Deviance

Deviance is behavior that violates the standards of conduct or expectations of a group or society. Here are some examples in which we can see some deviance behaviors in our life.

1- Kony runs the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Africa and is responsible for massacres, mass rapes, and creating a legion of child soldiers. He has evaded capture for nearly three decades. This is a formal deviant behavior because this African man is training kids to be criminals and even kill their own parents.

2- Gay marriage is something normal for gay and mostly for the rest of society. They say marriage is about love not about gender but there are people that will see this as a deviant behavior because for straight people, this will be weird and they will not support it.

3- Having tattoos and piercing all over your body it’s nothing illegal but it seems to be part of deviant behavior. I think people heavily tattooed are seemed as criminal by the society. They also tend to be the people that cause most of the chaos in society.

4. Tyler Clementi was an eighteen years old student who jumped and killed himself from the George Washington Bridge because his roommate used his camera without Clementi’s knowledge by recording Tyler kissing another guy. He uploaded the video to twitter where many people was able to watch it. Deviance is seemed in this case because his roommate violates his freedom.

5. My knowledge about the Ku Klux Klan is that this is an organization of white U.S American people against immigrants. It all started since African Americans came here as slaves and they fought for their freedom, once they were free and had their home, the Ku Klux Klan took action and started killing them and burning their houses and pertinence. This shows a deviance behavior from white people because they did things that society used to see as normal even though they were acting as cruel.

6. When I was in eleven grade I had a friend in school that was sixteen and she was a good student but suddenly she end up being pregnant, we all was surprised. In our senior year, her baby was a little grown and she could go to school but her baby was a priority to her and she left school and she couldn’t complete high school. This is a deviant behavior because she cannot offer to her son a better future and a good income for her and her children.

The article Positive Functions of the Undeserving Poor: Uses of the Underclass in America by Herbert J. Gans talks about the strange alliance between the poor and the wealthy in American society. Poor people and poor people of color are disproportionately labeled as underclass and undeserving.  The unfortunate are blame for most of the crimes and unacceptable behaviors that occurred in our society just because of the stereotypes they supposedly into. They are called lazy and are consider to have a higher criminal activities than any other class or rich people because they either dropout of school or can’t get a job to stay out of trouble. Being labeled make them fall into the “labeling theory” which is an approach to deviance that attempts to explain why certain people are viewed as deviants while other engaged in the same behavior are not. That is why being labeled in this way can cause criminal to stay criminals and they aren't seen as a positive function, they are seen more towards negative. In conclusion, the society will always continue to have a gap between the poor and the wealthy people and will create an unequal balance and will contribute to an equal treatment.