The hardest part of this research question was determining a selected population to examine. After all, if the goal is to determine who is considered deviant in U.S. Culture, it therefore becomes imperative to examine a population that can serve as a microcosm to the United States. I struggled on finding a suitable population until I realized there was a town I knew of that fit the microcosm I was looking for, a town that best exemplifies U.S. culture, and my favorite town that ever never was, South Park.
South Park is a small town located in the South Park basin in the Rocky Mountains of central Colorado. The town is composed of mostly lower to upper-income families and individuals. The town of South Park contains operations in science and industry, such as an observatory and a geology research lab, as well as farming and agriculture, such as Rancher Bob’s cattle farm. Because of this, the town of South Park is broken up into a dichotomy of white-collar and blue-collar individuals.
The town contains a majority of White/Caucasian, sisgender and sexually straight individuals. However, South Park is home to a number of gays and lesbians, who are generally well received and included in the community (the town even contains a tasteful lesbian bar called Les Bos.) As far as race and ethnicity are concerned, South Park is also home to a handful of individuals of different races and ethnicities, including the African-American elementary school chef Chef (until he fell off a cliff and was ripped apart by a bear and mountain lion) and fourth grade student Tokin Black, as well as Chinese Immigrant Mr. Lu Kim, the owner and operator of City Wok Restaurant. Mr. Herbert Garrison, the elementary school’s fourth grade teacher, had once identified as transgender and underwent a sex change operation. After the operation, she had changed her name to Ms. Janet Garrison, until she realized she wanted to be a man again and had the sex operation reversed after she paid scientists to grow a new penis for her, and is once again Mr. Garrison (he now identifies himself as sisgender.)
This research is about monitoring individuals human behaviors, and about whom individuals (in U.S. culture) label as deviant. I chose to observe a sample of individuals I know in South Park, and to watch and listen to their day to day interactions and conversations, so I could determine who these individuals label as deviant. These groups were labeled as deviant based upon language, action and particular context used by a person or persons towards them. NOTE: There are many groups and individuals that are targeted and labeled as deviant in South Park, but due to the parameters of the assignment my sample may only contain a short list. Those that were chosen were chosen based on the last few occasions I had when I visited the town of South Park.
To begin, I examined the often louder, angrier, and outspoken group of people who make up half of the town of South Park. I am referring to the more rural, conservative members of the South Park Community. These individuals are almost if not entirely all White/Caucasian, sisgender males (although there are a number of females that reside in this group as well.) I spent a great deal of time listening to them, and they did indeed speak out against certain groups of people. In fact, most of what this group did was speak ill of other types of individuals.
The groups these individuals labeled as deviant were usually individuals who had a more liberal worldview, and who stood for more liberal policies and ideologies. On more than one occasion, I observed these blue-collared members of South Park engaging in debates with the more liberal, white-collared members. These debates have on occasion become so heated that the two groups will physically engage each other, erupting in a bloody and violent riot.
The other groups these individuals often label as deviant are immigrants, usually ones who enter the country illegally or by some unethical means. For example, I saw many members of this rural community volunteered to be border agents so they could keep immigrants from coming over and to quote one man, “Take r jobbs!” I also observed them organizing and protesting against individuals that teleported from the future, so they could attain jobs to provide for their families by collecting interest on the funds they would leave in bank accounts in our time. These rural individuals expressed much outrage of these future individuals “Takin thur Jobbs”, and quickly labeled these individuals as deviant, going so far as to create the slur “Goobacks” when referring to them. It seemed clear to me that these individuals were most concerned about anyone who could threaten the dominance that white men have carried over the years in our country, and will quickly label ANYONE as deviant who stands to change any policy that distributes power or opportunity.
I was able to obtain pieces of footage from a number of their rallies and political debates:
I decided after engaging with the rural, blue-collar individuals of South Park, I needed to hear what the suburban, white-collar individuals had to say, and specifically, who they considered to be deviant. These individuals were again mostly White and/or Caucasian but did include more minorities than the rural white-collard group. They were predominantly straight but included more members of the gay community, and contained more women than the rural group did. (However they are still mostly all sisgender individuals.)
