Lauren Cole

Journal Week #6

Before reading the articles, my definition of social systems is: groups of people and

institutions that work together because of their common and shared characteristics and ideals.

After reading the articles, I have a much more refined view of social systems. For one, I have

learned that social systems are more than the people in them. Everyone belongs to many different

social systems but their feelings, personalities, and intentions do not affect how the social

systems are or work. In the same way that people’s personalities, intentions, and feelings don’t

affect social systems they also do not affect patterns of privilege. The main part of patterns of

privilege is how people participate in these social systems, though their personalities and such do

matter.

A way that I could say I’ve participated in oppression is probably by not asking more

questions regarding race or systems when I was younger. Educating yourself, to me, is the best

thing you can do as a white person. Educating yourself on your privilege and educating others as

the topic arises or as the situation needs is very beneficial in the long run. I have experienced

oppression as well, the most prominent thing I can think of right now is in the media. The way

that certain characters and idols are portrayed is a very concerning thing that I’ve noticed. I used

to go to church, and whenever I would look around I would only see white people, both in the

seats next to me and on the wall in the tapestries and stained glass. That is really concerning to

me because of where the Bible takes place. Jesus and his followers should be darker skinned

because of where they were born and lived, but they are almost always portrayed as white. Even

though the area of the Bible is well known very few people ask about why people are portrayed

as white because it is the path of least resistance. Until recently, the portrayal of people of color
has been very far and few between. A lot of times when POC people are shown in popular

American media it is through harmful stereotypes that generalize the group of people. Certain

things like Asians are good at math/bad at driving and that African American women are loud

are two stereotypes that are still prevalent in media today, even though they are very certainly not

applicable to every person in that race group and can end up being harmful when those

stereotypes carry over to the consumer’s life.