Importance Of Social Location

Social location and status set go hand in hand with where I have wound up in life and who I am. Social location is what memberships you carry because of your physical location in life. I settled down and “started roots” in Saginaw Township, MI. It is a smaller community in Mid-Michigan that is not far from where I spent the first 5 years of my life, Essexville MI. I was raised in Royal Oak, MI, and all three of these communities share about the same socioeconomics, being predominantly white, middle to upper class, about the same size, and just outside of a larger city. I feel comfortable with my current social location, because it is so familiar and normal to me. The reason I was raised in Royal Oak, MI is because of my dad’s employment.

My own mother was the same way and had never had a job outside of our home, but did do things like babysit over the summers, so that there was extra money for Christmas. It seemed very natural to me, that I would graduate high school, find some random job, get married and start a family. However, once we moved back up to Mid-Michigan we were with my father’s side of the family, and they were different agents of socialization because of their social structure. Every single one of my aunt’s held full time jobs outside of the home, and many of my female cousins went to college. My own mother took a job at the apartment community that my dad worked at! It was my own little culture shock, to suddenly have a mother who worked outside the home, since the women in my life had really molded my socialization, and what I thought I was going to do for the rest of my

To be honest, it makes me feel boring. There are things that make me who I am that are completely left out. I have run dozens of marathons, coached baseball, volunteered my time, and have suffered the loss of a child. All of these things have put me into different social categories and had changed society’s opinion of me at one time or another.
I was born a white, non-disabled, middle-class, American, female. Just based off of these simple things, it was very unlikely that my parents worried about me joining a gang or playing football in college. I grew up learning how to make spaghetti sauce instead of learning how to change the oil in a car. It was logical that I marry a man and become a mother one day.
Before doing this exercise and reading about “Power and Privilege”, I never would have assumed that I was somehow better off then another person just because I am white and I would have defended my position to anyone who would have challenged it. This of course, proves the authors point when he explains that thinking that way is just how privilege works in our social life. I have never been black, Jewish or homosexual, so I can’t feel the oppression those who are