Mary Helen Howell Professor Garneau General Sociology 13 December 2013

Reading #12 2) Youths who originate from street oriented systems typically develop or pick up decent orientations through outside influences such as: support groups or a modeling agent (relatives etc). Children reared in a street orientated fashion tend to have a glorified perception of violence as it equates to importance and influence. Violence is often positively reinforced as a way to respond to violence. Violence is also becomes integral in self esteem because of the rewards it yields. 3) Middle class men predominantly earn respect through the means of demonstrating perceived important masculine traits such as capability, dominance and aggressiveness. I think middle class men are preoccupied with earning respect but by different means and I think a way to prove manliness is to ex: show capability and dominance with tasks or hardship. Reading #13 1) Henken finds that urban legends are becoming more violent due to the need for people to pay attention to them. I can agree that urban legends ranging from the 50s to present day have been progressively becoming even raunchier and violent desensitization is an adequate and sound way of describing this phenomenon and is likely to be a main factor.

2) In my experience different urban legends do circulate among different age groups. Bloody Mary often circulates around younger children and the hooked hand psycho killer is obviously intended for teenagers. Urban legends often have a function and its to control others by frequently using a scary occurrence as a frame of reference. The hook hand killer is, for example, a means to promote abstinence. 3) I feel as though I inadvertently discussed this question above but an example that Henken gives us is the tales regarding fast food and how it causes deaths or gross things happening to food. I think these are manifested by a distrust of strangers handling food as well as an attempt to convince others to stay away from fast food due to their perceived unhealthiness. Reading #38 1) By backlash Leung means discrimination her example is the adjustment of affirmative action and quota requirements which disfavors Asian Americans. Other forms of this backlash are discriminatory events such as Asian Americans possibly being the target of anti-immigrant sentiment. 2) This is likely due to the perception that Asian Americans are a model minority rivaling and even considered more privileged than whites. The notion of limiting Asian Americans admission is likely due to the idea of the model minority. This causes others to believe that the stereotype that vast majority of Asians are privileged and have little academic struggle thus not requiring any means of affirmative action/ quota. 3) This question really relates to me because I happen to be an individual who is also Asian American! There are many Asian American subgroups that do not

follow the general Asian American trends. There are also many Asian Americans who come from wealthy families abroad as well as very poor families from low economic Asian countries who migrate to the United States with very little. Its not fair to judge all groups in such a homogenous way being that they are sometimes very different from each other. My point here is just because there is a large proportion of Asian Americans that show great academic achievement does not mean it is the case for every individual in that demographic. Asian Americans are still the target of prejudices, stereotypes as well as discrimination. Many South-East Asians do not conform to the unrealistic expectations of being Asian. For example the stereotype of Asians are supposed to be good at math put a tremendous amount of pressure on numerous Asian Americans. In my case, as a Filipino, I am often mistaken for being Latino/Hispanic which results in different perceptions, as well as self-identity and development, than that of my East-Asian American counterparts. Reading #39 1) It would not due to how males and females are reared early on. These attitudes follow people into adulthoodwhile males are taught to be more aggressive and assertive women are expected to be nice and inevitably become invisible in the classroom. 2) The hostility likely comes from the idea of competitionfor example the 10 men who were angered for not being able to attend specific courses.

The extent of the hatred towards the women in Georgetown is unprofessional as well as deplorable.