Sociology homework help

Sociology homework help. Disability and Ableism
This sections looks at how disability is socially constructed. The two models of disability:
Individual or medical model defines disability in terms of some physiological impairment due
to genetics, accident, or disease and focuses on individual special needs and personal
difficulties.
Social model asserts that the real problem is not just medical but social. Society creates
barriers by limiting physical access and displaying negative attitudes and focuses on
removing social and environmental barriers.
1. Watch the video of a the disabled man riding the New York City subway:
https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000004791816/ride-the-subway-in-a-wheelchair.
html?playlistId=100000004687548
(Links to an external site.)
a) How do structural barriers such as stairs or broken elevators create unequal access to
buildings, transportation, and public space for people with physical disabilities?
b) How does unequal access isolate and exclude people with disabilities?
c) How does it show structural ableism?
2. Watch the video, “Retro Local: Isolation to Inclusion,” about how children with intellectual
disabilities were institutionalized.
https://www.pbs.org/video/retro-local-isolation-to-inclusion-6istxn/
(Links to an external site.)
a) Why were children with intellectual disabilities institutionalized and isolated from society
(“out of sight, out of mind”)?
b) What were the beliefs about the lives of children with intellectual disabilities?
c) How was it institutional ableism?
3. Watch the PBS Newshour report, “Pandemic means Americans with Disabilities are not
getting the services they need,” on structural inequality in health care for people with
disabilities:
Pandemic means Americans with disabilities aren't getting the services they need
(Links to an external site.)
a) What does it mean for people with disabilities to lose home services such as being turned
over in bed?
b) At the 7:25 minute of the video, the speaker talks about “medicalized ableism” to refer to
medical discrimination against people with disabilities with health care rationing during the
pandemic. Why are people with disabilities put the last in line behind abled people for
services they desperately need?
4. Watch the “Lives Worth Living” trailer about the disability rights movement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXqXieHAE2Q
(Links to an external site.)
a) How did the disability rights movement challenge the negative beliefs that people with
disabilities do not want or are incapable of living a full life?
b) How did the movement challenge institutionalized ableism by getting the American with
Disabilities Act passed?
Crime and Justice
Social Class and Crime
1. Why are street crimes committed by poor and working class people defined as crimes
while corporate crimes committed by the wealthy are not defined as crimes even though they
cause greater harm to society, including harm to human health such as knowingly producing
and profiting from cancer-causing chemicals and highly-addictive opioids?
Note: In the video, “The Corporation,” a CEO says, “If I shoot you, it is a crime. But if I
knowingly expose you to chemicals that will give you cancer, it takes longer to kill you, but
what is the difference?”
The corporation, Purdue Pharma (owned by the Sackler family), that made Oxycontin
marketed it to doctors as “less additive,” knowing it was highly additive, made billions while
tens of thousands of people became addicted and died from overdose.
a) How is crime defined by the powerful and wealthy? How do they benefit from the
definition of crime as street crime but not corporate crime?
b) How does the definition of crime as street crime disadvantage poor and working class
people, especially poor people of color, and keep them under the control of the police and
criminal justice system?
Race and Crime
1. Watch the video, “A Brief History of the United States,” on why guns and gun violence are
so prevalent in the U.S.
A Brief History of the USA – Bowling for Columbine – Michael Moore
(Links to an external site.)
a) How does the video explain the high rate of gun violence in the U.S. in terms of white
conquest and control of Native Americans and black people?
b) What does the video suggest is the link between the National Rifle Association and the Klu
Klux Klan and white terrorism against black people?
c) How is a white man with a gun a symbol of white nationalists in the U.S.?
2. Read the article, “The Killing of Ahmaud Abery,” about the black runner shot and killed by
two white men.