The first thing I noticed about the suburban, white-collard individuals is that they definitely kept their conversations about deviant groups quieter, and more inside their own circles as the rural groups. But that’s not to say there weren’t people being ridiculed, judged, and feared by these white-collared individuals; in fact they seemed to be more meticulous about who they consider deviant than the blue-collar group did. For starters I overheard them making judgments about senior citizens, going as far as to proposing legislation in their community that would ban seniors from driving vehicles. They also did not seem to keen on loud or rambunctious individuals. I came to this conclusion after observing a large portion of the community rallying against individuals who had moved to South Park from New Jersey.
They seemed to take issue with environmentalist to a certain extent, when they openly criticized a member of their community for acting smug while driving his new Prius. I have also overheard them criticizing others religions, stating some as nonsense and at one time had suggested that the Jewish members of the community apologize for killing Jesus. On one of my last visits to South Park the townspeople were losing their minds in fear do to the influx of the homeless population in the city, suggesting that they behave more like zombies than actual people. I found a clip someone put together of the incident that shows an individual running for his life from the growing number homeless individuals.
And although racism did not appear on the surface to be something of an issue with the white-collar community, there were times when racial subjects were brought up that created quite a bit of tension in the room. One such event occurred when I went to watch my friend Randy when he went on Wheel of Fortune: NAGGERS VIDEO
What stood out about these individuals was that it seemed like they wanted to say more, but were often afraid about what everyone else in the group might think. For example, I believe that many of these people carried a more cynical view of minorities than they were actually letting on.
After engaging with the adults of South Park from the rural, blue-collard and suburban, white-collard perspective, I decided I should engage the youth of South Park and listen to their interactions. After all, children are usually more open and less reserved than adults, and therefore I could collect a more genuine account of who they labeled as deviant. The children I listened to varied between ages, once again most appeared to be sisgender males and females, and nearly all of them where White and/or Caucasian (one 4th grader was African-American or Black.)
While listening to these children, I noticed that they were indeed more critical of people, and were indeed more open about it. In terms of labeling deviance, the school kids targeted the nerdy kids, ugly loners, the ginger kids, and the Goth kids while I was within earshot. Meanwhile, some of the words or phrases used to put others down were often attributed to either homosexual or feminine concepts; terms like fag, faggot, pussy, and douche were all used frequently, meaning that in a society dominated by men, to be labeled as someone feminine is to be labeled someone of less importance or respect.
To conclude this sample I decided to engage with one of the children I was listening to at the school who had by far the most negative and critical things to say about individuals or groups of people. Since he is under legal age I will refer to him only as Cartman. Cartman is a fourth grade student at South Park Elementary. He is a straight, sisgender male, and identifies himself as white.
Cartman, even more so than his schoolmates, is openly critical of many groups; he most often labels one of his friends as deviant for being Jewish, and one of his closest friends for being poor. Cartman has openly criticized a number of religious groups including Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, and Scientology. Cartman has also criticized people based on race and skin tone. One example I saw was when a classmate asked him if he thinks he is going to go to heaven, Cartman responded with “Of course I’m not going to hell Butters, I’m not black.” On another occasion, I witnessed Cartman giving a presentation to his class about the dangers of ginger kids, that being kids with red hair, light skin and freckles. I was able to videotape his presentation and have posted it below for you to observe:
Like his classmates, Cartman also uses homosexual and feminine references to belittle those around him with the phrases I stated previously. Cartman also seems to label women as deviant, or inferior regardless of their age or gender; an instance of this occurred when I saw him give another presentation mocking breast cancer, as well as treating his mother more as a maid than a parental caregiver. What I learned from Cartman was that he most clearly emphasized his opinion of those he labeled as deviant, and did so in the most blunt and critical way. However, I do believe he was genuine about how he felt more so than anyone else I encountered which leads me to speculate that perhaps these groups of people he labels as deviant, are those others would label as deviant but are to afraid to say out loud or out in public.
