Text for project 2

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/inside_higher_ed/2014/05/academe_an_academic_blog_reveals_common_prejudice_among_professors_against.html

blog post 6

The othered community I have chosen is Farmers. Farmers make up less than 1% of the world’s population. While some may say farming is a profession and people chose to be a part of that group, but it is a life style and it is in our blood. Many farming families are at least third generation, and the children who grow up to be farmers are definitely raised into it. The reason I say farmers are othered is because we talk differently, we think differently, we are looked at differently. Farmers are often portrayed as “hicks” “rednecks” “plow boys” it is often assumed that we are less educated and less educated than other people. Often when I tell people that my profession is after I get out of school is going to be farmer I am often met with “Then why did you go to school” as if I would benefit less from a college education then they would. (Sorry that that turned into a little bit of a rant!)

blog post 5

During the first part of the football podcast, there was the example of the Carlisle Indian School, were the goal was to assimilate these Native American children into whit culture, by essentially turning these Indian kids white, with the way they talked, the way they dressed, the way they conducted themselves and by essentially stripping them of their heritage. He was trying to take this completely different group of people and make them fall into the social constructs that he deemed correct. This forceful assimilation while being cruel did introduce this group of young Indian men to the game of football where they had tons of success and showed the American public even for a brief moment that the Indians were not less than the white men, they were the same. Although this was not an Idea that permanently changed for Americans, it did show that there was a possibility that one day the Native Americans might be seen as equal.

I think that there a lot of situations that social construction is a very real idea, one of the biggest examples is gender separation. Coming from a sixth generation farm family I have been raised with a more traditional sense of gender roles, I have always been raised that there are specific “man jobs” and specific “woman jobs” such as men do more physical labor for example feeding cows, doing field work, fixing things when they break, and being the primary bread winner. Whereas women are traditionally confined to laundry, cleaning, cooking, and caring and nurturing children. Although my mother would be the first person to tell you she can do anything a man can do and would have no problem putting him in his place which I feel is something that is much better received than it would have been 50 years ago, but thought time and as some of those social constraints kind of disappear, it is more welcome for strong independent women who speak their mind and can do anything they put their mind to.