Remembering 9/11

HW: Read Joel Charon's Should We Generalize?

September 11, 2001 was earth-shattering for those who were living through it.  Over the years, stories and lessons have emerged from that day.  So, on the anniversary of 9/11, I want to post about it as a way of remembering those who died that day but also to learn something from that day.  

Rare 9/11 footage from the 29 minutes in between the collapse of the two towers from photojournalist Mark LaGanga on 60 Minutes including the man carrying briefcases "having a really bad day."

The story of the falling man photo from Time photographer.

Two French filmmakers happened to be filming NY firefighters on the job at the time of the 9/11 attacks.  Their footage became a documentary called 9/11 and was later purchased by CNN.  

The full documentary is available here at bitchute.  Also, PRI did a story about the documentary on the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11.  The PRI story is here and includes a link to the updated documentary.

A firefighter from Manhattan retells his experience working on 9/11 to the OWN network.

My Experience 

My own personal experience was that I was teaching sociology in a room in the 2900 hallway when Mr. Frantonius came into my room in a hurry and said turn on your TV, the pentagon is on fire and the world trade center is on fire.  We turned on the TV to live coverage and we watched the mayhem including live footage of the crash into tower 2 of the World Trade Center.   I remember leaving and trying to figure out what to tell my students in non-western cultures class third period.  Then, I had to travel to the other building and going outside was transformational - it was a beautiful sunny September day and the birds were singing oblivious to the horrors that people were going through.  It was comforting to think of creation and nature being so at peace.  Anyway, I had to teach the rest of the day despite the turmoil of emotions that we all experienced.  Looking back, there are some lessons to be learned and I think they all relate in part to sociology, certainly when considering sociological mindfulness.

Disaster and Altruism

One way to think about 9/11 is through all of the love and heroism that was displayed during that traumatic day. There are so many stories of strangers helping each other and displaying unbelievable acts of courage and love - from the Port Authority of NY to the police, fire and other first responders to those who just happened to be at work that day and found themselves in a situation to help others.  Lee Clarke's 2001 study is one sociology study (for more info. see Ferris and Stein 448-450) of how people in a disaster tend to help each other.  We are wired for being cooperative and helping others. (More on this in our unit on socialization.)  It was an incredible illustration that when life seems senseless and unbearable, we can ask ourselves, "How can I serve?" In other words, what can I do to help my fellow people and how can I make this world a bit better. That gives meaning to our life just as it did to those people on 9/11. Sociologically, humans were made to need each other. 

My Mom's Experience at O'Hare
One example from my own life this day was my mom who worked at O'Hare Airport as a ticket agent. After the attacks, O'Hare was closed down and all the employees and passengers were being forced to evacuate. As this was going on, an elderly woman who had trouble seeing approached my mom and asked what she should do. My mom said that the airline would get a hotel room for her. The woman said that the nearest available rooms were in a far suburb away from the airport. So, my mom said, "You know what? You come home with me." And she did. This total stranger lived with my parents for four days! It was that kind of caring that these horrible events brought out. 

The Man in the Red Bandanna

Welles Crowther was another hero on that day. His story from ESPN is here.  

"Everyone who can stand, stand now.  If you can help others, do so."

Man with Red Bandanna website here which includes a trailer for a documentary about Welles.

Boatlift

Here is a video displaying some of this heroism and caring in the largest water evacuation in history.

Gander, Newfoundland
Here is another example about the people living in the small town of Gander in Newfoundland, Canada and how they came to the aid of hundreds of people. 

Stereotypes

One of the most direct ways that I think sociologically about 9/11 is in the discussion of stereotypes and categories. I posted about this here too. The attackers on 9/11 claimed to be Muslim but that should not be turned into a stereotype about all Muslims. There is a powerful video that illustrates how Muslims were stereotyped after 9/11 and the video also shows how these stereotypes are shattered when you see the full spectrum of Muslims in America.
The speech in that video illustrates the same type of racist, intolerance that led to the attacks on 9/11. I think that September 11 can be a day to remember that we are all connected and we all share this world, and this can be done in peace and tolerance, even if we are not all in agreement. Don't let the hurt and anger give way to stereotypes, injustice and hatred.

Here is a Moth story from Khalid Latif, an imam who was a student in NYC on 9/11.

In fact, one of the first people killed by this hatred and ignorance was not even Muslim.  Balbir Singh Sodhi was killed outside of the gas station that he owned in Mesa, Arizona on September 15, 2001.  He was killed because he was a Sikh and wore a Turban.  He was targeted because he dressed differently and his killer assumed (outgroup homogeneity) that he was not American and therefore a muslim and therefore a terrorist. 

Here is an NPR Storycorps interview about Mr. Sodhi's brothers.
Here is a CNN story about how Mr. Sodhi's brother has chosen forgiveness.

Here is a story from American University about how life changed for Muslims and Sikhs after 9/11.

It is our nature to love one another and be cooperative. We often lose sight of that in our individualistic culture. Here is a quote from two survivors of 9/11:

On a personal level, Mel and Lisa learned several lessons from that day. “Be patient, be tolerant and above all tell people you love them every single day,” Lisa said. “Hate drove that day. The lesson is to never hate. Hate does damage. People didn’t need to die that day.”

