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I thought I was very observative with my surroundings. I thought I knew why certain people acted a certain way. I learned that much more through taking the class. The first mind blowing lesson was about stereotypes. I was always taught they were a negative thing. However, they protect us and allow us to react based on past experiences. Another big lesson that Sal always tried to push on us is there is no difference in race, gender, or creed on this earth. We are all part of the Human Race. We act like people are of different species sometimes, creating barriers between us and them. Such as African's are different than Asians. This is not the case we have the same type of genes. Another lesson is about social deviance. We see this all around us. People who have more money or more social status often get away with their deviance, while the poor and stupid do not. We see this with students all the time. This class has the reputation of being a blow off class. This class has the reputation of no work. Yet it shouldn't. The class has a easy workload yes, but it teaches invaluable lessons about people. I learned not to shy away from differences through Sal's way of seeing things. Usually people become ignorant of the unknown, but I feel prepared for life after SHS because of this class. This class was extremely beneficial and I really enjoyed learning all the different sociology lessons.

Then we crashed

The movie Crash extremely interesting and relevant to today's society. This movie showed inter racial conflict, but the main portion of the movie was intra-racial. The best example of this was Chris "Luda" Briges' character. He made comments such as "why do white people get scared when blackmen walk by?" He was very suspicious of racism, but then he only furthered the cycle when he robbed people. Also, the policeman that tried to do the right thing and save the black director, only got hurt in the end by accidentally killing Don Cheadle's brother. His character shows that even those who try to do good and fix the descrimination cycle only get bogged down in it, and eventually participate in the cycle. This was a very pessimistic film and looked to only show the negative (explicit and implicit) racism. However, this film definetly needs to be shown in schools and cultures!