My Life as a Georgia Department of Corrections Security Officer - Personal Statement Example

My Life as a Georgia Department of Corrections Security Officer, Valdosta St. Prison My Life as a Georgia Department of Corrections Security Officer The ideology of racism continues to reflect itself across the classes of the American society despite years of determined efforts against the practice. The structural foundations of racism affect all the classes all the same although they are more visible in the lower cadres of the society. The racial tensions are often enforced by stereotypes and stigma that create a Cartesian division across the races (Schaefer, 2006). For the working class this tension might represent itself through systematic discrimination in matters of policy and structural inequalities that perpetuate divisions. The tension that manifests itself at the American correction facilities is evidence of a dysfunctional integration policy both at the working class and the level of the unemployed. The weaknesses of the social superstructure of this society continue to increase racial intolerance that manifests its intensity at the criminal elements of the society. Question One My community is an interracial workforce at Georgia Department of Corrections, and not all members look like me. The differences are mainly across the lines of race, gender, and age. The African Americans are marginally predominant because they comprise of about 60% of the population. The remaining 40% are white. Roughly each half of the workforce is from either gender. The age bracket of the workforce also varies significantly across the younger generation where I am represented and the older generation. Question Two Leaders in my community do not all behave the same way towards people like me. There are those who treat people like me kindly and with requisite professionalism. They are encouraging and their approach is honest. They would, for example, not seek to humiliate me before my co-workers but would instead seek a private audience as and when issues emerge. Others however are inhuman and intimidating. They seem to operate below the levels of the systems of discrimination. Studies have found out that leaders in multi-racial environments can be driven by the factors of race, age, and gender prejudice (Schaefer, 2006). In this category, for examples include those who would occasionally want to reprimand me on things that are not related to my job performance. This treatment I have tended to assume arises from deep seated racial anchorage. There seems to be a silent racial profiling in the minds of some leaders so that their decisions are driven more by racial impulse than by merit. Question Three There is generally a structural system of parity in treating people so that discrimination is not so much manifestly obvious. However there are undercurrents of discrimination that operate at the levels of race, and age especially. There is racial distrust among some employees and which mostly become evident in matters of performance. Although there is no official system of racial profiling, there exist disparities in the performance expectations so that some people like me are more judged from racial perspective than from plain service. I have often felt discriminated against on the account of my young age. There are those within the workforce who feel threatened by my dedication and determination in the execution of my duties. This treatment often gets down to the inmates who have adjusted to respond in certain ways to the wardens with regard to races. The African Americans will most certainly distrust white wardens while the white inmates have always despised black wardens. Question Four I have across some text and work manuals that carry information about people like me. Some of this are encouraging while others are not. On the average however I feel that the manuals are more of biased are they tend to favor certain classes, certain gender, or races as positive examples while others are negative. For example I have rarely come across explicit negative information about the female gender or the white race. For this reason I have tended to feel that a select crop of people are being held up unfairly for promotion or for ridicule respectively. Such manuals I should think are basically created to impress and entrench stereotypes. Other manuals nevertheless are encouraging as they instill American values and professional ethics. Good manuals and texts ones promote parity and reflect on the challenges that face correction officers and how to overcome them. These particular ones have had the effect of bringing down the levels of burnout at times when the work load seems quite intense. Racial and ethnic groups by Richard Schaefer explore the underlying tensions of multi-racial relations in ways that assimilate the reader to this reality. Question Five The local media usually carries sensationalized aspects of reality about people like me. Quite often I have had the feeling that people like me are unfairly represented in the media content. Reports that imply complicity of the correction officers to the mischief of prisoners are especially damaging. We feel that we have been made to look like parts of the problems and not as the solutions that we really are. There are impressions in both the print and the electronic media that we just sit aside and watch as our correction facilities are run down by hard-boiled criminal elements. The versions of events that get carried to the media are, in most cases, purely stereotypical and many of these represent