Read more: http://rapidcityjournal.com/thechadronnews/latest/couple-say-lessons-are-patience-tolerance-love/article_ef9e8656-d8ca-11e0-8657-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1Y3NoAXGC 

Sociological Mindfulness and the Human Experience

Steve Osborne's "Takedown Day" from the Moth storytelling slam.
And one last story by former NYPD cop, Steve Osborn who helps us understand what it's like to be a cop on most days and how that translated to 9/11.  And if you watch his story until the end, you see a great example of how even a little kid (Alex) can make a difference in someone's life.  It's a reminder to be sociologically mindful.

Education as Functional Institution

Here is an NYT article about how 9/11 is taught around the world revealing that curriculum and textbooks are often a function for the society that they are in.

Content Analysis

 Here is an example of content analysis about climate change from the ASA :

Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve's Crook County - Example of ethnography

From the ASA an explanation about her ethnography on Youtube:

From Stanford University Press, Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve published a scathing account of Racism in Chicago's Cook County Courthouse.  Van Cleve, who is from Chicagoland originally,  spent ten years while at tending Northwestern U.  researching the Cook County Courthouse, the largest courthouse in the United States.  She is currently a sociology professor at Brown University.

Embedded below is an interview with Dr. Van Cleve on PBS:

Here is a bookreview from the ASA:  

There are three central aspects to Gonzalez Van Cleve’s argument in Crook County: her focus on professionals, her detailing of racial abuses, and her critical analysis of racism and racial injustice as embedded within court culture. Perhaps the most essential is her inverted lens on the court professionals. Rather than focusing on the impacts of an unjust criminal system on the Black and Brown individuals who pass through it, Gonzalez Van Cleve instead highlights the ways these injustices are carried out by the very professionals tasked with upholding and administering fair and just due process. In turning the lens on criminal justice professionals, Gonzalez Van Cleve articulates how systemic racism is managed, perpetuated, practiced, and understood by those “doing” colorblind racism, particularly in how they carry out unchecked racialized court abuses.

From Amazon,

Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve spent ten years working in and investigating the largest criminal courthouse in the country, Chicago–Cook County, and based on over 1,000 hours of observation, she takes readers inside our so-called halls of justice to witness the types of everyday racial abuses that fester within the courts, often in plain sight. We watch white courtroom professionals classify and deliberate on the fates of mostly black and Latino defendants while racial abuse and due process violations are encouraged and even seen as justified. Judges fall asleep on the bench. Prosecutors hang out like frat boys in the judges' chambers while the fates of defendants hang in the balance. Public defenders make choices about which defendants they will try to ""save"" and which they will sacrifice. Sheriff's officers cruelly mock and abuse defendants' family members. Crook County's powerful and at times devastating narratives reveal startling truths about a legal culture steeped in racial abuse. Defendants find themselves thrust into a pernicious legal world where courtroom actors live and breathe racism while simultaneously committing themselves to a colorblind ideal. Gonzalez Van Cleve urges all citizens to take a closer look at the way we do justice in America and to hold our arbiters of justice accountable to the highest standards of equality.

And here is an essay that Dr. VanCleve tweeted during the unprecedented pandemic of 2020-21:

https://contexts.org/blog/education-under-covid-19/ 

2 SocResearch BINGO! I found my research! Lesson 6

 RESEARCH BINGO!  

You can download this Bingo card by clicking here.

2 SocResearch Lesson 5cont'd

 

Reviewing the general types of research:

General Types of Sociological Research

• Longitudinal - a study that examines specific subjects over an extended period time.  For example, a researcher might interview kids at age 5, then at age 15 and then again at 25.  Some research is conducted over the course of decades by different researchers.
• Cross-sectional - a study that examines a group of people at a single point in time.  For example, like taking a section of cake that has different layers, a researcher might take a sample of people from a group like SHS.  The research might examine 10 students from each grade to get an understanding of the school as a whole. 
• Cross-cultural - a study that compares subjects from two or more cultures.
• Qualitative or Quantitative - qualitative is subjective and descriptive; it examines the qualities about a subject.  Quantitative is objective and involves examining numbers or statistics.
• Historical analysis - examing changes over time in comparison to present-day. 

1. What general type of research is your article?

Small group:  Explain what type of research your article is to your group.  Ask questions.  Help each other understand.

Now let's examine the specific ways that sociologists gather their research.  For more info,  Open Stax sociology textbook explains the methods in this chapter, see their graphic organizer below:

Methods of sociological research

These are some of the more common methods of research that you will come across in sociology:

Qualitative:

Survey - interviews that are open-ended 

Field work/ethnography - observing subjects by living with them, watching them and taking notes 

Content Analysis - examining the content of media or other cultural productions

 

Quantitative: 

Survey - questionnaires that are close-ended such as multiple choice or likert scale.

Experiment/Audit study - comparing the responses of two or more different reactions.

Statistical analysis - existing sources (data sets, such as GSS or Census data)

2.  Which of the methods above does Venkatesh use in the excerpt from Gang Leader? Explain when/how.  (Arguably he does 5 of them!)

3.  What methods are in your article?

Important considerations in research;  The importance of both ethics and peer-review in research:

Read this critique of Venkatesh's work and answer the question below.

4.  What are the criticisms of Venkatesh's Gang Leader research?

For more info on Venkatesh's work:

• Gang Leader for a Day on Amazon. 
• Read an excerpt from the book and download Venkatesh reading and talking about his book from NPR. 
• Venkatesh speaking on the Colbert Report and he explains that there are important ways of doing research correctly.
• Venkatesh speaking about his book and the research he did.  
• An interview at slate.com between Venkatesh and Alex Kotlowitz (There Are No Children Here).