Behind the Scenes

w/ Amari Anderson

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Health and Wellness

For this assignment, I interviewed Freshman Sociology major, Sydney Green. We discussed her strategies for maintaining health and wellness.

- Who do you call first?

When she gets sick the first person she calls is her mom to ask whether or not she needs medical attention considering that Sydney rarely gets sick.

- What strategies do you use to get well?

The strategies Sydney uses when she gets sick is taking NyQuil and DayQuil, drinking a lot of orange juice, eating soft foods like soup, grits, oatmeal and sleeping a lot.

- What strategies do you use to relieve pain?

Strategies that she uses to relieve pain would be to either take Tylenol or to use a heating pad.

- Are your healing strategies specific to your family, ethnic group, religion, or nationality?

Sydney stated that her strategies to heal aren’t necessarily tied anything but believes that it is related to people of color because we tend to try to nurse ourselves before we try to have others nurse us

- How do you figure out what made you sick so you don’t get sick again?

Sydney tends to retrace her steps to see what she has been involved with in the past couple days and then make sure that she wears the proper attire for the season. Sydney prefers to keep hand sanitizer with her and clean her home to make sure it’s free of dust and germs.

- When you are sick, how do you keep others from getting infected?

To keep others from getting infected, Sydney will give others a heads up that she is not feeling well and will self quarantine until she feels better.

- How do you feel about getting sick? What do you think getting sick says about you?

Sydney stated that being sick feels like she is “basically about to die”. This especially includes symptoms short of breath, hard to swallow, and weakness in the body.

- Is there a social cause of your illness? (example: lack of clean water, poor hygiene of others, etc.)

She noted that the only social causes for getting sick is not dressing appropriately for the weather or getting too close to someone who might just finished having something or was currently having their own illness

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Deep Dive in Lagos

Background Info on the Interviewee:

For this week’s fieldwork, I interviewed Jennifer Gatón in place of her mother, who is to remain anonymous. Gatón is an eighteen year old, freshman architecture major attending Morgan State University.

Gatón reported that her mother is originally from Lagos, Nigeria and migrated from Lagos during the year 1994 at the age of sixteen. She traveled into the United States with her mother and little sister. Upon arrival, the trio started off in Michigan and later moved to Prince George’s (PG) County, Maryland where they stayed with a family friend.

Gatón stated that the pull factors of the United States were the promises of an “American Dream”. Gatón’s mother was indirectly offered the opportunities that she was looking for: a job, education, and overall better lifestyle in order to raise her children. Although Gatón’s family was more on the wealthier side of the spectrum, the key push factor that pushed them out of Nigeria was the clear class differences. It was obvious who were poor and who were wealthy. From the clothes people wore, to the cars they drove, to the houses they lived in, it was very clear who had money and who did not. Outside of materialistic items, the necessities were also split among classes. There was an uneven distribution of electricity throughout Lagos. The wealthy had consistent electricity while the poor would go weeks or even months without electricity. The lack of electricity can strip people from sources of heat, cooking, bathing, etc.

While telling the story of her mother’s immigration, Gatón compared and contrasted Lagos, Nigeria to the United States. She stated that the two areas were similar as far as housing and social class separation. However, the political and social issues are more prominent in the United States than in Lagos. Lagos is not as exposed to social media as the United States is. This prevents unnecessary comparison on social media. In the US, social media is filled with societal standards and expectations that other people may compare their own lives to.

Gatón also mentioned how the migration process affected the family afterwards. The chain migration of this family caused a split that resulted in bonds and communication being lost and/or broken. They did, however, go back to visit in 2011 for a wedding. She was surprised at how much of American culture has been brought over since migrating.

At the end of the interview, I asked Gatón to describe the migration experience in one word, she chose challenging. She claimed that challenging was the best fit because of the amount of obstacles her mother went through during the process. She was held back in school once arriving in the United States because the educational system in Lagos was so different from the system here in America. Her mother was also managing a very heavy workload in order to help provide for the household, her mother, her siblings, and herself. She did all that work, starting at the age of sixteen.