We have loosely defined deviance in our class is any behavior or action that goes against social norms. What we as individuals must remember is that people are different all over the place, even in your own backyard. Meaning the values and beliefs that you define in your life as normal, may not in fact be the values and beliefs your neighbor believes are normal. Therefore, you may look upon them as deviant even if you share a number of similar views or beliefs; as long as there is a substantial enough difference in social norms, you will continue to see the other as deviant. For example if there is a person who is a heavily religious individual and attends church every Sunday, if he or she has a neighbor who is someone who does not believe in God, that person will see there neighbor as a deviant individual. This does not mean that the religious person will think the neighbor is as a bad person, just that the social norms he or she lives by do not equate to the social norms the neighbor lives by.
In the United States, we stand proud as a nation that considers itself a giant melting pot of the world. With that, come many different ideals, principles, beliefs, and behaviors that will inevitably differ from one individual to another. After spending some time in the town of South Park, I believe I did indeed find a town that is a microcosm of U.S. culture. I will conclude this blog post by examining three sociological ideas that have been presented to us so far in class, and connect them to what it means to be a deviant in U.S. culture.
The first idea I would like to express is taken from the article Power, Privilege, Difference and Us by Allan Johnson. On page 81 and 82 of his article Johnson writes:
“What we experience as social life happens through a complex dynamic between all kinds of systems – families, schools, workplaces, communities, entire societies – and the choices people make as they participate in them and help make them happen. How we experience the world and ourselves, our sense of other people, and the ongoing reality of the systems themselves all arise, take shape, and happen through this dynamic.” (Johnson, 81-82).
This means that the world you surround yourself in, the community you are apart of, has a direct influence on the social norms you yourself will attain, and therefore, who you will label as deviant. It is also important to note that while these social norms are indeed imbedded into ones worldview or society, that does not mean that such norms and ideas of deviance cannot change. Take Cartman for instance, many of the groups he labels as deviant may appall us such openly discriminating blacks or women, yet years ago it was considered the social norm to think of blacks and/ or women as inferior (in regards to a white man), but over time the societies, communities, and individuals grew to change their opinion on both blacks and women. This shows that while the community around you may shape whom you consider to be deviant, it does not mean that community cannot change its views on deviance.
The next idea that pertains to deviance is the idea of a master status. The concept of a master status is when something becomes your master status, it then becomes the first thing about you people notice. Take for example the ridiculed ginger kids in South Park. While they are all individual people with thoughts, feelings, talents, and opinions, the first thing about them when they notice them is their red hair, pale skin, and freckles (and perhaps the notion that that have no souls) and because of that one creates a pre-conceived idea that ginger kids are somehow creepy, perhaps even evil. Because of master statuses, many people do not see individuals as they truly are, but instead as a cookie-cutter cutout of what they believe that person is.
I will conclude with briefly discussing the idea of being an outsider. As stated by Howard Becker in his article Outsiders: Defining Deviance, he states, “When a rule is enforced, the person who is supposed to have broken it may be seen as a special kind of person, one who cannot be trusted to live by the rules agreed upon by society” (Becker, 1). These individuals are called outsiders. As we perceive them, outsiders usually are considered bad, or negative. This is because the social norms that society follows, these individuals have questioned or rejected. Because of this, we are quick to disassociate from them, and on occasion, they are equally quick to disassociate from us. Take for example this video of the Goth kids in South Park being interviewed
Deviance is without a doubt, a social construction that is used to define what we perceive as normal, and to discredit and distance ourselves from what we believe is not. Because of this, mankind has divided itself in order to attain feelings or perceptions of superiority. The downside is, we will never get rid of the idea of labeling individuals or groups as deviant, it may change from one group to another, but difference, paranoia and envy will always keep people divided. Now for the upside, YOU can always make your own choice; it’s the freewill that nobody can take away from you. You can choose to see people not as a label, but as the individual they are. You can choose to remember that people differ in their ideals and beliefs, and that it’s better to embrace than to divide. In regards to humanity embracing that idea, I don’t think it’ll ever come.
But if you can embrace it, you should come on down to South Park, and meet some friends of mine.
Word Count: 2,893
Photos provided by southparkstudios.com
Videos provided by youtube.com
The town of South Park is fictional, as are the individuals are stories told. If you didn’t know that….wow.