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Race and Ethnicity In the constantly altering modern society that we inhabit, the ever changing inhabitants of this society are always trying to find new or old ways to identify one and to relate one to each others. This section engages the first two main concepts of race and ethnicity and how people in the society perceive each other applying these two main concepts. Prejudice, the last concept will be discussed in this section and the relation to the first two topic. The operationalization of these three topics comes beforehand so that one will be able to measure them and discuss them in the movie Juno. Race, being the first topic has basic definition related to dividing people into populations or groups on the basis of various sets of physical characteristics which result from genetic ancestry. These physical characteristics can be from the skin color of an individual to any other physical trait. To start off, the concept of race in society has been established to show the inferiority or superiority of another group of people. Individuals who claim to be form the same race usually come to that conclusion through physical traits that may be natural or asserted. In terms of science, the scientific basis of racial distinctions has been proven to be inaccurate. Scientific studies show that racial genetic differences are weak except in skin color. In attempting to measure the race of an individual, the attributes of measurements are skin color and hair texture. For the skin color, the easiest known form of identification is Caucasian, Negroid and Mongoloid. For the hair texture, there will be fine, straight or wavy for the Caucasian, coarse and very curly for the Negroid and straight and medium for Mongoloid. In the movie Juno, the diversity of race is very minimal with all primary and secondary characters being Caucasian. In her high school, the presence of Caucasian is very well observed and the presence of the other minorities is very small and hard to notice. Juno, the principal character has only a few friends

and all of them are Caucasian with an exception of her new Mongoloid friend she gained after deciding not to abort the pregnancy. Not being a popular girl in her school, Juno is quite the social person. She is even able to have a conversion with the most popular guy from her school. The movies depicts the idea that most people that are confined to a race will stick to that race and will not try to exceed boundaries and meet new people from different races. This is also depicted in the movie when she is looking for adoptive parents, all adoptive parents that were on the list were considered wealthy with a good marriage relationship and most likely Caucasians. Secondly, ethnicity in defined by ones nationality and cultural characteristics, rather than their physical traits (Caron, 2012). There are many ways in which individuals group themselves as ethnic groups which may be different depending on the different ethnic groups. The members in any specific ethnic group should be able to identify with each other, on the basis of a real or a presumed common ancestry. Individuals who claim to be from the same ethnic group have similar shared cultural traits and a shared group history. Some ethnic groups also share linguistic or religious traits, while others share a common group history but not a common language or religion. To operationalize this topic, I have assigned my variables to be shared values, shared norms and shared experiences. The shared values will be recognised and will make it easy to measure the concept by knowing the morale lesson between individuals values. The shared norms will let us determine how individuals treat each other and how they feel toward one another. The shared experiences will allow us to determine the type of relation set between individuals and will help us measure the ethnicity in this movie. All these attributes differ from one ethnic group to another one but also help determine the culture and similarities an ethnic group shares. In the movie, as Juno is heading to the entrance of the abortion office, she meets a Mongoloid girl named Su-Chin who is protesting against abortion alone. Since Juno found about

the pregnancy, this girl was the only one who actually advised her not to abort. All other advices were telling her abort the pregnancy. This portrays the fact that the presence of similar physical traits does not necessarily mean shared values. It also represents the shared norms between her and her new friend Su-Chin as they both believe in keeping a life. Another representation in the movie is in the same scene where Juno offered to give Su-Chin some prescribed medicine used for attention deficit disorder. To my surprise, Su-Chin and both Juno were on the same page in terms of them both previously taken the pill and now they had both decide to stop taking them because of the side effects. This portrays the same idea that both girls have shared values, norms and experiences although their historical backgrounds are not similar. Throughout the movie, the opinion of each individual towards teenage pregnancy is that the child should be up for adoption rather than the teenager having to be a mom. Junos parents, friends and her babys father all agreed to give up the child for adoption since she is wont be able to take care of the baby. This is an example of a shared norm that everyone agreed with between the groups. Ethnic groups transcend boundaries set by sex and age. In Juno, The adoptive father who is really a quiet man surprisingly found himself sharing norms and experiences with the pregnant teenage girl. Most would have thought that Juno would be closer with the adoptive mother as she was going through the pregnancy. It was clear that the age interval between the man and the girl was large, and the fact that they are from different sexes could not be ignored. Juno was able to go above these boundaries by finding her passion in music with the adoptive parent Mark. Lastly, prejudice is a prejudgment, a supposition made about someone or something before having adequate relevant information to be able to do so. An individual who prejudges and disrespects people because theyre a different race, gender, or religion than them are prejudices (Diffen 2012). One can also be prejudiced against someones physical condition, or

ability to do something. People can become prejudiced for all sorts of reasons, but one thing is always the same; people are not born prejudiced but taught to be that way. To measure prejudice, I have decided to use attitudes and opinions as my method of measurements. Attitudes will be categorized by being positive or negative. Opinions will be categorized by elements such as bias and non-bias. In the movie, when Juno is at the hospital for a check up on her pregnancy, the nurse gives her opinion on how she feels that teenage mothers raising infants are the worst conditions for the new born baby. This was actually a negative attitude portrayed by the nurse who believes that every teenage mother is poisonous to its child. At the same time, the nurse portrays prejudice against teenage mothers because of her usual knowledge from seeing teenage girl suffers. On the whole, the concepts of ethnicity and prejudice are clearly portrayed throughout the movie Juno. Ethnicity can be measured through examining the shared values, norms and experiences of different individuals. By examining the main characters and how they feel towards each other, we can measure the prejudice in this movie. On the other hand, there was really not enough depiction of race in the movie. Race which is usually shown with the Caucasian, Negroid and Mongoloid elements through physical characteristics is rarely depicted in this movie.

