Tough Guise = Tough Guy?

          What is the meaning of strong and weak? It varies in different regions and nations. The film "Tough Guise" discusses how this idea came about and how masculinity is often depicted in the media as physical and mental strength, or power over others, and even violence when we saw on organized sports game or movies.
          In American society, a man needs to be tough, independent, strong and respected. This is interesting but where or who gave this certain definition to be a man? In fact, not only the medias, such as TV, movies, commercials, play an influential role on that, but also the dominant culture gave the definitions on how man should behave instead of being emotional is a trait of weak or sissy.
          There is a change of meaning of being a man. I like movies and I have seen many old movies about war, mafia, etc. You would find that most of the men hold a pistol instead of women in the movies. Whenever a man take out the gun and shoot someone, everything seems normal. But when a woman has a gun in her hand and killed someone by that, it shocks all the audiences. In "Tough Guise", it mentioned a research on commercial goods also have a remarkably shift from 1970s to 1990s.
          There is no "natural" image for masculinity. The meaning of masculinity is differed from the past due to gender socialization. Gender socialization refers to the learning of behavior and attitudes considered appropriate for a given sex. Boys learn to be boys and girls learn to be girls.
          In my opinion, when I looked back one of the videos we watched talking about the "man-box" in socialization chapter. We found many males are living under a great pressure due to the man-box and the norms of being a man.

Racism in America

          When I looked back to my first post of blog, it is the introduction entry of ourselves. We wrote about what shaped our personalities and so on. However, the more we learned about sociology, the more we understood what really shaped us, for example.
          In the past week, I read two articles : Racial Stratification and Education in the United States, by JOHN U. OGBU, and Color-blind Privilege, by CHARLES A. GALLAGHER. In the first article, Ogbu pointed out some phenomenons of inequality of educations in United States. He states that minority racial group of people [blacks] are treated by two different curriculum in schools in contrast to the majority racial group [whites], and that is the reason that blacks are not doing as well as whites in school's performances. This inequity is on racial basis and widen the gap between minority group and dominant group of people.
         However, when I read the second article "Color-blind Privilege", it is very interesting to see that the writer and the interviewees have the ultimate different perspective as the first article. The respondents here declare that racial discrimination has completely gone. People are now equally having the same LIFE CHANCES of upward mobility. [No one want to move downward, doesn't it?] They declare that people who claimed about the existence of racism are just separated by their own racial identities.
        In my opinion, racial stratification exists in nowadays lives and it will keep going endlessly. Although people insist that the color line has been erased, the fact that people are consisted in racial stratification that people rank one another according their values of race.