Tinesha Deleston
5/9/13
Soc100-148


                                                                              Deviance

We as human beings commit deviant acts everyday, no matter how small or big the acts are. If it goes against the basic cultural norms and expectations, then it's considered deviant. Deviance is based upon time, place, and setting, which is also man made as well. This means what ever bad acts that you commit has to be based on the time you do it, the place you do it at, and the surroundings you're in when you do this act. This also means that anything that you do, will be determined by you and whether or not you think the act is good or bad. The reason for this is because everybody see deviance in different ways. What maybe good to you may not necessarily be good to someone else. The things that we do are constantly being put to a test by us and others, and what can be deviant or not is always being judged.

1. The men that don't have any jobs to go to, no life, and stand on the street corners all day, are mostly the drug dealers. This is a deviant act because this specific act goes against the everyday norms in our community. In other words this specific kind of act would be called collective conscience.

2. Being LGBT is considered unacceptable in the world we're living in, because the norm is suppose to be people living a heterosexual lifestyle.

3. If you're a black man who committed a crime, you're going to be looked upon others as the typical black man who's always getting into trouble with the law. Not only would people think this of you, but you yourself will begin to have the same mind frame. The reason for that is because you know what the different stereotypes are being a black man in the United States, which is also the same as labeling theory.

4. Suppose a 50 year old man is dating a 15 year old girl and soon later have sex with her, but the man doesn't know the girl is 15 because she lied to him about her age and said she was 23 years old. The man eventually gets caught by the police and now he's in jail. Plus, he has to go register as a sex offender. This man is in jail for something he wasn't aware of and he know feels ashamed of himself because, he has to be called and looked at a title that he didn't intend to bring on himself. He know feels stigma in a act that wasn't tensional at all.

5. Interracial marriages are looked at as deviant towards others and the norms. The expectations from our society (Specifically Racist People) are, the same races should stick with only their race.

6. People that are on welfare are suppose to be deviant because, the norm is you waking up in the morning to go to a regular 9 to 5 job. Where you can make your own money and support yourself. Instead of looking for other people to give you handouts from the government and tax payers.

The article Positive Functions of the Understanding Poor: Uses of the Underclass in America written by Herbert J. Gans, is about how the poor is looked at as undeserving because they fail to meet society norms. The five functions that are listed in the article which are microsocial, economic, normative-cultural, political, and macrosocial are the five functions that the poor are categorize under. They say all these negative things about the poor, like what the poor need to do, and what the poor need should stop doing, but never looked at the fact that the poor people are the ones that's helping our world get better. To be honest we wouldn't have a world if it weren't for the poor. Politicians doesn't see it that way because their so focused on the negatives instead of the positives. This is the point that the article is trying to make on this situation about the so-called undeserving poor.