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Teenage Cocoa Ninja Turtles

Introduction

This is Tiara the Turtle, she is just one from the crew. Unlike most chocolate candy, Turtles are not a bar, but a cluster. This cocoa candy is usually sold in a larger bag, or in a small pack of four. I bought my Turtle treats from Walmart for about $1.69, but the candy can be found at pretty much anywhere. This Includes big name grocery and drug stores such as Walmart, Target, Aldi’s, CVS, and Walgreens.

About Me

This turtle quartet is the perfect combination of chocolate, nuts, and caramel. However, there is a little more to their story. The Turtles are originally composed of milk chocolate, cocoa butter, pecans, caramel, corn syrup, sugar, numerous oils, and nonfat milk. Majority of these components are grown in different places all over the world. Cocoa butter is the vegetable fat from cocoa beans that are mostly grown in areas around the equator. Sugar is produced from the leaves of sugarcane plants, corn syrup comes from the starch that is produced by corn, and pecans are grown and harvested from trees in the Southern United States. 

Behind the Scenes

Before, I mentioned all of the components that were involved in the making of Tiara and her trio, but there is more to the process than just the ingredients.  There has to be someone to put these ingredients to work. The ingredients are grown, fermented, dried, clean, packed, and sold to distribution companies”(Make Chocolate Fair).

The video above shows the process at which a pack of Turtles are created. However the production system has not always been this quick and peaceful. The chocolate industry has a century long reputation for forced child trafficking and labor. These children were exposed to “chemicals, long working hours, and denial of a decent education”(Cocoa Campaign). They are also put at risk due to exposure to flames, smoke, and dangerous tools. 

Marketing and Trade

Although the secrets behind the chocolate industry are gruesome, they manage to market the products perfectly. Commercials use high up-beat music and add different video effects to make the product more appealing to consumers.

With regulation by the Food and Drug Administration, commercials like these allow for higher trade rates. Currently, chocolate corporations Hershey and Mars are dominating the chocolate trade industry. Hershey controls 44% of the U.S. chocolate market and Mars controls 30%.

Money Talk

The price of chocolate changes with the level of supply and demand. Around holidays like Christmas, Halloween, and Valentine’s Day, the price may go up as the demand rises and more chocolate purchases are being made. 

One would assume that since the chocolate industry is thriving, that the pay and profit would be as well. Unfortunately that is not the case. The chocolate industry makes over $130 billion a year and the cocoa farmers only make about 6% of that while store owners can receive from 55 to 75%. This is taking away from the most important part of the chocolate industry and quite frankly, the ones that deserve the most.

The price of chocolate products affect not only our pockets and diet, but also the environment and economy. The cocoa industry is shrinking rain forests by “emitting significant amounts of carbon dioxide into [the] atmosphere”(Green Matter). Due to the poor benefits and pay of cocoa farming, young workers refuse to work in that profession; causing the amount of cocoa being grown and harvested to decrease. This has a negative impact on the economy because the demand for chocolate products is going to continue to rise even though the amount of cocoa farmers is decreasing.

Major Source Hyperlinks:

1. Child Labor

2. Cocoa Productions

3. Chocolate Company Stats 

4. Pricing

5. Profit

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The Fam Bam :)

For this assignment, I went with the simplified version of my family. I do not have a very good relationship with my father’s side of the family, so the relationships were limited. My mother’s side, however, is more in depth. I have two brothers, two aunts and uncles, five cousins, a niece, and nephew. My family is big and has a lot of layers to it. I could go on and on building this family tree, but I purposely left out some branches, such as siblings on my father’s side and more aunts and cousins on my mother’s side, to keep it simple. I found it interesting to see the different generations within my family all laid out on paper. I also came to the conclusion that my family is not big on marriage; hence why there are only three marriages.

