Social Awareness

Social Awareness

Social Awareness

Social consciousness is awareness shared within a society. It can also be defined as social awareness; to be aware of the problems that different societies and communities face on a day-to-day basis; to be conscious of the difficulties and hardships of society. A subject with an acquired social awareness derives his or her viewpoint from the mainstream culture. This individual avoids identifying himself or herself with a marginalized culture. This individual generally is either not aware of or does not acknowledge the way differences among people affect the treatment they receive within a society. This individual is not fully active in society. The person with an acquired social awareness does not question mainstream viewpoints, and acts accordingly, without confrontation. A subject with an awakened social awareness explores alternatives to the dominant cultural viewpoint (Black, 1995). This person might identify with a marginalized group, but the mainstream culture is central to his or her questioning or exploration. The subject recognizes and challenges social injustice (Dean, 1996). The person actively resists power and authority. The focus of discontent and action is often over the right to be visible, to have choice, or to be self-determining. A subject with an expanded social awareness strongly identifies with their marginalized group. This person views status as a continuously changing social construct, thus viewing responses as a lifelong process. This individual has an understanding of the complexity of the social hierarchy, and acts carefully after weighing both sides. Social awareness brings moral implications. Often, people with an awakened social awareness become socially active. A socially conscious person tends to be empathetic towards others regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, disability, class, or sexual identity (Dean, 1996).

The over popularized and wrong assumption that poverty converts everyone into a criminal is fought off by Michael Patrick McDonald but, the question lies in what exactly made him overcome his strenuous surroundings? The narrative, in his, book All Souls: A Famlily Story from Southie exposes his awareness of his social class, which is what eventually frees him from the bedlam that others couldn't overcome. Michael realized his calling was to become an activist; then later in life as a compelling truth-telling writer. His two books All Souls and Easter Rising can attest to that. He established a gun buy-back program where he would buy back guns from the neighborhood and destroy them. He also worked as an activist helping victims of violence in Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan that were mostly Boston neighborhoods, but he wasn't always so keen to help out. He grew up in an impoverished, welfare check collecting; look out for you, kind of community (Black, 1995). A community so intense that it “had a death culture” (Charlie Rose interview) attached to it that ensnared many people to their deaths; among those deaths would include is four brothers (Dean, 1996). In his book All Souls, time and time again, people would die off like old culture fads from drugs, crimes, or suicides that engulfed the ...