Dr. Perkins Intro to Sociology Paper

Aaron Hall December 2, 2015

Dr. Perkins Introduction to Sociology Fall 2015

A brief view into the life of a proud educated employed black woman.

Society has a way of reminding you of your place within it when you believe that you’ve just about figured out how your life will progress. Paula Elaine Hall, a 54 year-old educated Black woman from DC, can tell you many stories that can attest to that fact. For instance, when she was at the peak of her working career, after leaving the military, she, unfortunately, experienced the full brunt of the first wave of two major layoffs the first, at the beginning of the Bush administration, and the second at the beginning of the Job Market Crash of 2008 near the end of Bush administration. Losing not one but two valuable jobs, in the communications field, one at the former Virginia branch of the telecommunications company Teligent Inc., and the other at the hands of the former telecommunications giant Nextel, shortly after the company was bought out by and absorbed into Sprint. Paula, not one to be discouraged by a sudden income loss, then relied on the support of her spouse of then 14 and 21 years, respectively, Samoris Hall to pay the bills, while she searched for another job and obtained another master’s degree from the Howard University School of Divinity.

It would seem to a sociologically aware mind, as if she was completely aware that she was not alone in this time of financial crisis and took an objective view of it, linking her personal troubles with historic event that she worked through, thereby looking as if she was peering into the Sociological Imagination.

“The sociological imagination enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals. It enables him to take into account how individuals, in the welter of their daily experience, often become falsely conscious...