Hernando Washington: The Idea Of Social Imagination By Carlos Mills

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Recommended: What is the sociological imagination C. Wright Mills in 1959

Social Imagination as coined by Mills is the idea for one to take a look at other social problems through an unbiased lens. This idea to be able to look at problems in the world and not think of them in a way that is familiar, but yet to make them something new. The main idea of Mills is to take an issue and see it from the fabric of the culture that it originates from. By being able to utilize Social Imagination we can then look into cultural problems and analyze them as Sociologists. Being able to look at an issue, and disregarding our own social norms we can then see it for what is actually is. To your average person looking at social problems you’re going to see them through the idea that everyone has the same values, and morale’s that …show more content…

In the reading about Hernando Washington what I found to be most interesting was that the whole time he was acting like he was doing the right thing, and not trying to cause any harm, yet he kept her captive and would not let her leave. While reading this I was actually quite interested in what he must have been thinking during the whole process. When reading this article and using my social imagination, I was trying to put myself into his views and what he would have been thinking, which was hard to do. The reason though that I believe he kept trying to justify what he was doing and making it seem like he was going to let her go soon, and that he really did mean no harm to her was so that in his mind he could think that what he was doing wasn’t actually as bad. One part of that story that interested me was an interview with Washington where the interviewer askes “If you were beginning to be uncomfortable about the situation, why didn’t …show more content…

What most people would think is that only black men and women are killed by police officers. Yet this year there has actually been more white individuals killed by police officers than any other race. This is only a problem, because when you read about police killings it is almost all about how police target people of color. With this idea it makes it so that people of color feel more like a victim in the country and are then scared of police officers, who are supposed to be there to help. The statistic of white people being killed by police officers is not covered by the media, because it is not as intriguing or as controversial as the other stories. It is very important that people know that police killings as a whole is an issue not just police killing minorities. Using social imagination and looking at this problem you can see why you would not want one group to feel victimized, which would lead to them striking back at the people that are there to help

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