, who is the main character, is merely described as a young awkward teenager with brown hair and brown eyes, and as for a physical description that is about as far as it goes. Some criticize Stephenie Meyer for her lack of character development; however, I would have to say that she is pretty much a genius because it is exactly this lack of character development that makes almost every teenage girl fall in love with the story. Like many other young women I also fell in love with the series because of the exciting love story between Bella and Edward, or so I thought. However, after reading this article about the series I realized that the reason I love the story so much is because I can see myself in Bella. The lack of description and development of Bella allows for almost every girl to see themselves in Bella. The story becomes so much more enjoyable when you can see yourself in that character, and in the case of Twilight, every girl reads the story and immediately falls in love with it because they believe that if Bella, who is just like them, can fall in love with someone like Edward then it could happen to them too. So in terms of symbolic order, the more we can see ourselves in Bella, the more validation we have that we too can find love like she and Edward has. The Twilight series is just one example of the symbolic order. We see the symbolic order all over the media because one key to marketing is making consumers believe that they need a certain product, and the way to do that is by hiring actors who are similar to the targeted consumers. When I think about symbolic order, one specific commercial comes to mind. Recently I saw a commercial where there was a woman who appeared to be racially ambiguous and she was talking about how she was hired by this company to be a spokeswoman because she was racially ambiguous and that way she could attract a wider variety of women to the product. I do not even remember what the commercial was advertising for, but called out the fact that companies use symbolic order to get people to buy their products. Basically symbolic order revolves around the fact that people have insecurities and because of those insecurities people feel the need to find self validation in the media.
Aside from symbolic order, we also spent a majority of lecture this week talking about co-opting. There are so many images and symbols in our culture that people do not even realize were originally borrowed from other cultures. Other times we see images that we know are borrowed, but yet we don’t realize that they are misrepresentations of other cultures. After watching the film “In whose Honor” it was clear that the University did not realize they were misrepresenting the chief until one woman who was a Native American found the misrepresentation offensive. Like we talked about, co-opting can be freedom for some while oppression for others. So while the university students and staff found the chief mascot to be inspirational others were hurt by the misrepresentation. When I think about co-opting, I do not really think there is anything wrong with it. I believe that all of the things we borrow from other cultures are done so out of admiration and as a way to expand our own culture. After all, there is a saying that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. However, in the case of the chief mascot is imitation truly flattery or is it just plain offensive? Well, at first I thought that the woman who was offended by the mascot was just being too sensitive and that she was blowing it out of proportion. However, it wasn’t until after she explained that the costume and dance performed at half-time was part of a religious ceremony that I began to think differently. I immediately tried to think what it would be like for me if some aspect of my religion were displayed as a form of entertainment at a sports event. I tried to picture what it would be like if a priest was the mascot. All I could think about was that even if they said they were honoring Catholicism that there is no way it could be sincere honor because many of the people “honoring” the priest aren’t even Catholic and don’t understand the significance. I think that if I were in the same position I would be offended because it would seem like they were mocking my religion. So in terms of whether the University was in the right or wrong, I feel that it was wrong for them to have the chief as a mascot because they needed to recognize that what they were using as a form of entertainment was a distortion of a religious ceremony, and in our society today that is unacceptable. I think that co-opting can be a good thing if the images and symbols borrowed from other cultures are not misrepresented, but in the case of the chief mascot, I think the university was wrong because unless everyone was taught the same values and customs as native Americans, there is just no way they could truly understand and honor the chief properly.

Symbolic Order Creating Negative Stereotypes

We discussed in class today the concept of symbolic order and how much of this symbolic order we see ourselves in that is represented in popular culture?

We live in a world that is becoming increasingly defined by image, so we cannot underestimate the effects that popular culture has on identity. That is, public discourse, including popular culture, shapes our understanding of what it means to be a man or woman in this society. At times the influence can be overwhelming. It seems that every time I turn on the television or open a magazine there is a new fashion style that is “in” and I need to keep up with. But the always changing trends are something that one can get used to and either choose to accept or ignore. But what is extremely hard to change is an image of yourself you think is represented poorly in popular culture as a result of symbolic order.

The symbolic order in our society creates images that are hard to escape and these images can even lead to unrealistic stereotypes. Most of these images are seen in mainstream television and movies. A common popular culture image that could be a result of symbolic order is the bimbo cheerleader which is seen in countless television shows and movies such as “Bring It On,” “Sugar and Spice,” and “Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders.” These characters represented by obvious symbols such as high social status, good fashion sense, and lack of knowledge about important issues, result in an altered symbolic order in popular culture. This is very frustrating for cheerleaders/dancers like myself, who then get labeled all of these things as result of this symbolic order. I feel like the more people see this symbolic image of a bimbo cheerleader, the more they have a right validate cheerleaders as having these characteristics. But why are these symbolic characters continually brought up in popular culture? Why do people need to consistently see cheerleaders as possessing these characteristics?

It seems like to me that it is because these stereotypical symbols are what most people are comfortable with. If we all have a common view of a group of people it allows us feel like we know what they are about before we ever really have to get to know them. The problem with this is that these fictional characters and groups seen in the media then become what people expect in reality.

Another reason could be that these symbolic stereotypes are also more entertaining to look at and watch. This remains true when talking about physical attributes of groups represented in popular culture as well. Cheerleaders and dancers are symbolized as being thin and pretty, therefore whenever you do not these physical aspects in a cheerleader, it seems funny and unordinary. Television shows such as “Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader,” do a great job at emphasizing this physical symbolism associated with cheerleaders by kicking girls off the squad for being too fat rather then judging them by their dancing and cheering ability. This provides entertaining television but does nothing but reinforce negative stereotypes as a result of symbolic order.

Since the symbols involved in the typical bimbo cheerleader are mostly transcendent, there is hope for a change in their symbolic order. Cheerleaders and Dancers could try to change this symbolic order by proving that they are knowledgeable of important issues and making it apparent that high social status is not what is most important to them. If movies and television also focus on more positive symbols cheerleaders represent perhaps their overall symbolic order could then be transformed. It is hard to say if this representation will ever be seen in popular culture because the symbolism is so polysemic. What is seen as offensive and unrealistic to cheerleaders may be considered comforting and entertaining to others.