(Links to an external site.)
a) What does it say about why the white men believed they had the right to get a gun and
follow and shoot a black man they believe committed a crime?
b) Would it be defined as a crime if black men killed a white man who they believe
committed a robbery in the neighborhood?
3. Read the article, “Killings of Blacks by Whites Are Far More Likely to Be Ruled
‘Justifiable,'” about how when whites kill black men, the killer often faces no legal
consequences.
Scroll to the first graph to see how when one person kill another, 2% are ruled justifiable.
When a white person kills a black man, 17% are ruled justifiable.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/upshot/killings-of-blacks-by-whites-are-far-more-likel
y-to-be-ruled-justifiable.html
(Links to an external site.)
a) Why are whites killing black men far more likely to be ruled justifiable than whites killing
whites 2% or blacks killing blacks (2%)? (When blacks kill whites, only .8% are ruled
justifiable.)
b) What does it say about white privilege to use violence against black people?
4. Read the article, “Louisiana’s Color-Coded Death Penalty,” on racial disparities in death
sentencing.
Scroll to statistics: In Louisiana, black men who kill white women are 30 times more likely to
be sentenced to death than black men who kill blacks. When the victim is is white rather than
black, black men are 6 times more likely to sentenced to death and 14 times more likely to be
executed. No white man has been executed for a crime against a black person since 1752.

(Links to an external site.)
a) How is the fact that black men much more likely to be on death row for killing a white
person than killing a black person a form of institutional racism?
b) Why are no white men who kill a black person on death row?
c) Why are most if not all people on death row poor? (Do they have access to good lawyers
like middle-class and wealthy people?)
Gender and Crime
1. How would patriarchal masculinity explain why most crime, especially violent crime, is
committed by men?
2. Read the study, “Triple Entitlement and Homicidal Anger: An Exploration of the
Intersectional Identities of American Mass Murderers,” and why most are heterosexual
middle class white teens and men:
Intersectionality refers to your relative position of power and privilege or powerlessness and
disadvantage based on race, gender, class, and sexuality (as well as age and disability).
Read the first paragraph and scroll through the subheadings.
Mass Murder and Intersectionality.pdf
a) How does white entitlement and high expectations make white men feel they deserve
power and privilege?
b) How does downward mobility in class or status, losing a job, rejection by a woman, losing
money, etc., affect their sense of entitlement and high expectations?
d) How does heterosexual masculinity, domination over women and other men, and
masculine violence as a solution to downward mobility create mass murder?
e) How does the triple privileges of white heterosexual masculinity make downward mobility
and life loses even more shameful and result in a final act of violence against family
members, co-workers, people at a nightclub, music festival, or school to stave off
subordinated masculinity?
Drugs
1. Watch the video, “The House I Live In.” about how the war on drugs was a war on people
of color:
from Eugene Jarecki's documentary " The house I live in"
(Links to an external site.)
a) How did the war on drugs change the definition of drugs from a public health issue to a
criminal offense?
b) What does the video suggest about why people of color working hard and for low wages
were associated with drugs when whites used those same drugs, Chinese workers with opium,
Mexican workers with marijuana, and black workers who migrated to Northern cities with
cocaine?
c) How did white workers see workers of colors as a threat to jobs? How did the war on drugs
against people of color benefit white workers in terms of jobs?
2. How are drugs defined by race?

(Links to an external site.)
a) How are a white opioid users defined and treated compared to black cocaine or crack
users?
b) Why is crack possession treated much more harshly than powder cocaine possession?
3. How does the war on drugs create institutional racism and racial disparities in jobs?
a) How did war on drugs create mass incarceration in the U.S.? Why are most people in
prison for drugs?
b) Why are blacks and Latinos much more likely to be arrested and incarcerated for drugs
than whites who use drugs more?
c) How does mass incarceration reduce competition from black workers for jobs and benefit
white workers?
The Economy and Work
1. Read about Aimee Stephens who was fired from her job when she came out as transgender.
Her case is coming before the Supreme Court soon.