past tradition. Hardly matters of reform get the representation that they deserve. This situation makes some of us who have expended our most productive lives in service at the facilities feel unappreciated ignored. Question Six On the average I think there are more differences between my leaders and myself. There are many things that they have done right such as matters of routine and enforcing policy. Probably the only similarities that I share with them are that we work for the same facility and that we are bounded by a code of ethics that govern our professional lives. Otherwise I tend to think that we live in diametrically opposed worlds. If I were in their positions I would have clamored for the discarding of some of the officialdom that has created an oppressive hierarchy between the races, gender, and age. This would have ensured a cordial working environment without unnecessary tensions, and it might have spilt over to the inmates with significant improvement of their welfare. Question Seven The correction facility where I work needs an elaborate operational mechanism that would restore and sustain equity across the divides of gender, race and age especially. If it were in my power I would put in engineer a social system in which professional merit does not seem to reflect the categories of racism and gender. For instance I would establish a kind of rotational mechanism that would ensure all races, all sexes, and all ages get a fair share of power. This method would give all an opportunity to climb the ladder of management and also abolish the historical systems that have tended to favor some categories above others. I would also revise the titles of the leaders to reflect a more open-door and consultative policy. This should also go alongside the scrapping various middle-level leadership positions to create a uniform pool of equal workers. Besides, this move would end the unhealthy scramble for positions that has, in the past, only exposed cronyism and favoritism. In its place I would then seek alternative ways of reward that would cut well across the board. Question Eight The concepts of discrimination, ethnicity, and religion have been used in Schaefer’s Racial and ethnic groups extensively to explore the discourse of race. The author adroitly weaves together historical realities that have shaped up the diverse heritage of the contemporary American society. America as an amalgam of people from diverse racial backgrounds is portrayed in this book as a system where the inequalities of history, of gender, race, and religion are flexed out. Religion is captured in ways that relate to the working out of the realities of the emerging symptoms of worship in line with racism. The black church is here explored as a vehicle that carries and sustains the process of the emancipation of the black race from centuries of physical and mental domination. The events of September 11 are also represented as having significant impact on the racial relations between the Christian American races, and those that have leanings towards the black race. The discourse of discrimination in this text is explored as a representation of the salient struggles of superiority that is increasingly shaping the relationship between the races. The bottom line of this struggle is the desire of the races to climb higher on the ladder of hierarchy so that the higher a given race has reached, the higher it is given power to exercise power that necessarily comes alongside. The struggle for racial superiority reflects itself in the correctional facilities as well. As it is represented in this society, there are evident inequalities in the distribution of inmates in the American correction facilities so that demographically more African Americans are present at the facilities (Valdosta State Prison, 2010). Comparatively there is less white Americans at these facilities (Georgia Department of Correction, 2010). If crime were to be measured as a symptom of the collapse of a given social order then it would suffice to state that the African Americans are more stifled by the social challenges that result form this competition of the races. Conclusions The apparent tensions that exist between the races, gender and religion among the working force of the American society are testaments to the simmering tensions that impede the formation of a united American society. It might be difficult to fashion a working social system that will cobble together all the diverse ethnicities of the American society into a uniform and working whole. Every ethnicity brings on board some of its indigenous peculiarities in the form of morals, preferences, and values. Some of these attributes are bipolar opposites that can only promise increased prospects of racial tension and racial conflict. The discourses of slavery has mutated in the American system to represent itself in subtle but damaging ways. The response of the African Americans towards this has often been rebellious, which might explain their increasing numbers at the correction facilities. A working system that might promise harmony must be one anchored in the diversity of the races and completely neutral in indigenous values. References Schaefer, T. R. (2006). Racial and Ethnic Groups. 10 Ed. Pearson Group, Inc. Georgia Department of Corrections. (2010). Retrieved December 29, 2010 from http://www.dcor.state.ga.us/GDC/OffenderStatistics/jsp/OffStatsResults.jsp Valdosta State Prison. (2010). Retrieved December 29, 2010 from http://www.dcor.state.ga.us/GDC/FacilityMap/html/Valdosta_state_prison.html Read More