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Sociology
The theory of symbolic interactionism corresponds to the article about
interracial marriages in the United States. It is one of three major theories, the other two
being Conflict and Functionalist. Symbolic interactionism is a perspective in which an
individual is influenced by their society. This means that there are symbols for everything
and everyone. Those symbols tell the person how he or she should behave and they are
defined by our society. For example, a person would look at their uncle differently from
their spouse. The symbols in the example would be the aunt and spouse. So, the way in
which the theory corresponds to the article is because our society use to looked down
upon interracial marriages at one point. People then viewed interracial marriages as bad
and steered away from the idea. It wasn’t until recent that we started seeing an up rise in
non-traditional marriages. The reason being is that society began to slowly move towards
the interracial marriages and began to accept it more. People now most certainly seem to
be okay with the idea of people of different races getting married. If a person from forty
years ago were asked about that, they would most likely be against it. If a person from
now were asked the same question, they would be fine with it. It is all due to the fact that
society defines how people should behave to things around them. With time, the whole
concept seemed more acceptable. It explains why there was a huge jump in the interracial
marriage scale. People are more comfortable breaking away from tradition. So now, that
symbol of interracial marriage changed from bad to good.
There are six sociological research methods that can be used in order to gather
information needed. Those six methods are surveys, participant observation, secondary
analysis, documents, unobtrusive measures, and experiments. All of them are pretty much
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self-explanatory. Surveys are papers people fill out honestly in order to gather certain
information. Participant observation is that the person conducting the research is also
involved. An intrusive measure is a method in which a researcher is observing people
without their knowledge. Experiments are a method that allows two or more groups to be
observed but one of those groups has to be the control group. The reason why a control
group is needed is because the other groups will be compared to that one group. The
research methods used in this article were secondary analysis and documents. That means
that the researcher is using data that has already been gathered by another researcher. The
Census Bureau was the one that collected all the information concerning interracial
marriages and The Associated Press is using that data on their article. They also took
information from The National Center for Health Statistics. The next method used in this
article was documents. They used a film to demonstrate that there were clearly
boundaries in the late 1960s.
There are four sociological concepts that relate to the article and they are values,
norms, positive sanctions and negative sanctions. Values are the ethics by what we define
as good, bad, beautiful, and ugly. The values were very different forty years ago than
they are now because society saw marriage as a union between two people. Now it is
seen differently because interracial marriages are becoming more recognized. So, people
forty years ago would see a traditional marriage as good and beautiful. The next concept
is norms and those are expectations or rules of behavior that develop out of a group’s
values. Society forty years ago expected people to marry people of the same race. Today,
we are expected to marry whom ever we wish to marry. That would be considered the
norm of today’s society. The third concept that relates to this article is positive sanctions.
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They are expressions of approval like a thumb up or a high five. These days, most
interracial couples are not treated any different from traditional couples. They are not
treated with any racial hostility and hardly encounter any hassles. Lastly, the final
concept is negative sanctions, which are expressions of disapproval like booing. The
community harassed an interracial married couple. They broke their car window and pour
chocolate milk cartons all over their yard. Those are both negative sanctions.
The article opened my eyes and had got me thinking about my future decisions. It
made me think about all the stuff our society is okay with and what they are not okay
with. Marriage is definitely a very important decision, especially when it comes to who’s
doing what. The article affected my thoughts on how many people even today have not
changed their feelings about certain things like marriage. Some still believe that
traditional marriage is the only thing that is acceptable for a person. Thoughts on who I
should date were definitely something that also crossed my mind. After marriage, the
decisions that would have to be made would be trying to divide roles within a home.
Besides that, the four concepts discussed earlier came to mind while thinking about our
society. I wonder how things would change in our society, as I grow older and gain more
knowledge. I also ponder if my decisions now are going to change along the way based
on what our society thinks. My decisions will be based on my values. If my values
happen to change due to our society, it will be for the better.
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