In Barbara Berlund’s Making San Francisco American: Cultural Frontiers in the Urban West, Berlund explains how San Francisco grew from a young settlement which grew rapidly thanks to in part of the California Gold Rush which took place in 1949. Of course with the growing of this small settlement came it’s conflicts and how it rised to where it stands present day. A primary factor which helped San Francisco flourish a ton was the influence from those who had power and chose what would happen throughout the city, for example the Big 4. Those who were wealthy did not make this city what it is today without the help of people who made up the middle class as well. Every establishment within this city set the social order as to how the inhabitants of San Francisco would go about their life in society. Depending on where white of middle and upper class treated the other races within this spectrum of diversity one could predict how difficult one’s life would be during …show more content…
He was taken to court by Marth in hope of getting a compensation for being raped, impregnated, and having a child. Though he had some influence with the power of his purse he managed to get her into an asylum and she was diagnosed as mentally unstable and he got away with rape simply because he had a higher social status. The big 4,consisted of a corrupt group of men that manipulated the political system and orders which favor outcomes that they were highly in favor of. Allowing Chinese to migrate to the San Francisco when the people of the city were highly opposed to that. Blacks who were recruited by the east and worked at a palace were offered good work conditions, received high wage, and were seen as high class within the black community and possibly higher social
Post-emancipation life was just as bad for the people of “mixed blood” because they were more black than white, but not accepted by whites. In the story those with mixed blood often grouped together in societies, in hopes to raise their social standards so that there were more opportunities for...
differences in how whites and Blacks lived speak to the social norms of the time period.
Besides race, the scholar also reveals how childhoods are unequal based on social class. Drawing from the American society, there are several social classes. For each class, there are unique pathways of lives followed and these usually influence both the educational and work outcomes. To ...
American minorities made up a significant amount of America’s population in the 1920s and 1930s, estimated to be around 11.9 million people, according to . However, even with all those people, there still was harsh segregation going on. Caucasians made African-Americans work for them as slaves, farmers, babysitters, and many other things in that line. Then when World War II came, “World War II required the reunification and mobilization of Americans as never before” (Module2). They needed to cooperate on many things, even if they didn’t want to. These minorities mainly refer to African, Asian, and Mexican-Americans. They all suffered much pain as they were treated as if they weren’t even human beings. They were separated, looked down upon, and wasn’t given much respect because they had a different culture or their skin color was different. However, the lives of American minorities changed forever as World War 2 impacted them significantly with segregation problems, socially, and in their working lives, both at that time and for generations after.
The purpose of my memoir is to awaken the power of Sociological Imagination in an attempt to analyze my own life experiences through sociological lens in order to understand how my life and opportunities in society have been shaped by race, class and ethnicity.
From an early age it was clear to Sandy that, the lighter a person’s skin was, the higher their social status. As the only young child in his household, he was exposed to many conversations among the adults around him that revolved around race. A primary example of this was one of the conversations between his grandmother, Aunt Hager, and her friend, Sister Whiteside. Sandy and the two elder women sat at the kitchen table together to share a meal while the two women chatted. Sandy sat quietly and absorbed their talk of everything from assuming the white ancestry of a lighter-skinned child they knew, to the difficulty of keeping “colored chillens in school” (13-15).
Upon initial research of the rich heritage of California the two minority groups that stood out as especially influential in historic California and today’s society are the Native Americans and Hispanic Americans. To better understand and identify with these minority groups we must identify the common themes within their day to day life. By researching each culture’s common family traditions, religious beliefs, arts & entertainment, and language one can gain a greater appreciation of many different kinds of people, and in turn have more effective relationships in a multicultural society.
As the United States developed and grew, upward mobility was central to the American dream. It was the unstated promise that no matter where you started, you had the chance to grow and proceed beyond your initial starting point. In the years following the Civil War, the promise began to fade. People of all races strived to gain the representation, acknowledgement and place in this society. To their great devastation, this hope quickly dwindled. Social rules were set out by the white folk, and nobody could rise above their social standing unless they were seen fit to be part of the white race. The social group to be impacted the most by this “social rule” was the African Americans. Black folk and those who were sympathetic to the idea of equal rights to blacks were targeted by the Ku Klux Klan. (Burton, 1998) The turning point in North Carolina politics was the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898. It was a very bold and outrageous statement from the white supremacists to the black folk. The Democratic white supremacists illegally seized power from the local government and destroyed the neighborhood by driving out the African Americans and turning it from a black-majority to a white-majority city. (Class Discussion 10/3/13) This event developed the idea that even though an African American could climb a ladder to becoming somebody in his or her city, he or she will never become completely autonomous in this nation. Charles W. Chesnutt discusses the issue of social mobility in his novel The Marrow of Tradition. Olivia Carteret, the wife of a white supremacist is also a half-sister to a Creole woman, Janet Miller. As the plot develops, we are able to see how the social standing of each woman impacts her everyday life, and how each woman is ...
