Thursday, November 10, 2011

Symbols and Labels...

In the video "A Class Divided" symbolic interactionism was used by the teacher who put into place a unique activity, to help her students understand racism. Symbolic interactionism takes advantage of the human mind being able to understand--in various degrees--symbols and the meanings behind them. Humans--or any creature/being--hone in on a myriad of symbols every day, whether they be simple like family members, friends, boyfriends/girlfriends and also help us decide what is right or wrong--depending on the feelings of each individual. Without these labels functioning in a healthy way would be impossible, for the mainstream person would not want their sister as their wife or uncle as their partner. However, this does not mean that our society functions in a healthy way, for not all symbols create equal responses for all and when helpful to some, may not be helpful to other.

In "A Class Divided" the teacher spoke that those with blue eyes were superior to those who were born with brown eyes, for a majority of reasons. This cause friction between these students, who had known one another for some time. The children with blue eyes began to pick on those with brown eyes, while the students with brown eyes tried prove themselves--to not avail. Those who were considered lesser, because of their eye color began doing poorly on assignments, while those thought of as better excelled in their work. The next day when the roles were switched--brown eyes were considered better and blue eyes worse--the pattern stayed the same. Those thought of as lesser did worse, while those that were considered better excelled. Even though the day before they had done the opposite. Just being told that they were worse based on eye color, completely changed their performance ability and attitudes.

Obviously labels are not "bad", for adding a label to these students helped them achieve higher success, however when the only way to achieve this, is to also put negative labels on another group of students...this obviously is skewed. But, throughout history it has seemed to be the case: someone has to be lower if someone is going to be higher. Can society exist without their being conflict between groups? Black vs white, straight vs gay, women vs men, brown eyes vs blue eyes. There may not be extreme issues between similar groups in today's environment, but their competition and conflict seems to be abundant in certain areas across the nation and the world.

Without these symbols our world would be a complete mess, but these symbols we rely on so greatly to function in life, have caused much of the problems we have faced throughout history. Even though a lot of damage has come from applying certain symbolic meaning to specific things--skin color, gender and sexual orientation--they have assisted in living healthy as well. Symbols are in fact extremely important, the problem is that people choose to assign negative beliefs about certain symbols. Personally I do not believe in a world that will ever be passed this, for there are far too many minds working on different wavelengths, so agreement with all is an impossible task. Symbolic interactionism is useful in our world, because of the issues surrounding symbols and the way they are applied. It is too bad it is not just used to differentiate family, friends and lovers; and that we cannot have positive labels without there also being a need to have negative labels, for other groups as well.





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