Sociology Reaction Post. Social Sciences Assignment.

Sociology Reaction Post
1. What’s something from the lectures this week that surprised you?
2. What’s something from the lectures this week that you learned?
3. What’s something from the lectures this week that you knew already, and where did you learn it?
Watch these two videos and answer the questions above, then write a 2-3 sentence response to this reaction post below.
https://youtu(dot)be/GfqdbxhhEqQ
https://youtu(dot)be/S1316eRYMCU
What’s something from the lectures this week that surprised you?
I was surprised to see how race not only plays a role in mass incarceration, but also in the opportunities that prisoners have once they are released from prison. In the lecture, Devah Pager sheds light into the inequality that is present between race and job applications. She found that Whites who had no criminal record were 34% likely to get a job offer or get a call back, but only 14% of blacks who had no record received call backs. For blacks who had a record only 5% received job offers, compared to the 17% of whites with records who got call backs. What’s more is the fact that whites with a criminal record still get more job offers than blacks who have no criminal records. Racism is definitely a factor in this, but it should not be.

What’s something from the lectures this week that you learned?
This week I learned about penal populism. I had never heard the term prior to the lecture, but I had seen traces of it in our society. Penal populism can be defined as “a discourse about punishment that is about satisfying the preferences of the public (rather than relying on evidence or experience).” In other words, penal populism is more about pleasing the majority, instead of doing what is right (in some cases). It was also interesting learning about the impact that mass parental incarceration has on families, communities, and individuals.

What’s something from the lectures this week that you knew already, and where did you learn it?
I already knew that the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and that blacks are more likely to be imprisoned than any other race, followed by Latinos. During high school, in one of my writing classes, we had discussions about how unjust our justice system is by not only incriminating more black people, but by also having more lenient sentences for whites who committed the same crime. Therefore, it makes sense that blacks are six times more likely than whites to be incarcerated, and three times as likely to be incarcerated than Latinos when we have a justice system that favors the white population, and allows racism and stereotyping to play a role in who is imprisoned and who is not.