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BethDougherty |
Mary Patillo
Apr 7 2009, 10:05 AM EDT
Somehow the Mary Patillo thread disappeared. Ergo, a new one. Listening to this conversation, can you see how Mary's biography drove her own sociological investigations? Have you noticed our racially divided neighborhoods? Are there assumptions you've run into in the past that tacitly state 'how things are' in a region that have surprised you? Do you find this valuable?
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jknapp |
1. RE: Mary Patillo
Apr 21 2009, 1:53 AM EDT
| Post edited: Apr 21 2009, 2:11 AM EDT
I was impressed that Mary Patillo was so fired up by her experience with the University of Chicago professor during the neighborhood tour that she felt compelled to investigate this issue from a sociological perspective. I have noticed our racially divided neighborhoods in Chicago. Back in 2003 I was working with a company to assist the Chicago Housing Authority to develop software to support their "Plan for Transformation", (which is an initiative to rehab or renovate more than 25,000 public housing units in Chicago). I went into the project thinking that all of the public housing provided in the city was scary like Cabrini Green and that all of the residents would jump at the chance to move into newly built or renovated housing. It turns out that not EVERYONE wanted to move. There were residents that had figured out a way to survive in their environment and were extremely change averse. I came to realize that they were hesitant because they were used to the “devil they knew”. They knew how to survive and felt like they had some sort of control. With the Plan, they had no idea what to expect and had no idea of when they would move into their “permanent” home once the renovations were complete. If you were to apply the Strain Theory, (according to our textbook, is that people feel strain when they are exposed to cultural goals that they are unable to obtain because they do not have access to culturally approved means of achieving those goals,) then I beleive these residents adapted via ritualism and/or retreatism. They really didn't expect any results, but they did what they were expected to do and followed the rules. Now, many of the other trouble making residents would be the rebels... those individuals would display the most deviant behavior, destroy the property and cause mayhem and will do so, regardless of what the Plan promises them. Do you find this valuable? |
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JonaThomallari |
2. RE: Mary Patillo
Apr 25 2009, 8:46 PM EDT
The video was kind of hard to understand, but that's more to do with the quality of the video, otherwise Mary Patillo is a good speaker and makes her topic about black poverty easily understandable and interesting. I like her example about the neighborhood that cleaned and fixed itself that may have been poor before and broken down but now is a good neighborhood, but she explains that the reason for it being a better neighborhood isn't because the lives of the poor got better, its more that wealthier individuals moved in, or other individuals moved in and made it the way they wanted to see their neighborhood look like. I was also interested in her first example of her tour in the Chicago neighborhood and how her professor showed a nice neighborhood and automatically stereotyped it as thinking its a white community, but telling his students that it isn't. I sometimes do think certain things are a certain way and later when the truth comes out I get surprised to find out I was wrong.
Do you find this valuable?
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pkjauregui |
3. RE: Mary Patillo
Apr 29 2009, 8:11 PM EDT
Agreeing with Jona, the video was very hard to understand, i had to listen to it twice to get the full understanding. Mary Patillo made some very vaild points on the situation that was first presented in the video when the professor said that just because a neighborhood is clean it should be expected to be a white peoples nieghborhood. Just how the same can be assumed with a dirty nieghborhood to be owned by black people just because it is dirty. the assumptions we make about people and their living are widly known and widely sterotyped. I've lived in many places before settling in Woodridge with my family. Previously living in Chicago when i was young i lived in a nieghborhood with people of many colors and people not getting alone. None of it made sense to me and i guess it got so bad that no one could stand eachother because people started moving and then we moved. We are better off in the nieghborhood we are in now because people are less racist and quick to making assumptions but i always ask my dad why it didn't work out there. Other then the video being very poor in being able to understand Mary Patillo is a very interesting speaker and makes very good points.
Do you find this valuable?
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