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Ch. 10 Fieldwork

Karl Marx Theory-

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1008472/the-shady-labor-practices-underpinning-sheins-global-fashion-empire 

Marx’s theory is based on capitalists and the working class. The well known clothing brand “SHEIN” is has been accused to child labor numerous times. In this case, SHEIN is the capitalists or bourgeoisie and the children are the working class or proletariat. SHEIN is making money off of the labor of their workers.

Max Weber Theory-

Weber’s theory states that the amount of land and property you own determines the amount of power and available opportunities you have. Dough McMillan is the CEO of Walmart Inc. With being CEO his own million of properties all over the world. Going based on this theory McMillan would be considered to have a lot of power compared to your local store owner down the street.

Pierre Bourdieu Theory- 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/move-end-standardized-testing-high-schools-draws-both-praise-concern-n1282657 

Bourdieu’s theory is based around social class and prestige within the education system. This story about ending standardized tests is a good example of this theory because tests are often used to determine a students overall intelligence, which is incorrect. Most tests determine whether or not a student gets into higher classes or gets accepted into a “better” college, which separates them from other students of similar intelligence.

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Gender Roles: Child Edition

For this weeks’ fieldwork, I chose to look at a series of old toy commercials. The video above showed the top 10 toys from the early 2000′s, all of which I watched and noted. I noticed that the majority of the commercials were indirectly targeted for boys. Toys such as Fingerboards, NERF guns, Razor Scooters, Mighty Beatz, and Legos didn’t have a single female child present at all throughout the commercial. This alone singles out young girls and portrays the image that only boys can play with said toys. I also realized that the few commercials that were projected onto girls were all similar. They all consisted of some form of care-giving or fashionable message. For instance, the Bratz doll commercial was an all girls commercial that was all about being fashionable and knowing how to look good. Along with the Webkinz commercial, which pushed the care-giving role on to such young girls by taking care of a stuffed pet both in person and virtually. There were, however, two commercials that were not gender specific yet a gender was implied. For example, the Tekno Robotic Puppy was more portrayed for girls as it is a pet that -- once again-- is to be taken care of. The Geomag commercial pushed more for boy attention. It is a magnetic toy used to construct and build different objects. Overall, I’ve observed that toys directed towards boys are all about sports, strength, creativity, and power. Whereas the toys directed towards girls are more about taking care of babies, pets, their appearance, and cooking/cleaning. These stereotypical gender roles play a part in how children are brought up into gender roles today. Women cook, clean, and watch kids, while men work and provide.

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Ethnic State

Both my mother and father were born and raised in the depths of Chicago, Illinois. Along with my older brother and both of my grandparents on both sides of the family. Me on the other hand, I was born in St. Louis Park, Minnesota; where I spent a good portion of my childhood. I currently live in the suburbs just north of Chicago. I do not know too much about my father’s side of the family, but my mother’s side is rooted from Chicago. My mom carried on all of the cultural habits she learned growing up, and used them to raise me. She taught me the same cultural experiences and lifestyles skills such as cooking, cleaning, the importance education, and listening to the same music. 

Chicago is all I’ve known growing up aside from Minnesota. I am unaware if any of my roots go back to Africa or the Caribbean or anywhere else, so ethnically and racially, I am a Black American. Technically, I am from Minnesota. Culturally, I am a Chicagoan.

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Society and its Racisms

1. Hypodescent

This tweet is an example of hypodescent racism. Mixed children are degraded daily by society. Specifically speaking, children mixed with both black and white often identify as a black man or woman because they are seen as “too black for the white community”. This puts up a wall between biracial people and an entire part of their ancestry and where they came from due to racism.

2. Intersectionality

Click here for Intersectionality TED Talk

This TED talk by Kimberlé Crenshaw discusses the importance of understanding intersectionality. Intersectionality is the cross between different social categories (race, class, and gender) and how they apply to an individual. For instance, I am a middle-class, black woman. Those who have a harder time in society tend to be on the more oppressed side of the spectrum; black or brown, lower class, and/or a woman. However, those who do not fall under the oppressed characteristics can come off as privileged.

