Sunday, March 20, 2011

Crime and Racism or Privilege vs Equality?


It is believed by many people that discrimination amongst race and gender has been diminished by the Civil Rights Act. However in today’s society, I find that very hard to believe. After watching ABC’s 20/20 video about Alex Wood and Tyron Brown’s case with a personal experience that happened in my life, I believe that the racial and gender discrimination still exists. As mentioned in one of the videos, Alex Wood who was white and a son of a well known Reverend were well-off and had many connections with other famous people. Alex Wood was charged 10 years probation and was privileged to be free after committing a murder. On the other hand, Tyron Brown who came from a poor family background and had no famous connections in his community was also charged 10 year probation for pointing a gun and robbing whatever money they had without hurting them. He had later returned what he stole back to the owner.
            During probation time, both had additional punishment because they had broken the law again. Alex Wood was charged twice with possession of cocaine and other offenses due to his behavior. However, Tyron Brown was only caught smoking marijuana once and was sentenced to life. This was injustice to Brown because I believe the judge based his punishment from his poor background and who had no connection with anyone famous. Wood’s case should have been taken more seriously because he did take someone’s life and did continue to do wrong things while on probation.
 
I can relate to this is because one member of my family was charged guilty of doing something he did not do. Only because he was the only guy around at the time and the girl was white.  So the judge favored her rather than what really happened. He ended up paying $5000 so that the girl would drop the case.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Conformity and Ethics


The modern version of Milgram’s shock experiment describes it’s been more than 45 years and people have not changed their ways of being obedient under an authoritative figure. In search for more ethical experiment, Jerry Burger conducted the same experiment but with few differences. One of those differences compared to Milgram’s first experiment was the maximum number of shocks received was 150 volts instead of going all the way to 450 volts. The newer version of experiment also conducted the experiment with the participants and an accomplice to see if that would affect the participant’s behavior. Sadly, the participant’s behavior was not greatly affected but it stayed the same as before like they were only with the experimenter. For an ethical experiment, the experimenter for example the “teacher” was given an option of quitting the experiment whenever they felt the need to. Surprisingly the participant went on with the experiment until they were done asking questions. Behavior based on gender was also observed while watching the experiment. Because of the nervous laughs, shows women were more hesitant to go on with it than men. However that fact did not change the outcome of the experiment. Another difference conducted in this experiment was that Burger’s experiment had to take permission from American Psychological Association. In it a clinical psychologists screened the participants in order to see if they would have a negative effect of the procedure which did not happen in Milgrams experiment. Another difference was that participants were told three times during the experiment that they had an option of leaving while receiving the payment. In Milgram’s experiment that was also not the case, the participants were forced to go on. This study shows that even with few adjustments, people are continuing to follow what their authority tells them. Burger’s experiment proves that even in modern day society, people are obligated to do what they are told without doing what they consider is ethically right.