Dumenil, Lynn, ed. "New York City." The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History. N.p.: Oxford UP, 2012. Oxford Reference. Web. 8 Apr. 2013.
During the Gilded Age white were understood to be at the top and all other ethnicities were below them as well in the 1941, however during the 1950-1980 things were starting to change but not dramatically. White men in all three periods were allowed to speak their minds and say whatever they wanted because in their minds they understood that they were at the top.4 For example, white men joined forces and created the unions to go against the overbearing power of corporations.5 These corporations c...
California society, and people as individuals, could not decide whether they relished their newfound freedom or despised it. Some people attempted to recreate the lives they knew at home, while many others threw off the shackles of their old proper lives. Victorian culture emerged in the 1820’s and 1830’s in America. At 1850, the time of the Gold Rush, it was at it’s high point. Anyone who came to California from the states, no matter what their position, would have come from a place influenced by the Victorian way of life. This included strict ideas about the roles of men and women, taboos on drinking and gambling, high value set on hard work, Christian ethics, and ethnic prejudices.2 People who came to California experienced something quite different.
Since 1848 to the present, California has had strong periods of representing the American Dream with its egalitarian advances and times of overwhelmingly democratic positions. Also, California was once a place for economic opportunity, attracting people from all over the nation. Since 1990, however, California has witnessed a reverse migration. Once a land of hope and opportunity, California has slowly been turning into a land of despair.
In the early 1900’s, Theodore Roosevelt took office after McKinley was assassinated. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only turmoil at the time. A ship with rats infected with bubonic plague started the first plague epidemic in the continental U.S. Survivors of the plague believed that the corpses were still contaminated, so all burials were banned within San Francisco. Fifteen blocks of China Town were quarantined because the Chinese were blamed to be the cause of leprous, small pox, and malaria. Fortunately, the plague was finally eradicated by 1905. The Bay area enjoyed success and growth from its formation during the gold rush of 1849 until the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.
Social Stratification in the African American community has changed over the years. Social stratification is defined as a rigid subdivision of a society into a hierarchy of layers, differentiated on the basis of power, prestige, and wealth according to Webster’s dictionary. David Newman in Sociology Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life describes stratification as a ranking system for groups of people that perpetuates unequal rewards and life chances in society. From slavery to the present, the African American community has been seen to have lower status compared to white people. Today, the stratification or hierarchy difference between whites and black are not really noticeable, but it is still present. However, during slavery, the difference in social stratification was noticeable. Whites dominated over the blacks and mulattoes (offspring of a white and black parent). The mulattoes were seen to have a higher stratification than an offspring of black ancestry. Because the mulattoes were related to the whites, they were able to obtain higher education and better occupations than blacks. For example, most slaves of a lighter skin tone worked in the houses and darker slaves worked in the fields. As the people of light skin tone had children, they were able to have advantages too. The advantages have led into the society of today. In this paper I will discuss how stratification has been affected in the African American community over time by skin tone to make mulattoes more privileged than dark skin blacks.
Los Angeles is unique in that it captures the essence of a multi-ecological setting bringing the ocean, the skyscraper, and the happiest place on earth under one rooftop. Its deep-rooted culture engulfs the city’s character and overwhelms the spirit of L.A. Los Angeles has encompassed the circle of the Mexican pueblo that began in 1848 and has returned over two hundred fifty years later. Hordes of “land hungry Anglo-Europeans” began to migrate to Los Angeles from various parts of Europe. They viciously took land from the inhabited Mexicans by fraud, force, and imposing ridiculous property taxes. Although Mexican rancheros fought gallantly for their land, they could not afford to pay the property taxes and as a result lost a vast part of their holdings. The Mexican ranchero lifestyle gradually vanished as new settlers took over. As the Anglo-whites became the majority in Los Angeles, they also became the major influence on the development of the city and its capitalist structure.