3. White Privilege

This video is a prime example of white privilege using the metaphor of life being like a race. However, throughout the race the black runners were either held back, stopped, or completely incapable of proceeding due to obstacles placed by society. This left the white runners to continue the run and get ahead in the race, hence getting ahead in life. The system is made for minorities to be set up for poverty, prison, or death. This is shown when the black man is caught by the gate and is carried away. This metaphor is implying how black men typically end up in jail or prison. Similarly to when the woman was stopped by an authoritative figure and given a drug test. This implied racial profiling, assuming that the only way a black person could be so good at something is by cheating it with drugs or steroids.

4. Colorism

The two images above represent colorism. Colorism is a racist issue mostly found within the black community. Darker skinned women are seen as less than compared to light skinned women. Light skinned women soon became the “beauty standard” for society. It even got to the point where darker women would claim to be lighter (Tiktok here ! Beware of profanity). In The Hate U Give (2017), the main character Starr was described as a dark skinned teenage girl. However when the movie came out in 2018, Starr was played by light skinned actress, Amandla Stenberg. Just like in the children film Princess and the Frog (2009), Princess Tiana was a dark skinned woman and in Wreck It Ralph 2 (2018), she was lighter skinned. Considering that Tiana is the only black princess, this is insulting to my childhood.

5. Institutional racism

A Black Lives Matter protest (bottom) and the Capitol Riot (top). Two groups of people fighting for what they believe is right, with 2 very different outcomes. The BLM protesters fought peacefully for the equal rights of black individuals and justice against police brutality. Meanwhile, rioters with weapons climbed the walls of the Capitol building, got past the gates, and fought Capitol police. Forbes staff, Tommy Beer, wrote that former President Trump referred to the BLM protesters as “thugs, terrorists, and anarchists” and the Capitol rioters as “very special”(Forbes 2021). This is a prime example of institutional racism within the legal system.

6. Microaggression

My last example is not something I found on social media, but something that I experienced myself. Saturday, October 2nd, I was a victim to microaggression. While at work, I was speaking with a coworker, white male, about school and how the only class I am not too fond of is English. My coworker proceeded to say “so you like to write how you talk instead of properly” then followed up with what seemed to be his attempt at AAVE. I felt both shocked and culturally insulted. His statement implied two things. One, AAVE is improper. And two, my skin color is somehow linked to my inability to speak “proper”. I then proceeded to end the conversation there because I refused to converse with someone who was so loud, yet so wrong.

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Gender vs. Language

Considering that my Anthropology class was the most interactive, I decided to use this class to analyze for this assignment.

There are approximately 44 people in my class both in person and on zoom; 31 women, 13 men. Out of those students, I noticed that more women, including myself, spoke up during this week’s discussion. About 6 out of the 13 men spoke and 19 out of 31 women spoke during the discussion. That is more than three times the amount of men.

Besides women speaking longer than men, I noticed that the way women spoke was a lot more enthusiastic than men. The women used a variety of hand gestures and body language. They gave examples and told very in-depth stories. The men however, did not use as much body language to express emotion and were very direct in what they were saying. Most of the men in the room did participate in the discussion, but I feel like this week’s topic also caught the student’s attention more as well, leading to more participation. I believe that had the discussion been less interesting to men, they would have been less attentive. 

My instructor is a woman. She asked questions, told stories, and gave hypothetical situations to encourage students to keep the conversation flowing. By my instructor being a woman, I feel like she spoke more and was more passionate about the discussion which influenced the men and women of her class to participate and speak throughout the conversation as well.

[anderson-a25]

MAP OF MORGAN

For my mapping assignment, I chose the busiest part of campus. I chose this location because no matter the time of day, from the University Student Center all the way to the Quad, you can always find some kind of social interaction between individuals. While observing, I noticed everything from music playing to ambulance sirens. I heard laughter, watched a group of boys race on the LIME electric scooters, and even witnessed a DIY photoshoot.