Reflexivity In the movie Juno, to find fully relative examples that would support the topics that we each chose individually, everyone had to employ their own research method. Initially, since we were confident of each other, our method was that everyone chooses their topic and goes to watch the movie individually on their own time. We had chosen perspective group dates on which we would meet and share our work to review and help one another. To choose our movie, we met in a lecture and tried to find a movie that would be able to have enough examples of all the six main topics. The reason why Juno was suggested was because it had a lot of information regarding modern problems concerning teenagers. It was at the same time a comical movie that would not be uninteresting to watch and analyse. The selection of the first two topics out of the mandatory topics for each group member was purely based on choice of interest. To divide the work equally and somewhat fairly, we had decided that after everyone had chosen their final topics we would set up a group meeting in which as group we would work on the rest of the assignment. Honestly, as a group, we achieved very little work in the amount of time given. The meetings that were appointed were not really resourceful since we only stayed together for about fifteen minutes. At most of the meetings, Not all group members were present at all times because different schedule and poor time management. After we had realized that we had very little time to finish the last part of the project, we decide that we would have to once again share the rest of the work independently. At the very start, our first difficulty was that we did not watch the movie together nor did we meet to discuss the movie. It made our work difficult, that a single individual would be writing the reflection concerning the group when rarely our group met. It made it extremely on that individual to reflect on the part of the group but it was also clear to the whole group that the group did not really reflect together as one. To

complete our topics, we asked helped from our T.A to help us with a third topic to pick which he did and told us that there were more choices in the assignment instructions. Some of us got our third topic from those suggested to us. When it comes to the research project, it was really difficult to operationalize topics that are so closely related such as race and ethnicity mainly and then class and power. In the movie Juno, it was difficult to find examples of race and ethnicity in a movie where all main characters are Caucasians. The movie is situated in a non-urban, small town where the possibility of viewing multiple ethnic group or multiculturalism was very minimal. There were numerous examples that could be related to the topic of Gender and sexual orientation since most modern movies concerning teenagers always touch topic such as those two. Operationalizing our perspective topics was not an easy task considering that we had find ways to measure our concept in the movie that was really one sided in terms of relation to concepts. On the other side, it was really easy to point out in the movie that it was lacking some essential components that would make it easy to relate to the topics. The part of the task where we had to discuss and relate our operationalization to the movie that is being studied was the least difficult to complete since the hardest part was operationalizing. Finding examples was easy because it was matter of watching the movies and pointing out what was related to your topic. If not, then it was easy to prove that our topics were not present in the movie. The operationalization section, taking the most time, was difficult because we had to find the definition of our concept in our own words so that we could translate our opinions clearly. The most difficult of this part was reflecting on the project as a group who worked confidently independently but could not manage our time properly. The reflection part requires the whole group to give their suggestions and opinions that they talked over together.

The groups strength was working independently on the concepts that we all chose. Doing this meant we all had understood how to operationalize a topic. A clear strength was letting our members choose their topics by choice so that nobody would be forced to work on a topic that is not interesting to them. Time management and group work for us was one of main weaknesses. We could not all meet up on the set dates of appointment, therefore we were really forced to work kind of independently. The fact that we never had any beneficial group evaluation in between us made it impossible for group members to check on each others work and to help each other out. The surprising part about the project was to find that all the high school students were mostly sharing the same values and norms in suburban town as shown in the movie. When Juno offers to sell her prescribed medication for studying to her friend Su-Chin, and Su-Chin replies that she has stopped taking the pills, it was shocking to me how these really young students think it is okay to consume that medication. These students were most likely all aware of the effect of those pills and yet still felt that it was okay to take them. It was shocking for me because my upbringing shaped my views in a way that I think that all medications are unhealthy. In our research, there were many exceptions that appeared against our concepts such as Juno and her adoptive mother having the power in their perspective relationships. Another exception that appeared against the race concept is the fact that Juno had Mongoloid friend named Su-Chin. In an enclosed town as theirs, I would not have expected Juno to be familiar with Su-Chin who seems from a different culture. Apart from that, most of us tried to mould our concept to the movies even it was difficult. The most favorable part of this project was analysing the movie and trying to understand all the topics in a sociological perspective. The addition of choice of third topic was great

because it gave all of us a chance to pick a topic that you preferred and felt it was easy to relate to the other concepts. It gave us a chance to express ourselves in a way that would make the project interesting and easier for ourselves and each other. Analysing the movie made it exciting to see what the director and script writer wanted to portray to the audience. It was fun understanding how to measure a concept and prove it with an example. It made me understand how to perceive a society that has its values, norms and experiences shared with its people. If we were asked to work on a project such as this one, we would choose a movie that would be mould to at least a concept from each member. We would make sure that all our group members have done the same adequate amount of work weekly. We would manage our time better so that it shapes to everyone timetable in order to work together as a group. As group members too, we would make it our responsibility to be present at the appointments if not find a way to better communicate with group members because the reflections needed to be done as group not from a single individuals point of view. Although we struggled as a group to work together, our individual sections were well done and we learned many valuable lessons from watching the movie and from the sociological perspective.

References Diffen contributors. Discrimination vs Prejudice. Discrimination vs Prejudice Comparison chart. November 21 2012. <

http://www.diffen.com/difference/Discrimination_vs_Prejudice>. Caron, Christian O. (2012). Sociological Lenses. (1st ed.). Nelson.