The setting of my experiment happened back in my hometown in different locations. I decided to do different random acts of kindness all day, like giving back to a homeless person, and a few other things. For my first deviant act, I decided to give back to a homeless person I saw near downtown. I had went to McDonalds earlier and bought a burger with a bottled water to give away. I decided to dress up as business attire to see reactions when l approached a homeless stranger. I started to feel nervous because this would have been my time interacting with a random homeless stranger.
When I walked up to this woman, I noticed she was sitting down on the sidewalk and looked tired. She had a sign saying she was hungry and didn’t eat in two days. But most people were walking by like she was not there. I decided this was my opportunity and went up to her to ask if she would like to have lunch with me. She looked up at me and saw the McDonalds bag in my hand and yes without hesitation. I decided to sit down next to her and have our lunch, in which she was so shocked to see me sitting next to her especially in the professional clothes I was in.
When I gave her he bag, she started to cry and I immediately felt emotional. Based on our how I grew up and our society, we have been taught to not to interact with a homeless person because they only want money. I was breaking a social norm by actually sitting down and interacting with this person instead of just walking by like everybody else. I was talking to a random person and offering them food, which is not considered “normal. ” I received several weird and shocked looks while I was eating with her. This made me uncomfortable to the point where I thought I should just stand up and walk away.
But then I thought why I should care what other people think. A common misconception that society and myself use to always think “If they can sit out here all day asking for money why don’t they just get a job? ” But then I learned that everybody’s situation is different just like the woman I sat next to. She had lost her job due to financial meltdown. I decided to give her $20 out of kindness because I knew times were rough. This made me think back to Sociologist C. Wright Mills sociological imagination. He distinguishes personal troubles from public issues.
Using ociological imagination, helped me looked past the individual person and brought me to focus on the social aspects that may have caused this negative outcome. Did she lose her job because she was uneducated or lazy? The answer to this is no, unemployment has been a problem in our hometown and she did not become lazy all of a sudden. This negative outcome was due to something else outside of her individual self-changed. She thanked me, gave me a hug and said I was the only one in a long time who actually looked at her as a person.
I knew sitting down on the sidewalk downtown, eating lunch with a homeless erson was considered breaking a social norm. I gave another homeless person who was a man this time $20 and said have a blessed day. His eyes enlarged when he saw the bill and asked me was I sure. I told him I was positive because everyone goes through hard times to where we wish someone would be there for us. He shook my hand and said “Thank you so much, you have no idea how much this means to me. ” Homeless is a problem in our society to where it evokes strong reactions from people but we must understand this problem as a social rather than an individualistic terms.
My second deviant act would be at my neighborhood where I interacted with my neighbors. I bought a few individual sunflowers to give around neighborhood in act of kindness. My neighborhood is a quiet suburban area and most of my neighbors are a lot older. I decided to knock on each of my neighbor’s door and give each of them a flower. I had received so many different reactions but there was two reactions that surprised me out of all of them. Since I am in college, my next door neighbors always asks about me to see how I am doing and I never took the time out of my ay to go visit them when I am home.
I decided to knock on their door and their reactions were happy. I handed them a flower and said “I hope your day is going well. ” She and her husband instead that I stay for a little, in which I did. They were the most inviting, warm couple in our neighborhood. They told me all types of stories and gave me advice in life. While I was sitting and talking to them, her husband said he would be right back to check the mail. He was walking with a cane, and could only see out of one eye. I took the opportunity to get the mail or him and while I was at it, I decided bring their trashcan back up their house.
He was so grateful because he said sometimes he did not have the energy to get the mail or trash. This made me so happy that before I left I told them that my 15 year old brother would start helping with their trash and mail. While I was walking down my neighborhood, I noticed two older ladies was doing a walking exercise. I went up to them and apologized for stopping their exercise and handed them a flower in which they took. They thanked me very kindly and went on with their exercise. My last stop was at one of my neighbor’s house that I did not know quite well.
When I ranged the doorbell, she looked at me with a confused looked. I offered her a flower out of kindness but she declined. That shocked me because I thought I was doing something nice and did not understand why someone would turn it down. She looked confused and asked me why I was being so kind in offering flowers. I told her it feels good to know that I can brighten up someone’s day. She told me her husband had recently died, and he would do the gardening every day to keep the flowers blooming.
I looked behind me and notice that her yard indeed use to look beautiful with the flowers everywhere but now it looked dead. I felt really sad when she said that to me and offered her a hug. She then smiled and wrapped her arms around me. I realized the norm I was breaking in my neighbor was just randomly being nice in our quiet neighborhood. The symbolic-interaction analysis of labeling theory described my neighborhood interaction because the deviant act came from how others responded to my action. Throughout my day, I started to understand what it felt to be viewed as being deviant.
Some gave me weird looks and did not understand why I was being so randomly nice. At first, being viewed as deviant made me feel uncomfortable especially interacting with a homeless person. Many people was looking at me in disgust when I sat next to the homeless woman. I knew she was getting stigmatized for being homeless, which Erving Goffman says is a powerful negative label for social identity. Being able to experience this project shows me what it is liked to be stigmatized and how everything we do in life judged by a certain set of guidelines followed by norms.