dit-story&fellback=false&imp_id=920823820&action=click&module=moreIn&pgtype=Artic
le&region=Footer
(Links to an external site.)
a) How does transgender discrimination in the workplace reinforce gender normativity and
benefit cisgender people?
2. Why have corporations like Amazon fired workers who protest unsafe working conditions
during the pandemic? How is Jeff Bezos making billions during the pandemic?
3. a) Why are contingent workers in the gig economy not defined as employees but as
contract workers? How does that affect workers’ pay and benefits?
b) How does defining workers as “contingent” benefit corporations?
Families
1. Look at the article and graph on missing black men, mostly due to mass incarceration:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/20/upshot/missing-black-men.html
(Links to an external site.)
a)How does missing black men affect black families?
b) How does the 50/50 male/female ratio for whites benefit white families?
2. Look at the video, “Alone,” about a woman who wants to marry her incarcerated
boyfriend:

(Links to an external site.)
a) How does missing black men force black women to live alone or support a household and
children alone?
2. Read this excerpt from bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody, about how domestic
violence is created by patriarchy.
bell hooks, a black feminist, refers to domestic violence as patriarchal violence because it is
based on men’s power over women and children through violence. She writes:
“Patriarchal violence in the home is based on the belief that it is acceptable for a more
powerful individual to control other through various forms of coercive force. This expanded
definition of domestic violence includes male violence against women, same-sex violence,
and adult violence against children. The term patriarchal violence is useful because…it
continually reminds the listener that violence in the home is connected to sexism and sexist
thinking, to male domination…more women are beaten and murdered in the home than on the
outside….much patriarchal violence is directed at children by sexist women and men.” [p.
61-2]
a) How does patriarchy where the powerful control the powerless, create intimate partner
violence, especially men against women?
b) How does that definition of patriarchy create child abuse in the family?
Education
1. Read at the charts in “Students of Color Are Being Left Behind”:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/29/upshot/money-race-and-success-how-yourschool-district-compares.html
(Links to an external site.)
a) What is the gap between black and Latino students compared to whites in grade level
performance?
b) How does racial segregation in schools (black and Latinos students in virtually
all-minority schools and white and some Asian students in virtually all-white schools) create
unequal grade level performance between students of color and white students?
2. Watch the video, “Taking Back the Schools” from Chicano! The History of the Mexican
American Civil Rights Movement, on educational tracking of Mexican American students into
vocational jobs.
Watch the first 14 minutes:

(Links to an external site.)
a) Why are Mexican American students going to a segregated school?
b) Why are the students tracked into vocational classes instead of academic or college prep
classes?
c) What kind of jobs are Mexican American students being tracked into?
3. Read article, “Even with Affirmative Action, Blacks and Hispanics More Underrepresented
at Top Colleges Than 30 Years Ago:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/24/us/affirmative-action.html
(Links to an external site.)
a) Why are blacks and Latinos still underrepresented in top colleges?
b) How does racial segregation in schools and tracking into vocational vs college prep classes
create unequal education?
The Health Care System
1. Read the article, “Question of Bias in Covid-19 Treatment Add to the Mourning for Black
Families,” about the racial bias in medical treatment black people face:

(Links to an external site.)
a) What does it mean that black patients are less likely than white patients to be tested or
treated for the illness?
b) How does medical bias in treatment create the racial disparities in deaths from Covid-19?
c) How does medical bias create the racial gap in life expectancy?
2. Read the article, “How to Keep the Mentally Ill from Getting Behind Bars,” about how the
mentally ill end up in jail instead of hospitals:
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/05/09/getting-the-mentally-ill-out-of-jail-andoff-the-streets/how-to-keep-the-mentally-ill-from-getting-behind-bars
(Links to an external site.)
a) Why do the mentally ill end up in jail instead of hospitals?
b) How is mental illness treated differently than physical illness? Why are the mentally ill
more stigmatized than the physically ill?
Progressive Social Movements
1. a) How does the #MeToo movement challenge sexual harassment in the workplace?
b) What does the movement address women’s equal access to jobs?
2. a) How does the Black Lives Matter movement challenge police and white civilian
violence and killings of black people?
b) What does the movement address black people’s access to public spaces where they are
confronted by whites calling the police or telling them they do not belong there (driving
while black, golfing while black, etc)?
Here’s an article about running while black:

