What It All Has to Do with Us

Allan Johnson’s thesis in his chapter, “What It All Has to Do with Us” is “Contrary to the individualistic model, social life happens only as people participate in social systems—families, schools, workplaces, religious organizations, and so on” (78). His main point is that individuals make social systems and as people participate in social systems they create individuals and how they act.
Everywhere we go we are shown an image about something. It comes from media, families, and friends and through examples set by parents, peers, coaches, teachers, and public figures (78). We get mindsets of how things are supposed to be and who the all the power belongs to. An example of this is Johnson says, “The message came through loud and clear that straight white men are the most important people on the planet because they’re the ones who supposedly do the most important things” (79). This is told everywhere because this system is creating this image for people. Individualism creates two different groups of people, good and bad. Johnson says that you are good if you don’t have any bad feelings toward racism and you are willing to help the bad people. Bad people are the ones who create problems and see racism and do not want to help the world. Being on the privilege side means you get many benefits. You do not have to worry about a lot of things such as race. Being on the bad side means you are more likely to perform bad actions. The neo-Nazi is an example of this where they go around abusing or killing people of color or gays or lesbians (85). They have joined a system that has similarities to their personality and then they are welcomed by others who share the same beliefs.
Why do people teach images to create such hostile systems? With all these bad groups that are being formed, people should rethink of what they are teaching to children so this world will one day be without anger. Media should not be able to portray certain groups as higher power. For example there should be even amounts of different races on television shows.
I agreed with most of the content in this chapter. Individualism does put people into two different groups. I think there should only be one but that would make the world way to easy. Images are shown to people as they grow up and depending on where you live and what your closer ones believe in is how you are going to see the world and belong to the system you belong to.