Odena Chinchilla

Sociology 1
The activity on chapter thirteen helped me get a good insight into terms that label certain
actions that take place in daily life and have been studied by sociologists. I recognized the
actions being explained I was just not aware that these actions fell into categories and
were studied and explained by professionals. Examples include terms like racial
profiling, ethnocentrism or model minority, among other terms. I think this activity
helped me understand better the conflicts that take place in society.
I would have liked more time to work on this project because the topics are very sensitive
and very heavy topics that confront us constantly. So if we can invest more time in
understanding the roots, the how and the why of these problems; maybe we can equip
ourselves to engage them better.
If someone would have approached me before this class and particularly this chapter and
asked me to explain what I thought had taken place with my siblings when stopped by the
Sherriff. I would just have said prejudice, but know I can say that from my point of view,
what took place was racial profiling, discrimination from the authorities towards them.
Fortunately we could afford to get legal counsel and since we did not want to have any
repercussions of this situation so we hired lawyer that was able to expedite matters and
clean misunderstanding and assumptions without making permanent negative records for
my brothers. I also learned the term to define people who think that there culture is above
the rest. Furthermore, I learned to see the downside of being pegged as the model
minority, things like assuming that they dont need public assistance because they are self
sufficient, not taking in consideration that culturally most Asian individuals come from

societies in which help is not openly asked for. Not to mention the assumptions that take
place and raise the bar of performance for these individuals. I also learned of the invisible
minority models, which are the African American professionals, who tend to be
overlooked in their achievement, I did not know there was a term for that as well.
I learned many tings in this chapter, one of the bigger insights was understand social
construction of society, and how it varies among people and places.