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(Links to an external site.)
3. Watch the video, “Transforming History,” about the transgender movement and its focus
on middle class white transgender people, while trans people of color, especially black
transgender women face poverty and violence:
https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000003740068/transforming-history.html
(Links to an external site.)
a) How do transgender women of color experience much more poverty and violence,
including murder, than white transgender people?
b) Why does it say about the need for social movements to include an understanding of race
and gender inequality along with other forms of oppression?
The Progressive Plan to Solve Social Problems
The progressive plan approaches the solution to social problems.
The progressive plan would build a strong safety net by increasing unemployment benefits,
paid family leave, food stamps, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Head Start, and
Social Security, and Medicare.
It would replace brutal capitalism with democratic socialism in which the government
provides universal health care, subsidized child care, good public education, food security,
affordable housing, and a living wage.
A New New Deal for the Pandemic Recession
The New Deal created Social Security and the WPS, a jobs and infrastructure-building
program, that brought the United States out of the Great Depression.
The Great Society in the 1960s created Medicare, Medicaid, and Head Start.
“The New New Deal” would create jobs and build green energy infrasture programs to
provide food security, equal education, subsidized child care, affordable housing, universal
health care, environmental protection, and clean energy.
1. Read the article, “The America We Need,” for a New Deal-style program to address the
great divide in economic and health inequality the coronavirus has laid bare, a divide in
which a billionaire spends $238 million for a house while 10.9 million people cannot afford
an apartment and many more are homeless:

ction=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
(Links to an external site.)
a) How could a New Deal-style jobs and public-works program to bring greater economic
equality?
Read the article, “Stimulus isn’t enough. Our cities need a post-pandemic New Deal.”
https://www.curbed.com/2020/4/16/21223683/coronavirus-stimulus-unemployment-jobs-wpa
-green-new-deal
(Links to an external site.)
b) How could a New Deal-style jobs program create jobs, help prevent a depression, and
build a green energy economy?
2. Read the article, After the Pandemic, the Big Reset,”

k&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
(Links to an external site.)
a) How would changing the health care system to universal health care reduce social
inequality?
b) How would changing the work system to paid leave, a living wage, working from home,
and subsidized day care reduce social inequality?
c) How would changing the food system to address obesity, eating more fruits and
vegetables, and food insecurity by providing school lunch programs reduce social inequality?
This includes fixing immigration policy so “essential” farm workers who bring us fruit and
vegetables would be able to work with decent pay and documentation with a path to
citizenship.
2. The progressive plan for climate change, the Green New Deal, would reduce greenhouse
gases by building a sustainable energy economy.
https://www.curbed.com/2019/1/8/18173851/green-new-deal-cities-environment-infrastructur
e
(Links to an external site.)
a) How would building a clean energy economy based on wind and solar energy create jobs
and phase out fossil fuels?
3. Feminist Solutions to Social Problems such as:
Equal pay for equal work
Ending pregnancy discrimination and the “mommy track”
Ending sexual harassment in the workplace
Ending gender segregation in jobs and women’s equal entry into male-dominated jobs.
Equal representation in top corporate and government positions.
Universal child care
Men doing equal child care and housework
Protecting women’s reproductive rights including Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court ruling
legalizing abortion
Ending the orgasm gap between women and men by redefining heterosexual sex from
no-hands intercourse to the mutual stimulation of “clittage” intercourse.
Ending intimate partner violence and child abuse
The feminist solution to patriarchy is redefine patriarchal masculinity to feminist masculinity.
Feminist masculinity redefines manhood as men and boys learning non-sexist thinking,
being emotionally expressive, loving and nurturing, and doing equal child care, housework
and emotional care (like the boys in the video, “In My Shoes,” learning to express love and
care for younger siblings).
1. a) How would feminist masculinity reduce violence against women?
b) How would feminist masculinity reduce child abuse and create greater closeness
between children and their fathers?
c) How would feminist masculinity benefit men by allowing them to express emotions and
care for others and treating women as equals?
d) How would feminist masculinity benefit society by reducing gender inequality and
violence?

Sociology homework help

 
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