Sociology Ozark Missouri - 1225 Words

Ozark, MO; Population: 18,348, Demographics: 90.9% White, 5.5% Hispanic, 2.6% Interracial, 0.4% African American, 0.4% Asian, and 0.2% American Indian, Median Income: $48,929. (1) Ozark, Missouri is the place where I lived for the first nineteen years of my life. I was raised in a middle class, interracial, family consisting of Irish and Mexican bloodlines. My mom and I are white, my step-dad is Hispanic, and my brother is White/Hispanic. The majority of my friend’s family’s socioeconomic status is in the $200,000 to $300,000 income bracket. Our town also includes the fourth largest Assembly of God church in the United States with an average attendance of 8, 850. (2) This is the society I grew up in and there are a lot of things I†¦show more content†¦When it comes to my social structures effect on my life, in regards to enabling and constraining my options, I feel I am more enabled than constrained in life. However, I believe that often I am enabled by soc iety because it has constrained me to believe that what society expects of me is also what I want and expect of myself. The individual desires of my life, such as: doing well in high school, so that I can get into college, so that I can get a good job, so that I can make more money, so I can enjoy my life, seem to align so much with what I believe my family, community, and society expect of me that it’s hard not to see the constraints that society puts on my thoughts. Some of these constraints that almost control my thoughts are the ideas: that college is the best route to being successful in life after high school, that a hard work ethic is the best characteristic to have, and that monetary success is a route to happiness. I believe that ideas like this are still quite engrained in American society and it will be a long time before I, and the whole of the population of the United States, begin to accept non capitalistic ideas about how to live life. Although I do feel there is kind of a set path in my beliefs regarding economics, politics, and religion, I also feel like I do have a right to make a wider range of choices in my personal life that will have less of an effect on the way society views me, such