One thing I will say I have never noticed about that side of campus is how bright it is at night. This part is filled with light posts and big, bright buildings. Even though there are street lights and traffic stop lights at the corner, I feel like even if those were turned off, Tyler Hall and Richardson Library alone could continue to light up the block.

One thing that was absent that I expected to find was a larger population. It is a late weekend night so I was hoping to see more of my peers out and about enjoying themselves. However, there was hardly anyone outside. There was a good amount, but definitely not as much as I am used to seeing.

This absence could have a lot to do with the pandemic of COVID-19. Being in quarantine for almost a year caused a lot of people to become very antisocial; some more than others. This lack of interaction extended into after quarantine was lifted. People have gotten so used to "six feet", "mask up", and "social distance", that they prefer to stay in their own space rather than going out and socializing. And, as a result, the used to be "lit college experience" has now become a safety hazard.

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Consumerism at its Finest

Making this list showed me a firsthand example of what consumerism actually is. Companies advertise items to a crowd that they’ll attract the most. Expensive items such as cars, phones, air pods, watches, are all wants that are mostly bought by teens and young adults provoked by the media and the society around them.

I noticed that the majority of my list were wants. Electronics, clothes, shoes, beauty supplies are excess items that are not a necessity. It’ll be times where I just go on random shopping sprees buying things I know I may not need or use later down the road but, since I want it in that moment, I get it. 75% of my items came from big known companies like Walmart, Amazon, Target, etc. and now that I think about it, I could have saved so much money by purchasing needs more than wants.

This is also a result of privilege. Growing up, my needs were given to me for the most part so I had money to buy whatever I wanted and not needed. Not everyone is given the opportunity to take advantage of the advertisements seen on television or in stores or online because their income goes straight to the necessities.

This assignment has definitely opened my eyes more and made me realize how I could be more responsible with how I spend my money.

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Thursday’s classwork. 9/9/2021

Concept Map

Amari Anderson

Aisha Osei-Zulu

Brianna Richardson

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Chapter 1 Fieldwork

Amari Anderson

A typical wooden pencil. A writing tool used for recording, communicating, writing journals, and more. Everyone uses pencils at some point in their life, but how much do we actually know about them? 

History:

As popular as pencils may be now, it was not always like that. Pencils  were invented in 1795 by a man named Nicholas-Jacques Conte. Before this, people were using chalk, stone, ink, and even carving messages into wood for them to be baked later. During the graphite deposit in England in 1564, it was discovered that graphite was and still is a great tool for writing. In 1662, German manufacturers began inserting the graphite into hollow sticks of wood and began the first mass production of wooden pencils.

Manufacturing:

The pencil I am holding was manufactured from the pen+GEAR company that was first established in India. Pen+GEAR products are distributed through companies such as Target and Walmart, that can be found pretty much anywhere. The development of wooden pencils have extremely improved over time. During the 17th century, the graphite and clay that is found within the pencil, was grounded down into a cylindrical mold in order to be inserted in the wood. Now, there are huge factories that have machines that mass produce pencils by cutting down the cedar wood, inserting the lead, and stamping on the design, logo, or company trademark. The metal ferrule that is used to hold the eraser in place is made of aluminum, while the eraser itself is made of rubber. 

Impact:

The production of wooden pencils had a negative impact on the environment since they required wood from trees. People began to fight for tree conservation and, as a result, mechanical pencils began trending. Mechanical pencils are a lot more popular and appealing to the human eye due to the different amount of colors and designs being made. This development was a win for both the community and businesses. The people are able to use pencils without harming the environment and company owners such as Walmart CEO, Doug McMillon, and Target CEO, Brian Cornell, continue to make 19-22 million dollar salaries.

http://www.historyofpencils.com/

https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/06/24/history-of-the-pencil/

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Key Dynamics of Globalization

Time-Space Compression

Example: Communication

This is an example of time space compression because as more technology is made and developed, the more people are able to communicate at a faster pace. Before, communication was handled through letters/mail which could take weeks or months. Today, anyone can communicate by cell phone within seconds.